High-contrast gratings (HCGs)—alternating stripes of semiconductor materials and air (or silicon) with subwavelength periodicity—are an emerging integrated photonics platform being used to fabricate such diverse optoelectronic elements as reflective mirrors, lenses, high-Q resonators, vertical in-plane couplers, and even tunable vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs).

Dutch researchers from the University of Twente, the FOM Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Philips Research Laboratories have created a nonimaging speckle interferometer that uses a photodiode to detect the lateral position of a scattering material at high speed over a small range to nanometer precision.

A technique to deposit precisely doped semiconductor materials into microstructured optical fibers (MOFs) is coming of age, demonstrated by gigahertz-bandwidth photodetectors built directly into a fiber.

Researchers at the Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science (KRISS) have developed a purely optical approach using plane-parallel mirrors and have demonstrated a factor-of-four improvement in grating-based spectrometer resolution using two mirror pairs.

The demand for better connections between Tokyo and London is driving construction of the first submarine fiber-optic cables to span the Arctic Ocean.

Queen’s University physicist and principal investigator James Fraser and doctoral candidate Paul Webster have solved a significant problem inherent in the use of lasers in automated industrial welding, drilling, and machining: The inability to effectively monitor the depth and quality of laser welds on the fly.

A light source that operates via so-called Dicke superradiance has been created by scientists at the University of Cambridge and the PN Lebedev Physical Institute; the two-section gallium nitride (GaN)-based laser diode produces 1.4 ps optical pulses at a 10 MHz repetition rate and a 408 nm wavelength.

Cavity-enhanced laser-based methane analyzers from Los Gatos Research (LGR) have enabled scientists to measure methane-gas venting fluxes in extreme Arctic conditions from a helicopter in real time.

A different take on the broadband IR absorber, this one based on dielectric and metal-film multilayers, has been designed by researchers at the University of Maryland and Concord University.

High-quality single-crystal silicon-germanium (SiGe) multi-quantum-well layers were epitaxially grown on silicon substrates by researchers at Bilkent University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Korea University, and the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology.

Students interested in a career in optics and photonics should carefully research which institutions are a geographic, academic, and financial fit; which institutions offer a fast track to industry through collaborative programs; and whether or not the technician option makes more sense.

A more complete understanding of thermally induced injury of the retina provides the basis for optimizing international laser exposure limits, allowing higher laser powers that are still "safe."

By combining digital holography with optical coherence tomography (OCT) in a process known as holoscopy, 3D parallel image acquisition with extremely high data throughput at high imaging speeds is possible due to the lack of moving elements.

Fiber lasers are compact and rugged, don't go out of alignment, and easily dissipate thermal energy. They come in many forms, sharing technology with other type of lasers but providing their own unique advantages.

Imagine a world in which optoelectronics such as OLEDs are freed from their rigid, confining encapsulation and intimately integrated into our daily lives-into our clothing or distributed throughout our ambient environment.

Free-form optics tiling can potentially overcome the invariant on the field of view and the resolution in a head-mounted display, and enable the design and development of lightweight and high-performance head-mounted displays.

Built around arrays of tiny thermal detectors, uncooled IR cameras avoid the high cost and cooling requirements of photon detectors for long IR wavelengths. Steady improvements in their performance are making thermal cameras practical for new civilian and military night-vision applications.