Dr Aaron M McKay

Biography

Dr Aaron McKay (born in Queensland, Australia) obtained a Bachelor of Science (honours) in applied physics and a Bachelor of Engineering (honours) at the University of Technology, Sydney Australia in 2001 and 2006 respectively. In 2008 completed a PhD at Macquarie University, Australia with the thesis entitled “Dual-polarised Neodymium-coped Ceramic and Crystalline Lasers”.

Aaron has worked in industry as a R&D engineer at JDS Uniphase (1999–2002) and BluGlass Limited (2006–2008). In academia, he has also worked as a research assistant at the University of Sydney and post-doc research fellow at Macquarie University on dual-polarisation microchip lasers and on Raman terahertz lasers. He has also tutored and demonstrated at both universities. Currently, Aaron is been employed as a post-doctorial research associate within the Lasers and Photonics Applications group at Heriot-Watt University in Scotland, UK. Aaron has worked on a variety of high power brightness improvement and beam combining techniques for diode bars, pulsed laser amplifiers and novel cooling structures for multiple single-emitter diode packages.

Dr McKay’s research interests include polarization and intensity dynamics in solid-state lasers, ceramic gain materials and fabrication thereof, brightness improvement and beam combining high-power laser diodes, and pulsed ceramic laser amplifiers.

Journal Publications

• McKay, A., P. Dekker, D. W. Coutts, and J. M. Dawes (2007). Enhanced self-heterodyne performance using a Nd-doped ceramic YAG laser. Optics communication, vol. 272, pp 425–430.
• McKay, A., J. M. Dawes, and J.-D. Park (2007). Polarisation-mode coupling in (100)-cut Nd:YAG. Optics express, vol. 15, pp 16342–16347.
• Park, J.-D., A. M. McKay and J. M. Dawes (2009). Effect of gain anisotropy on low-frequency dynamics in four-level solid-state lasers. Optics express, vol. 17, pp 6053–6058.
• McKay, A., and J. M. Dawes (2009). Tunable terahertz signals using a helicoidally polarized ceramic microchip laser. IEEE Photonics Technology Letters, vol. 21, pp 480–482.

International and Full Length Conference Papers

• Campos Zatarain, A., A. McKay, H. J. Baker, D. R. Hall, and M. Desmulliez (2009). High-quality CO2 laser machining of LTCC structures for thermal management of a group of single-emitter laser diodes. International Symposium on Microelectronics, San Jose, USA.
• Valles-Gomez, V., A. McKay, H. J. Baker, and D. R. Hall (2009). Barrier Slip-Casting Technique for Composite YAG Ceramics. Laser Ceramics Symposium, Bilbao, Spain.
• McKay, A., and J. M. Dawes (2009). Terahertz generation using a two-frequency highly-doped ceramic Nd:YAG microchip laser. Conference on Lasers and Electro-optics, Baltimore, USA.
• McKay, A., and J. M. Dawes (2008). Microwave generation using a dual-helicoidally-polarized ceramic microchip laser. IEEE International Topical Meeting on Microwave Photonics, Gold Coast, Australia.
• McKay, A., D. W. Coutts, and J. M. Dawes (2008). Quasi-microchip dual-polarisation ceramic laser. International Congress on Optics, Sydney, Australia.
• McKay, A., J. M. Dawes, and J.-D. Park (2007). Polarisation-mode coupling in (100)-cut Nd:YAG. Conference on Lasers and Electro-optics - Pacific Rim, Seoul, Korea.
• McKay, A., P. Dekker, D. W. Coutts, and J. M. Dawes (2007). Self-heterodyne performance of ceramic Nd:YAG lasers. Advance Solid-State Photonics Topical Meeting, Vancouver, Canada.
• McKay, A., J. M. Dawes, D. W. Coutts, and P. Dekker (2006). Dual Polarization Operation of Nd:Ceramic YAG vs Nd:YAG Lasers. CLEO/QELS, Long Beach, CA, OSA.
• Park, J.-D., C.-H. Cho, A. McKay, and J. M. Dawes (2006). Antiphase dynamics in orthogonally polarized dual-mode solid state lasers. The 14th International Symposium on Laser Spectroscopy, Daejeon, Korea.
• McKay, A., J. M. Dawes, P. Dekker, and D. W. Coutts (2005). A comparison of tuneable, passively-stabilized two-frequency solid-state lasers for microwave generation. IEEE International Topical Meeting on Microwave Photonics, Seoul, Korea.

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