Photonics Spectra

OIF Forms User Working Group for Physical Layer Technology
The Optical Internetworking Forum, based in Fremont, Calif., has announced the creation of the...

Olympus Europa Purchases Soft Imaging System
In Germany, Olympus Europa GmbH of Hamburg has acquired Soft Imaging System of Münster and its...

Nufern Is Granted Amplification Technology License
To upgrade amplification of its fiber laser subassemblies, Nufern of East Granby, Conn., has...

Ionatron and Air Force Research Laboratory Collaborate
Ionatron Inc. of Tucson, Ariz., and the Directed Energy Directorate of the US Air Force Research...

InterSense to Develop Cockpit Helmet Tracker
InterSense Inc. of Burlington, Mass., has won a Phase I Small Business Innovation Research contract...

Lemelson Patents Ruled Invalid, Unenforceable and Not Infringed
Under a decision by the US District Court in Las Vegas, machine vision and bar-code patents held by...

Dalsa to Provide Cameras for Flat Panel Display Inspection
Dalsa Corp., based in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, has received camera orders totaling $3.9 million...

LEOMA Discontinues Operations
After 15 years of service to the US laser and electro-optics industry, the Laser and Electro-Optics...

RVSI Receives Orders for Equipment to Read 2-D Bar Codes
The Acuity CiMatrix Div. of Robotic Vision Systems Inc. (RVSI), based in Nashua, N.H., has received...

Alpine Research Optics Relocates
In Boulder, Colo., Alpine Research Optics has moved into a custom-built 35,000-sq-ft facility,...

Feature Articles

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Ytterbium Tungstate Revolutionizes the Field of High-Power Ultrafast Lasers
A recently commercialized laser material, ytterbium tungstate (Yb:KGW), is the basis for a new...

Alkali Lasers Challenge Thin Disks and Fibers
What led you to investigate alkalis as laser materials? I’m an inventor, an applied...

Testing High-Quality Optics
Optics are everywhere. They’re in increasingly sophisticated research and medical devices such as...

Optical Profiling Techniques Characterize Free-Form Optics
Optics that deviate from the traditional spherical shape are increasingly popular in optical...

FT Interferometry Measures Homogeneity
Today’s advanced semiconductor applications have pushed the limits of optical lithography systems....

Positioning Precision Takes Center Stage
These basic laws of physics can frustrate any system designer’s best efforts to move a component...

Positioning Systems Make Submicron-Level Moves
Demanding by their very nature, submicron and nanometer-scale positioning tasks are further...

Kinematics and Precision Stages Drive Laser Welding
No longer an exotic manufacturing application, laser welding is now a common production tool for...

Scanning Microscopy Moves into Production
Since the scanning tunneling microscope was invented in the early 1980s, the field of microscopic...

Automation Speeds Fiber Alignment
Coupling a single-mode fiber to the lens of an infrared diode laser is one of the most common...

Hollow Retroreflectors Promote Precision Optical Alignment
Precision optical alignment capability across a range from the UV to the far-IR and a...

CO2 Lasers Maintain Their Momentum
Even in last year’s somewhat slow market, CO2 laser technology remained a strong contender in...

CO2 Technology Continues to Evolve
The first commercial application for CO2 lasers was wire stripping — using a large, flowing gas...

Scanners Handle High-Power Welding
The idea of scanning a laser beam has been around for years. Until recently, though, the concept...

Low-Power Lasers Make Their Mark
Although sealed CO2 lasers have been used to mark plastics, paper and other organic materials for...

New Support Systems Pack on More Power
In manufacturing applications from welding to cutting and powdered metal deposition, the thirst for...

Specialty Fibers and Waveguides Enable Groundbreaking Applications
Although we are beyond the optical fiber boom for the telecommunications sector, specialty fibers...

Hollow Silica Waveguides Offer IR Solutions
Applications in the mid- and far-infrared regions have long suffered from the lack of a reliable,...

Fiber Lasers Poised to Seize Market Share
Significant progress over the past two years in the development of fiber lasers has led to an...

Fibers Deliver CO2 Laser Beams for Medical Applications
An innovative class of optical fibers was developed several years ago at Massachusetts Institute of...

Inductively Coupled Plasma Fuels Elemental Spectroscopy
Over the past three decades, inductively coupled plasma, which forms during inductive heating of...

Where Spectroscopy and Fiber Optics Meet
The intersection of spectroscopy and fiber optics continues to give rise to some very interesting...

Light Engines Enhance Machine Vision Illumination
Even the most sophisticated machine vision system will fail if the lighting isn’t right. Variations...

Third Dimension Brought to the Factory Floor
Traditional machine vision applications examine the shape and color or the feature size and...

Stand-Alone Board Processes Images Cost-Effectively
The days when an engineer needed to have a computer, a frame grabber, an operating system and a...

Presstime Bulletin

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Laser Techniques Reveal Molecular Folding
Reporting in the Feb. 20 issue of Science, scientists in the Timothy S. Zwier group at Purdue...

Modal Characteristics of Holey VCSELs Studied
Researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Furukawa Electric Co. in...

Silicon Optical Modulator Achieves >1-GHz Operation
In a development that points to the advent of silicon as a viable photonic material, a group of...

Research

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Waveguides Force Diode Laser into Single Mode
Semiconductor lasers oscillating in a single, fundamental lateral mode produce a better-quality...

Ince-Gaussian Beams Find the Middle Ground
When optical engineers talk about laser modes, they're referring to the distinct spatial patterns...

Nd:LuVO4 Laser Pumped
The vanadate crystals YVO4 and GdVO4 have been very successful hosts for diode-pumped...

Technology

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Amplifier Boosts Efficiency of Microlaser
Miniature, longitudinally pumped, Q-switched solid-state lasers have relatively low efficiency, in...

Photonics Detects Elusive Ozone Destroyer
A team of researchers from Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., and from NASA's Jet Propulsion...

Photothermal Analyzer Detects Fuel Adulteration
The adulteration of gasoline with cheap industrial solvents or with aromatic or light hydrocarbons...