Photonics Spectra: Optics This is the syndication feed for Photonics Spectra: Optics. https://www.photonics.com/Splash.aspx?Tag=Optics Tue, 19 Mar 2024 01:35:25 GMT Mon, 18 Mar 2024 07:00:00 GMT 1800 Photonics-Based Oscillator Provides Precise Signals on Compact Chip
Many technologies — from communications, to radar and sensing, to positioning and navigation — rely on low-noise microwave signals for precise timing and synchronization. Advances in these technologies intensify the demand for stable, low-phase noise microwave sources.

Although photonic lightwave systems provide advantages over conventional electronic approaches for generating low-noise microwaves, the large size and power consumption of photonic systems restrict their use to laboratory environments.

Researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, the University of...]]>
https://www.photonics.com/Articles/Photonics-Based_Oscillator_Provides_Precise/p5/a69821 A69821 Mon, 18 Mar 2024 07:00:00 GMT
Quintessent Closes $11.5M Seed Round
Quintessent seeks to address infrastructure bottlenecks for data centers and computing technologies by implementing advanced materials, device/circuit design, and link architecture in order to reduce power consumption and required component count. The company previously formalized a collaboration with Tower Semiconductor...]]>
https://www.photonics.com/Articles/Quintessent_Closes_115M_Seed_Round/p5/a69820 A69820 Mon, 18 Mar 2024 07:00:00 GMT
Multicolor Photochromic Fibers Deliver Interactive Wearable Displays
Fiber, as a wearable material, offers breathability, flexibility, and resistance to wear, making it an ideal substrate for wearable devices. Using mature textile technology, color-changing fibers can be integrated into clothing to serve as an interface between humans and computers. The use of light-emitting, color-changing fiber as an interface for communications, navigation, healthcare, and Internet of Things is expected to grow.

Inspired by photochromic fibers that exhibit fluorescence effects and polymer optical fibers that emit light when coupled with an external source, scientists from Huazhong University of Science and Technology and Nanjing University created a multicolored, uniformly luminescent, photochromic fiber. They...]]>
https://www.photonics.com/Articles/Multicolor_Photochromic_Fibers_Deliver/p5/a69817 A69817 Fri, 15 Mar 2024 07:00:00 GMT
Light-Beads Microscopy Reveals New Information About Brain Activity
Mammalian brains are known to be comprised of densely interconnected neurons, but a remaining mystery in neuroscience is how tools which capture relatively few components of brain activity have enabled scientists to predict behavior in mice.

To better capture and understand neural activity in mice, professor Alipasha Vaziri and his team at The Rockefeller University used large-scale recordings and light-beads microscopy (LBM), a volumetric, two-photon imaging technique developed by the Vaziri lab in 2021. LBM increases imaging speed by eliminating the “dead-time” between sequential laser pulses, when no neuroactivity is recorded, and by removing the need for scanning.

LBM breaks one laser pulse into 30 sub-pulses...]]>
https://www.photonics.com/Articles/Light-Beads_Microscopy_Reveals_New_Information/p5/a69813 A69813 Thu, 14 Mar 2024 07:00:00 GMT
Optica Names 20 Recipients for 2024 Awards, Medals
“Congratulations to the 2024 Optica award and medal recipients, whose leadership, vision, and extraordinary contributions are advancing our field to new heights,” said Gerd Leuchs, Optica's 2024 President.

For a complete list of the winners, visit www.optica.org/about/newsroom/news_releases/2024/march/optica_names_20_recipients_of_2024_awards_and_medals/.]]>
https://www.photonics.com/Articles/Optica_Names_20_Recipients_for_2024_Awards_Medals/p5/a69801 A69801 Tue, 12 Mar 2024 07:00:00 GMT
Liquid Crystals Control Polarization in Laser-Written Waveguides
Researchers in Germany have developed a way to control and manipulate optical signals by embedding a liquid crystal layer into waveguides created with direct laser writing. The work could lead to devices that enable electro-optical control of polarization. Such devices could open possibilities for chip-based devices and complex photonic circuits based on femtosecond-written waveguides.

According to Alessandro Alberucci, researcher from Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, the advance could be beneficial for other data-intensive applications in and beyond the data center. Alberucci added that the technology could also find application in the experimental realization of dense optical neural networks.

Liquid crystal-enabled...]]>
https://www.photonics.com/Articles/Liquid_Crystals_Control_Polarization_in/p5/a69800 A69800 Mon, 11 Mar 2024 07:00:00 GMT
Researchers Develop AI-Enabled Liquid Holographic Camera
Holography technology can restore the complete light field information of the recorded object, which has important applications in fields like biological microscopic imaging and optical micromanipulation. One important frontier in holography is the reconstruction of realistic 3D scenes. However, the development and application of holographic technology have been hindered by the huge amount of data of the 3D scenes and the laser coherence, which leads to the slow capturing speed of the real 3D scenes and the serious speckle noise of the holographic reproduced image.

A team of researchers has collaborated to develop a holographic camera based on liquid lens technology, capable of recording high-quality holograms of real 3D scenes in a...]]>
https://www.photonics.com/Articles/Researchers_Develop_AI-Enabled_Liquid_Holographic/p5/a69798 A69798 Fri, 08 Mar 2024 07:00:00 GMT
VIAVI Solutions Agrees to Takeover of Spirent Communications in $1.3B Deal
The acquisition is expected to close during the second half of 2024.

Spirent is a provider of products, services, and managed solutions for test assurance and automation of technologies including 5G, software-defined wide area networks, cloud, and autonomous vehicles. The company’s international...]]>
https://www.photonics.com/Articles/VIAVI_Solutions_Agrees_to_Takeover_of_Spirent/p5/a69796 A69796 Thu, 07 Mar 2024 15:30:12 GMT
All-Optical Network Bridges Space, Air, Underwater Environments
Researchers have developed an all-light communication network that enables seamless connectivity across space, air and underwater environments. The new network design combines different types of light sources to ensure connectivity across environments.

“In today’s world, data transmission is critical for communication, navigation, emergency response, research and commercial activities,” said research team leader Yongjin Wang from Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications and Suzhou Lighting Chip Monolithic Optoelectronics Technology Co. Ltd. “This new wireless network enables uninterrupted connectivity across environments, facilitating two-way real-time data transmission between the network nodes that...]]>
https://www.photonics.com/Articles/All-Optical_Network_Bridges_Space_Air/p5/a69787 A69787 Thu, 07 Mar 2024 07:00:00 GMT
Polymer-Coated Metasurface Could Enable Sensors, Networking
A material coating, whose light refraction properties can be precisely switched between different states, has been developed by an interdisciplinary research team from the Chemistry and Physics departments at the University of Jena. The team, led by professors Felix Schacher and Isabelle Staude, combined light-reactive polymers with metasurfaces. The work has led to the creation of new optical components that could see use in signal processing.

As light hits this photo-tunable polymer metasurface, properties like its refractive index are changed, depending on the incident light’s wavelength. Courtesy of Jens Meyer/University of Jena. Optical metasurfaces are nanostructured thin layers whose characteristic structural sizes are...]]>
https://www.photonics.com/Articles/Polymer-Coated_Metasurface_Could_Enable_Sensors/p5/a69786 A69786 Thu, 07 Mar 2024 07:00:00 GMT
Photoacoustic Device Probes Tissue with Low-Cost Laser Diodes
Photoacoustic (PA) technologies offer a noninvasive approach to probing biological tissues, but have seen limited use in clinical applications, partially due to bulky, expensive laser sources. A compact PA sensing instrument for biomedical tissue diagnosis, powered by laser diodes, could provide clinicians with a practical, effective tool for evaluating breast disease.

By providing a cost-effective path to tissue diagnosis, the compact PA sensing instrument could bridge the gap between PA research and its practical application. The instrument is the work of a research team from the Indian Institute of Technology Indore.

The researchers integrated multiple laser diodes for PA excitation within a compact casing and developed a...]]>
https://www.photonics.com/Articles/Photoacoustic_Device_Probes_Tissue_with_Low-Cost/p5/a69779 A69779 Tue, 05 Mar 2024 07:00:00 GMT
DMD-Based SIM Attains Fast Superresolution Bioimaging in 3D
Although structured illumination microscopy (SIM) demonstrates ultrahigh temporal and spatial resolution, the speed and intricacy of polarization modulation affect the speed and quality of its imaging resolution in 3D.

A 3DSIM technique, developed by a team led by professor Peng Xi at Peking University, leverages digital display technology to achieve a rapid, reliable, multidimensional SIM imaging tool for investigating diverse biological phenomena. The new microscopy technique blends 3D superresolution and fast temporal resolution with polarization imaging. To do so, it combines the polarization-maintaining and modulation capabilities of a digital micromirror device (DMD) with an electro-optic modulator (EOM).

A DMD uses the...]]>
https://www.photonics.com/Articles/DMD-Based_SIM_Attains_Fast_Superresolution/p5/a69775 A69775 Mon, 04 Mar 2024 07:00:00 GMT
UK Funding Fuels Future Telecom Research
The Technology Missions Fund (TMF) Future Telecoms Mission will provide sixteen projects with a share of £22 million to support development and commercialization of technology solutions. Projects will be led by academia and industry alike and will work on technologies such as optical network switches, LiFi, mid-infrared free space telecommunications, and optical transceivers.

The remaining £40 million ($50 million) will support three existing future Telecoms...]]>
https://www.photonics.com/Articles/UK_Funding_Fuels_Future_Telecom_Research/p5/a69774 A69774 Fri, 01 Mar 2024 07:00:00 GMT
Aktiia, Optical Health Monitoring Firm, Gains $30M in Funding
Photoplethysmography is a noninvasive optical measurement technique that uses a light source and a photodetector at the surface of the skin to measure volumetric variations of blood circulation. Since Aktiia's device debuted in the U.K. in 2021, the company has acquired more...]]>
https://www.photonics.com/Articles/Aktiia_Optical_Health_Monitoring_Firm_Gains/p5/a69769 A69769 Thu, 29 Feb 2024 07:00:00 GMT
Researchers Develop 2D Waveguides, Enable Dark Exciton Study
A team at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), in collaboration with Kansas State University, has developed slab waveguides based on the 2D material hexagonal boron nitride. NRL researchers also developed 3D electromagnetic models of the waveguides. The modeling results provide a toolkit for designing future 2D devices that use slab waveguides. The technology has applications in optoelectronics and enables the study of dark excitons.

2D materials are a class of materials which can be reduced to the monolayer limit by mechanically peeling the layers apart. The weak interlayer attractions, or van der Waals attraction, allows the layers to be separated via the so-called “Scotch tape” method. The most famous 2D material,...]]>
https://www.photonics.com/Articles/Researchers_Develop_2D_Waveguides_Enable_Dark/p5/a69766 A69766 Wed, 28 Feb 2024 07:00:00 GMT
Measurement Tool Helps Optimize Semiconductors for Optoelectronics
Devices such as solar cells, transistors, detectors, sensors, and LEDs are made with semiconductor materials that have charge carriers that are released when the carriers are hit with light.

Determining the transport properties of a semiconductor’s charge carriers can help researchers predict how effective the material will be for an optoelectronics application. Until now, the parameters of the transport properties in minority and majority charge carriers in semiconductors have been determined by using different measurement methods for each type of charge.

To enable efficient, complete characterization of semiconductors, scientists at Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB) developed a method that records 14 different parameters...]]>
https://www.photonics.com/Articles/Measurement_Tool_Helps_Optimize_Semiconductors/p5/a69765 A69765 Tue, 27 Feb 2024 07:00:00 GMT
Metalenz Partners with Samsung on Facial Recognition Tech
Metalenz will use Samsung Electronics’ ISOCELL Vizion 931 technology as the image sensor component for its "Polar ID" imaging system. Metalenz offers the solution for facial biometrics. The partnership with Samsung provides manufacturing scale to drive rapid adoption of the technology within the smartphone industry, Metalenz said, and that Polar ID is under early evaluation with several leading smartphone OEMs.

The imaging system is to specifically combine Metalenz’s polarization-sensitive meta-optic with a derivative of the ISOCELL Vizion 931 image sensor to capture polarized images in the near-IR with advanced global shutter technology. The ISOCELL Vizion 931 achieves 60% quantum efficiency at 850-nm infrared light...]]>
https://www.photonics.com/Articles/Metalenz_Partners_with_Samsung_on_Facial/p5/a69764 A69764 Tue, 27 Feb 2024 07:00:00 GMT
SPAD Elevates Spatiotemporal Resolution in Conventional Microscopes
Image scanning microscopy (ISM), a superresolution technique enabled by the advent of fast and compact detector arrays, provides signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), optical sectioning, and spatial resolution better than that of a traditional confocal microscope. The lateral resolution of the ISM image can surpass Abbe’s limit by up to a factor of two.

However, these advantages are achieved by exploiting only spatial information; modern fluorescence bioimaging can be further enriched by time-resolved acquisition, which enables access to structural and functional information encoded into the fluorescence dynamics (e.g., fluorescence lifetime).

Researchers at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Genoa developed a compact...]]>
https://www.photonics.com/Articles/SPAD_Elevates_Spatiotemporal_Resolution_in/p5/a69758 A69758 Fri, 23 Feb 2024 07:00:00 GMT
Hyperfluorescent Blue OLEDs Boost Display Efficiency, Stability
Commercial OLED applications such as display technologies require blue emitters that are more stable and efficient. This need has been intensified by newly proposed power-efficient OLED display architectures that only use blue pixels with external fluorescent color conversion layers.

A Durham University team took an unexpected approach to improving blue light emission in OLEDs. The team used sensitizer molecules long considered poor emitters, like ACRSA, to enable brighter, more efficient blue OLEDs. When ACRSA was used as a sensitizer in the new technology, which the researchers called hyperfluorescence (HF) OLEDs, the efficiency of blue light emission almost tripled.

“We discovered a ‘blind spot’ where...]]>
https://www.photonics.com/Articles/Hyperfluorescent_Blue_OLEDs_Boost_Display/p5/a69755 A69755 Thu, 22 Feb 2024 07:00:00 GMT
Coherent CEO Mattera to Retire
Coherent Corp. CEO Vincent "Chuck" Mattera has informed the company’s board of directors that he will retire as CEO, following the hiring of a successor. The board has retained a leading executive search firm to commence a comprehensive search process, which will include evaluating internal and external candidates, to identify a new CEO. A subcommittee has been formed to oversee the search process.
Vincent Mattera will retire as CEO of Coherent following the completion of the company's search for a replacement. Courtesy of Coherent. Mattera’s intention to retire, the company said, does not reflect a dispute or disagreement. In August 2022, Coherent extended Mattera's contract through 2030.

Mattera has been with Coherent...]]>
https://www.photonics.com/Articles/Coherent_CEO_Mattera_to_Retire/p5/a69750 A69750 Wed, 21 Feb 2024 10:19:15 GMT