MANOS

(1) The complete title of one (or more) paper(s) published in the open literature describing the work that the author claims describes a human-competitive result.

Evolutionary Design of Single-Mode Microstructured Polymer Optical Fibres using an Artificial Embryogeny Representation


(2) The name, complete physical mailing address, e-mail address, and phone number of EACH author of EACH paper 

Steven Manos
Centre for Computation Science
University College London
20 Gordon Street, London WC1H 0AJ
E-mail: s.manos@ucl.ac.uk 
Phone: +44 (0)20 7679 5300

Maryanne C. J. Large
Optical Fibre Technology Centre
University of Sydney
NSW 2006, Australia
E-mail: m.large@oftc.usyd.edu.au 
Phone: +61 (0)2 9351 1923

Leon Poladian
School of Mathematics and Statistics
University of Sydney
NSW 2006, Australia
E-mail: leonp@maths.usyd.edu.au
Phone: +61 (0)2 9351 2049


(3) The name of the corresponding author (i.e., the author to whom notices will be sent concerning the competition)

Steven Manos


(4) The abstract of the paper(s)

Polymer microstructured optical fibres are a relatively recent development in optical fibre technology, supporting a wide variety of microstructure fibre geometries, when compared to the more commonly used silica. In order to meet the automated design requirements for such complex fibres, a representation was developed which can describe radially symmetric microstructured fibres of different complexities; from simple hexagonal designs with very few holes, to large arrays of hundreds of holes. This representation uses an embryogeny, where the complex phenotype is 'grown' from a simpler genotype, and the resulting complexity is primarily a feature of the reuse of gene elements that describe the microstructure elements. Most importantly, the growth process results in the automatic satisfaction of manufacturing constraints. In conjunction with a multi-objective genetic algorithm, this formed a robust algorithm for the design of microstructured fibres for particular applications of interest. In this paper the algorithm is used to design one of the most common types of microstructured fibres ? single-moded fibres. Various types of single-moded designs that have not been encountered in the literature were discovered, identifying new 'design themes'. One of the designs was subsequently manufactured, the details of which are included. 


(5) a list containing one or more of the eight letters (A, B, C, D, E, F, G, or H) that correspond to the criteria (see above) that the author claims that the work satisfies.

(A) The result was patented as an invention in the past, is an improvement over a patented invention, or would qualify today as a patentable new invention. 

(B) The result is equal to or better than a result that was accepted as a new scientific result at the time when it was published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

(D) The result is publishable in its own right as a new scientific result - independent of the fact that the result was mechanically created.

(E) The result is equal to or better than the most recent human-created solution to a long-standing problem for which there has been a succession of increasingly better human-created solutions. 


(6) A statement stating why the result satisfies the criteria that the contestant claims.

The following states why our entry satisfies criteria A, B, D and E.

Microstructured Optical Fibres (MOF) were first manufactured using silica in the early 1990's. The manufacturing technique used to manufacture these fibres involves the stacking rods of glass together and drawing them to an optical fibre, limiting the hole pattern to a hexagonal type pattern. Polymer MOFs (or MPOF) were pioneered at the Optical Fibre Technology Centre in 2001, and allow the insertion of arbitrary patterns of holes within the fibres. Even with this new flexibility in design, where many different types of arrays of holes are now manufacturable, all microstructured single-mode fibres have used a hexagonal pattern of holes. Various incremental improvements to these designs have been explored in the literature (and in some cases - GA designed). However, they have all been variations of the hexagonal array design theme.

Optical fibres typically guide light using either single-moded guidance or multi-moded guidance. Each of these cases has their own specific application areas. Single-mode fibres have been typically used in long distance telecommunications, however short distance applications of single-mode fibres, such as sensing applications, which operate using single-mode interferometry, are becoming increasingly widespread. 

The suitability of an optical fibre to a particular application goes beyond just the light propagating characteristics. Ease of manufacture, minimising design complexity and the interconnectivity of fibres is also important. Thus, finding new types of designs, which are not hexagonal arrays of holes is important. For example, the writing of gratings into a microstructured fibre core is dependent on the surrounding hole geometry - a simpler geometry can result in the more efficient writing of gratings. Another example is the possibility of large core sizes in single-mode fibres, which can aid in the connectivity of single-mode fibres to devices (for example, lasers and detectors), and to other fibres. 

The fibres evolved by the microstructured fibre GA were not hexagonal arrays. Simpler designs were found which exhibit single-moded guidance, with symmetries ranging from 5 to 8 (not only the typical hexagonal symmetry of 6), These designs exhibited single-mode guidance using a different mechanism of light confinement - confining the fundamental mode but allowing other modes to escape. Most importantly, the designs found were simpler and easier to manufacture than previous designs, with less holes required to achieve single-moded guidance.


(7) A full citation of the paper (that is, author names; publication date; name of journal, conference, technical report, thesis, book, or book chapter; name of editors, if applicable, of the journal or edited book; publisher name; publisher city; page numbers, if applicable). 

Steven Manos, Maryanne C. J. Large, Leon Poladian, Evolutionary Design of Single-Mode Microstructured Polymer Optical Fibres using an Artificial Embryogeny Representation , Late Breaking paper, GECCO 2007, University College London, London, England, July 7-11th, 2007.


(8) A statement either that "any prize money, if any, is to be divided equally among the co-authors" OR a specific percentage breakdown as to how the prize money, if any, is to be divided among the co-authors. 

Any prize money, if anyway, is to be awarded wholly to Steven Manos.


(9) A statement stating why the judges should consider the entry as "best" in comparison to other entries that may also be "human-competitive."

Optical fibre design has essentially been a human-driven process of trial and error to find fibre designs which exhibit the light-guiding properties of interest. This research work has two major aspects which have never been seen in the research field of optical fibre design. 

1) For the first time a fully-vectorial electromagnetic modelling algorithm was used to explicitly evaluate the confinement loss of modes, for structures of different complexities and symmetries. In the past, this has typically been done using rules of thumb, approximations, or as a post-processing step on 'optimal designs'. The losses of the various modes were also considered in a multi-objective setting, resulting in various designs with different loss properties. However multiple design were found which were deemed 'single-moded'. Although this was a computationally expensive approach, careful parallel programming meant that optimal and manufacturable designs could be discovered within 2-3 days. 

2) For the first time an embryogeny representation was developed which can represent a wide range of microstructured optical fibres of varying complexity and different symmetries, from 2 hole fibres to fibres with thousands of holes. This embryogeny automatically satisfies manufacturing constraints, meaning that the evolved designs can be manufactured immediately. The phenotypic space of (valid) designs possible is massive, with no preconceptions about symmetry or types of designs incorporated into the design algorithm. This opened up new avenues of possible structures, resulting in the discovery of novel single-moded microstructured fibres.