Far above an oil pipeline, a drone bobs and weaves. The drone, dispatched by Denver, Colorado-based Project Canary, is collecting high-resolution imaging data of the site, while also scanning for any indications that the pipeline is leaking methane. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, and Project Canary cofounder and co-CEO Will Foiles saw a valuable opportunity to act against climate change by giving oil and gas facilities the ability to quickly detect and prevent its release into the...

The meaning of “high power” varies considerably by sector. Indeed, the high powers that industry applications command, for example, differ vastly from those that are considered high power in the field of biomedicine. The identifiable...

SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, recognized the top innovations in new optics and photonics products at the 2024 Prism Awards held at Photonics West on Jan. 31. The gala event marked the Prism Awards’ 16th anniversary....

In the early 2000s, a husband-and-wife team, Hongxing Jiang and Jingyu Lin of Texas Tech University, first demonstrated the range of outstanding features provided by micro-LED displays. Since then, the technology has seen increasing adoption in the...

When Theodore (Ted) Maiman described the laser as a solution seeking a problem, beam shaping was not a big deal. A lens or two were enough to project the beam profile onto a screen. The main challenge was operating the laser itself. Figure 1. A...

New Space, a vibrant and rapidly growing domain that encapsulates private space exploration, satellite deployment, and cutting-edge space technologies, is in the midst of a breathtaking wave of advancements. Photonics has stepped into the spotlight...

Laser welding finds its place in fields such as electromobility (e-mobility), aerospace, ship and rail transport, construction, the energy sector, semiconductor, consumer electronics, medical device manufacturing, and others. Its flexibility and...

Contact-free thickness measurements are increasingly important in industrial process monitoring and quality control. In the automotive and aviation industries, the exact thickness of paint and coating layers not only affects the overall appearance...

October is beautiful in Munich. Hotel room prices relax after the end of Oktoberfest and local parks display autumn colors while the weather is still pleasant. Such was the setting when EPIC held its recent technology meeting on Industrial Quantum...

A figure-of-nine femtosecond fiber laser seeds a novel dispersion patterned chip to enable compact, low-power supercontinuum generation. The new technology could support more portable supercontinuum sources for sensing, ranging, and imaging...

Attosecond photonics allows for deep insights into material dynamics on ultrashort timescales and at nanometer resolutions. Because the attosecond is the natural timescale of electron motion within atoms, molecules, and solids, the applications for...

In 2000, Berthold Leibinger, the man who brought laser technology into Germany’s TRUMPF Group, established the Innovation Award — expressed in native German as the “Innovationspreis” — to honor outstanding R&D in...

Many trends in the manufacture of photonic systems are well known: miniaturize and integrate components, scale-up batch sizes, and, increasingly, expand automated and sustainable manufacturing. At the same time, quality control remains a priority...

If lasers helped to redefine many manufacturing operations, then ultrashort-pulsed (USP) lasers promise to revolutionize them. They can process almost any material, and they can do so with a precision that extends below micrometers. This advantage...

Ultraviolet laser optics tend to have limited lifetimes, due primarily to two processes: laser-induced contamination (LIC) and UV fatigue. LIC is caused by the deposition of unwanted material on the surface of the optic, whereas UV fatigue results...

The internet is an inescapable part of modern life, and the hardware that enables it is almost as ubiquitous. Fiber cables transmit terabytes of data around the world every second and, although the technology is constantly evolving, it has become...

Ultrashort pulse lasers, such as femtosecond lasers, are becoming increasingly easy-to-use plug and play devices suitable for a wide range of industrial and biomedical applications. Fifteen years ago, these lasers were large mainframe affairs...

The laser is a versatile tool for many applications partly due to its capacity to generate harmonic wavelengths in which, for example, two red photons combine to generate a blue photon. But with the advent of ultrashort laser pulses, processes were...

In recent years, lasers have made significant inroads into analytical applications, such as semiconductor test and analysis. They are now incorporated into analytical instruments, for example, to detach single atoms from a tiny tip, or to measure a...

There are a number of applications for which 3D sensing is rapidly emerging as a critical sensing modality. 3D and 4D sensors are arising in autonomous vehicle applications because they are propelled by products that are being developed for advanced...

High-power fiber lasers are a versatile and powerful tool for a wide range of industrial applications, from cutting and welding to defense and beyond. Advancements in laser head design, beam optimization, and wavelength flexibility have caused fiber...

It is a rare event when a successful experiment in basic research makes it to the evening news. In December 2022, the U.S. secretary of energy announced a breakthrough in laser-based nuclear fusion. The news was covered in all major media around the...

The hunt is on for better gas analyzers, driven by growing demands. For instance, hydrogen sulfide, an industrial byproduct, has a permissible worker exposure limit of 20 ppm in a confined space, according to OSHA. Increasingly stringent emission...

As broadband light sources, supercontinuum lasers are a truly revolutionary technology. While halogen light sources — or even a normal tungsten bulb — can emit a large bandwidth of light, supercontinuum generation (SCG) derives from a...

As anyone who has ever worked with an alexandrite laser can attest, its lasing medium demands respect. “It has about every problem a laser engineer can imagine,” said Josef Höffner, a scientist at the Leibniz Institute of...