Photonics Spectra

NFOEC 2002 Presents the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Like the hackneyed joke, the National Fiber Optic Engineers Conference (NFOEC), which took place in...

Industrial Laser Shipments Rise
Shipments and exports of North American industrial laser equipment and systems rebounded in the...

Task Force to Revamp Photonics Education
Three organizations have joined forces to develop the second level of photonics standards and...

Advanced Photonix Purchases Silicon Sensors
Advanced Photonix Inc. of Camarillo, Calif., a supplier of OEM silicon-based electro-optic...

NEMI Works to Improve Fiber Splicing
A little-appreciated economic tenet of any market downturn is that vital resources become available...

Nanosys Pursues Nanolaser Technology
Nanosys Inc. of Palo Alto, Calif., has signed an exclusive licensing agreement with the regents of...

Collaboration Aims to Lower Cost of Fiber Optic Component Assembly
EM4 Photonics of Burlington, Mass., and Newport Corp. of Irvine, Calif., have signed a letter of...

Optics Consulting Service Established
Optics for Hire of Arlington, Mass., and Lviv, Ukraine, has formed an optics consulting firm. The...

Company to Enhance Systems for Processing Cables
Flexon AG in Horgen, Switzerland, is now part of Schleuniger, based in Thun, Switzerland. The...

Firms Combine Prototype and OEM Manufacturing Technology
Two New York state companies have formed a partnership to assist customers with the transition from...

Boeing LTS Wins High-Energy Laser Research Contract
Under a multiyear, $25.5 million contract from the US Air Force, Boeing LTS of Albuquerque, N.M.,...

Lehigh's Center for Optical Technologies Gets Financial Backing
The Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development has awarded Lehigh University in...

New Focus to Develop Laser for Cesium Atomic Clocks
New Focus Inc. of San Jose, Calif., has agreed to develop laser technology for NASA's Jet...

Media Cybernetics Buys Assets of Definitive Imaging
Image analysis software provider Media Cybernetics Inc. of Silver Spring, Md., has purchased the...

General Dynamics Unit Wins Army Contract for Telecom Upgrade
General Dynamics Network Systems of Needham, Mass., has received four orders totaling $15.2 million...

Feature Articles

Who's Who? Making Personal Identification Foolproof
Biometrics isn't just a good idea. It's the law, as spelled out in the Enhanced Border Security and...

A New Spin: Thin-Disc Yb:YAG Lasers
If asked to name a solid-state laser, most people would mention the Nd:YAG. This trusty combination...

Why Photomultipliers Need Amplifiers
Photomultipliers remain the preferred light detectors for many applications, mainly because they...

Adaptive Optics Extends the Reach of Far-Field Microscopy
In confocal and multiphoton microscopy, light travels to the focal plane and excites fluorescence...

Measuring Birefringence in Calcium Fluoride at 157 nm
In recent years, leading-edge optical lithography has been moving to ever-shorter wavelengths: from...

Presstime Bulletin

UV Produces Transparent Conductor
A transparent electrical conductor has been produced from an insulating oxide by a team at the...

Transparent Organic Cells Emit Blue
European and Canadian researchers reported in the Oct. 21 issue of Applied Physics Letters a new...

Laser Fabricates Terahertz Waveguides
Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers in Cambridge have fabricated solid-state...

Very Large Telescope Snaps Images of Radio Hot Spots
A research group has imaged hot spots from the radio galaxy 3C 445 using optical and infrared...

Rewritable Solitons Produced in VCSELs
A team from Institut Non Lineaire de Nice in France, Poltecnico e Università di Bari and Università...

Proposed 2 X 2 Switch Applies Photonic Crystals
Collaborators at the University of Delaware in Newark and the US Air Force Research Laboratory at...

Photonic Fiber Drops Raman Threshold
A group of scientists at Bath University in the UK have reduced the threshold power for stimulated...

Laser Spectroscopy Displays 12-nm Resolution
At Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, scientists have employed laser...

Independent Photons Coalesce
Quantum mechanics predicts that when two photons emitted simultaneously by parametric...

Blue-Phase Liquid Crystal Acts as Laser
Researchers at Kent State University in Ohio and Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana in Mexico City...

Research

Speckle Patterns Offer Secure Code Keys
To ensure that secrets stay secret, information should flow easily in one direction but not in the...

Flared Laser Produces 650 mW
Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Nuvonyx Inc. in Bridgeton, Mo.,...

Confocal Raman Microscope Analyzes Reactions
A team at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City has developed an inverted confocal Raman...

Laser Array Traps and Manipulates Particles
A technique that employs an array of vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) has...

Integrated Mode Converter Improves Fiber Coupling
Researchers at the University of California at Santa Barbara have developed a simplified technique...

Video Catches Bubbles in Waves
Researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, in...

Modulation Improves Terahertz Spectroscopy
Time-domain terahertz spectroscopy shows promise for applications in many disciplines, but the...

Polymers Extend Range of Blue Phase
Blue-phase liquid crystals display much promise in photonics -- for example, in switching...

Near-Field Probes Offer 30-nm Resolution for Photoluminescence Imaging
A group of scientists at Kanagawa Academy of Science and Technology, the University of Tsukuba and...

Time-Reversal Mirror Offers Subwavelength Focusing
Two researchers at Université Paris VII have reported that they have used an acoustic time-reversal...

Optical Tweezers Benefit from In Situ Laser Power Measurement
With optical tweezers, the potential photodamage to cells or other biological tissues makes it...

Nanoscale Optics Unhindered by Diffraction Limit
As optics designers strive to shrink photonic devices to nanoscale size, they must contend with the...

Matter Wave Collapses and Revives
While a Bose-Einstein condensate may represent the most classical form of a matter wave, the wave...

Deposition Forms Buried Grating
Scientists at the University of California at Berkeley have formed a buried oxide grating by...

X-ray Imaging Offers High Spatial Resolution
Building on the fact that x-ray illumination excites electrons that generate photochromic effects,...

Technology

Imaging Gets the Drop on Radioactive Waste
Radioactive waste disposal generally entails vitrifying the waste into a glassy solid. Initial...

UV/Blue Lasing Observed in Nanowires
Building on earlier research that used near-field microscopy to capture lasing action of single ZnO...

Quantum-Dot Lasers Exhibit High Characteristic Temperature
Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have developed 1.3-µm InAs quantum-dot GaAs-based...

Single Laser Matches Transmission Record
The record for optical data transmission has long since passed a terabit per second, but the feat...

Nanoporous Coatings Exhibit Low Refractive Index
Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge have developed an aqueous-based...

Nd:YAG Replaces Spark Plug in Lean-Burn Engine
Forget about putting a tiger in your tank; to really get your motor running, put a laser under the...

Array Measures Ice Cloud Scattering
Scattering from nonspherical ice crystals in the upper atmosphere interferes with satellite...

Hot Embossing Method Improves Polymer's Light Emission
Incorporating wavelength-scale microstructures such as gratings can improve the properties of...

Curved CCDs to Scan Earth's Orbit
Curved CCDs could improve the ability of telescopes to monitor and track debris and objects in...

Lasing Achieved with Doped DNA
Researchers at the Chitose Institute of Science and Technology in Japan have doped DNA strands with...

DC Sputtering Cuts Deposition Times and Costs
KDF Inc. of Rockleigh, N.J., has developed a DC reactive sputtering process that promises to...

Digital Data-Hiding Pulls a Reverse
The ability to easily modify and manipulate digital imagery has been beneficial to applications in...

Cold Cathode Supports Flat Panel Displays
Scientists at Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology have developed a flicker-free...

Shaped CO2 Pulses Cleanly Ablate Silica Glass
Although excimer and ultrafast laser technology can machine silica glass, the high average power...

Ultrafast Laser Chisels Lens Inside Glass
In the classic magic trick, a magician asks a member of the audience to select a random card from a...

Optical Trap Builds Microvalves
Microfluidic devices have made chemical and biological analysis faster, more selective and less...