Minister Shane Reti visits the photonics laboratory
Dr Shane Reti, then Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology, visited the photonics laboratory at the University of Otago in December 2025.
The visit was a chance to show, rather than describe, what the programme is building: the whispering-gallery-mode resonators at the heart of the instrument, and the up-conversion experiment that turns faint microwave and terahertz signals from the atmosphere into optical light a compact detector can measure.
The argument Tuwhiri makes is partly an economic one — that an instrument small and cheap enough to fly on a CubeSat changes what a country of New Zealand’s size can afford to monitor from space. That case is easier to make standing next to the apparatus.
Harald Schwefel is a Professor in the Physics Department of the University of Otago and Science Lead of Tuwhiri. He is also the Deputy Director Science in Te Whai Ao – Dodd-Walls Centre for Photonic and Quantum Technologies and Principal Investigator in Quantum Technologies Aotearoa (QTA).
His research interests are in the use of optical resonators. Such high-quality resonators are great to generate very high field intensities. With high fields the interaction of light with matter can show significant nonlinearities and light can interact with itself and new colours can be created. A side effect of these high-quality resonators is that they are extremely sensitive to changes in the environment making them an ideal candidate to measure such changes.