Abstract
The project is a consortium based activity involving researchers from the UK institutions of the
Universities of Surrey, St. Andrews, Leeds, Warwick, and Southampton, as well as the commercial
research institution QinetiQ. The aims of the project are to progress the state of the art in Silicon
Photonics, in the areas of waveguides, modulators, couplers, detectors, Raman processes, and integration
with electronics. Thus the field is vast, and impossible to cover comprehensively in one project, nor
indeed in one paper. The programme is run on a truly collaborative basis, with members from each
institution running one or more work packages within the project, each co-ordinating work from their
own plus other institutions. To date, the most well developed work has emerged from the activity on basic
waveguides and their characteristics, the modulator activity, optical filters, and work on Raman
Amplifiers. This work will be the main focus of this paper, but an attempt will be made to update the
audience on the remaining activities within the project. By the nature of the project, much of the work is
medium term, and hence some activities are not expected to yield viable results until at least next year,
hence the concentration on some activities rather than all activities at this stage.
