physics

Miro Erkintalo

Miro Erkintalo is a physics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Miro Erkintalo rather than just read about it. In short: Miro Erkintalo is a New Zealand physicist specialising in nonlinear optics and laser physics, and head of the Department of Physics at the University of Auckland. Education Erkintalo was born and grew up in Pori, Finland, with an interest in science and maths.

Key takeaways

Miro Erkintalo belongs to physics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Miro Erkintalo to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Miro Erkintalo from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Miro Erkintalo is a New Zealand physicist specialising in nonlinear optics and laser physics, and head of the Department of Physics at the University of Auckland.

Education Erkintalo was born and grew up in Pori, Finland, with an interest in science and maths. He attended the Tampere University of Technology intending to get his MSc and become a teacher or technologist, but after interning in a research lab decided to become a physicist. He completed three degrees in succession: a BSc (March 2009), an MSc (November 2009) and Doctor of Science in Physics (January 2012). After his PhD, Erkintalo came to New Zealand in 2012 to take up a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Auckland, at the suggestion of his mentor John Dudley. He had intended to just stay for two years, but enjoyed New Zealand so much he became a permanent resident. He became a Lecturer in the Department of Physics in 2014, Senior Lecturer in February 2017 and Associate Professor in February 2021. He is a principal investigator at the Dodd-Walls Centre for Photonic and Quantum Technologies.

Areas of research

Erkintalo studies laser light and how it interacts with matter, both fundamental physics and technological applications. He developed the theoretical model for microresonator frequency combs, which can convert a single laser beam into hundreds or thousands of different-coloured beams. Currently fibre-optic communications systems use hundreds of lasers with different wavelengths to increase the amount of information transmitted; a microresonator frequency comb could allow a single beam to do this work, greatly improving performance and energy efficiency. His work on temporal cavity solitons has potential for the development of light-based computer memory. Erkintalo has also been part of the development of inexpensive ultrashort pulsed lasers with potential applications in microscopy and micro-machining. These lasers have extremely short pulses of hundreds of femtoseconds, which have very high peak energy and can be used in environments where they would have to work under extreme noise, temperature, and vibration.

Honours and awards

Erkintalo was awarded a Rutherford Discovery Fellowship in 2015 and two Marsden Fund grants. He won the Hamilton Award, the Royal Society Te Apārangi's Early Career Research Excellence Award for Science, in 2016 for his work in nonlinear optics and laser physics. On 30 June 2020 Erkintalo was presented with the 2019 Prime Minister's MacDiarmid Emerging Scientist Prize for his contributions to new laser technologies. Most of the $200,000 prize will go towards exploring microresonator frequency comb architecture.

Selected publications Coen, Stéphane; Erkintalo, Miro (2013). "Universal scaling laws of Kerr frequency combs". Optics Letters. 38 (11): 1790–1792. arXiv:1303.7078. Bibcode:2013OptL...38.1790C. doi:10.1364/OL.38.001790. PMID 23722745. S2CID 2590926. Dudley, John M.; Dias, Frédéric; Erkintalo, Miro; Genty, Goëry (2014). "Instabilities, breathers and rogue waves in optics". Nature Photonics. 8 (10): 755–764. arXiv:1410.3071. Bibcode:2014NaPho...8..755D. doi:10.1038/nphoton.2014.220. S2CID 53349599. Pasquazi, Alessia; Peccianti, Marco; Razzari, Luca; Moss, David J.; Coen, Stéphane; Erkintalo, Miro; Chembo, Yanne K.; Hansson, Tobias; Wabnitz, Stefan; Del'Haye, Pascal; Xue, Xiaoxiao (2018). "Micro-combs: A novel generation of optical sources". Physics Reports. Micro-combs: A novel generation of optical sources. 729: 1–81. Bibcode:2018PhR...729....1P. doi:10.1016/j.physrep.2017.08.004. hdl:1959.3/434768. Nielsen, Alexander U.; Garbin, Bruno; Coen, Stéphane; Murdoch, Stuart G.; Erkintalo, Miro (2019). "Coexistence and Interactions between Nonlinear States with Different Polarizations in a Monochromatically Driven Passive Kerr Resonator". Physical Review Letters. 123 (1) 013902. arXiv:1902.05541. Bibcode:2019PhRvL.123a3902N. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.013902. PMID 31386416. S2CID 118943790. Ricciardi, Iolanda; Mosca, Simona; Parisi, Maria; Leo, François; Hansson, Tobias; Erkintalo, Miro; Maddaloni, Pasquale; De Natale, Paolo; Wabnitz, Stefan; De Rosa, Maurizio (2020). "Optical Frequency Combs in Quadratically Nonlinear Resonators". Micromachines. 11 (2): 230. arXiv:2004.04714. doi:10.3390/mi11020230. PMC 7074798. PMID 32102284.

References

External links

2016 Hamilton Award winner: Dr Miro Erkintalo (YouTube) University of Auckland staff profile Research website

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Miro Erkintalo

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Miro Erkintalo claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In physics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Miro Erkintalo before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Miro Erkintalo ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Miro Erkintalo

In research: Miro Erkintalo appears in physics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Miro Erkintalo in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Miro Erkintalo is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 20th-century New Zealand physicists, 21st-century New Zealand physicists, Expatriates in New Zealand, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Miro Erkintalo outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Miro Erkintalo in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Miro Erkintalo means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Miro Erkintalo out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Miro Erkintalo in simple terms?

Miro Erkintalo is a New Zealand physicist specialising in nonlinear optics and laser physics, and head of the Department of Physics at the University of Auckland. Education Erkintalo was born and grew up in Pori, Finland, with an interest in science and maths.

Why does Miro Erkintalo matter?

Because it connects several physics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Miro Erkintalo?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Miro Erkintalo.