This thesis describes developments in atomic vapour loading in hollow core photonic crystal fibre (HC-PCF) for fabrication of atomic vapour loaded photonic microcells (PMC). These developments have been targeted at addressing some of the issues associated with loading atomic vapours in confined waveguiding geometries such as increased dephasing and physio-chemical wall absorptions. Atomic vapour loaded HC-PCF and PMC’s have applications in laser metrology, coherent optics and magneto optical spectroscopy. State of the art HC-PCF have been fabricated for loading with atomic vapour including both photonic bandgap (PBG) guiding and inhibited coupling (IC) hypocycloidal core shape Kagome HC-PCF. Record loss of 70 dB/km has been achieved in IC hypocycloid core shape Kagome HC-PCF in the spectral region centred at 800 nm. This fibre retains excellent single mode propagation combined with large core and increased optical bandwidth in comparison with specialist PBG HC-PCF optimised for operation around 800 nm. Aluminosilicate sol-gel coatings have been developed and successfully applied to the inner core wall of HC-PCF’s to reduce the atomic vapour surface interaction. Confining atomic vapours in micron scaled HC-PCF results in increased dephasing rates because of the frequent atom wall collisions. Anti relaxation coating materials have been applied to the inner core wall and the longitudinal relaxation time has been measured in coated and uncoated fibres utilising a magneto optical technique. Additionally sub Doppler transparencies are investigated in anti relaxation coated and uncoated HC-PCF.

This PhD thesis focuses on improving the limit of detection (LOD) of Raman biosensors by using surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) and/or hollow core photonic crystal fibers (HC-PCF), in conjunction with statistical methods. Raman spectroscopy is a multivariate phenomenon that requires statistical analysis to identify the relationship between recorded spectra and the property of interest. The objective of this research is to improve the performance of Raman biosensors using SERS techniques and/or HC-PCF, by applying partial least squares (PLS) regression and principal component analysis (PCA). I began my research using Raman spectroscopy, PLS analysis and two different validation methods to monitor heparin, an important blood anti-coagulant, in serum at clinical levels. I achieved lower LOD of heparin in serum using the Test Set Validation (TSV) method. The PLS analysis allowed me to distinguish between weak Raman signals of heparin in serum and background noise. I then focused on using SERS to further improve the LOD of analytes, and accomplished simultaneous detection of GLU-GABA in serum at clinical levels using the SERS and PLS models. This work demonstrated the applicability of using SERS in conjunction with PLS to measure properties of samples in blood serum. I also used SERS with HC-PCF configuration to detect leukemia cells, one of the most recurrent types of pediatric cancers. This was achieved by applying PLS regression and PCA techniques. Improving LOD was the next objective, and I was able to achieve this by improving the PLS model to decrease errors and remove outliers or unnecessary variables. The results of the final optimized models were evaluated by comparing them with the results of previous models of Heparin and Leukemia cell detection in previous sections. Finally, as a clinical application of Raman biosensors, I applied the enhanced Raman technique to detect polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) disease, and to determine the role of chemerin in this disease. I used SERS in conjunction with PCA to differentiate between PCOS and non-PCOS patients. I also confirmed the role of chemerin in PCOS disease, measured the level of chemerin, a chemoattractant protein, in PCOS and non-PCOS patients using PLS, and further improved LOD with the PLS regression model, as proposed in previous section.

Light can exert optical forces on matter. In the macroscopic world these forces are minuscule, but on the microscopic or atomic scale, these forces are large enough to trap and manipulate particles. They may even be used to cool atoms to a fraction of a degree above absolute zero. This thesis details a number of experiments concerned with the optical manipulation of atoms and micron-size particles using free space light beams and photonic crystal fibres. Two atom guiding experiments are described. In the first experiment, a spatial light modulator is used to generate higher blue-detuned azimuthal Laguerre-Gaussian LG) beams, which are annular beams with a hollow core. These LG beams are then used to guide laser cooled rubidium-85 atoms within the dark core over a distance of 30 mm. The second atom guiding experiment involves attempting to guide laser cooled and thermal rubidium atoms through a hollow-core photonic crystal fibre using red-detuned light. Hollow-core photonic crystal fibres are fibres that are able to guide light with low attenuation within a hollow core. For this experiment a hot wire detection system was designed, along with a number of complex vacuum systems. The first dual-beam fibre trap for micron-size particles constructed using endlessly single-mode photonic crystal fibre (ESM-PCF) is described. The characteristics of dual-beam fibre traps are governed by the fibres used. As ESM-PCF has considerably different properties in comparison to conventional single- or multimode fibres, this dual beam ESM-PCF trap exhibits some novel characteristics. I show that the dual beam ESM-PCF trap can form trapping, repulsive and line potentials; an interference-free ‘white light’ trap; and a dual-wavelength optical conveyor belt.