Due to the unique light weight and small footprint of optical fibres, they can be attached to musical instruments without significant alteration of their acoustic behaviour.  The vibrational modes of the instrument then introduces a time-varying change in the optical path length of the optical fibre.  A fibre optic interferometer can detect these displacements with very high resolution, and this signal can then be recorded with very high fidelity.  This project investigates various aspects of this  concept, including acoustic modelling, transducer design, and signal processing and analysis.

Students will require a background in optics and signal processing.