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James C. Wyant with Maria Ruiz in 2014, a first-year graduate student at the College of Optical Sciences, who that year received a Louise Wyant Memorial Scholarship in Optical Sciences. James Wyant and his family are now contributing $2 million and SPIE $500,000 to an educational-funding initiative for optics and photonics.

With $500,000 grant to University of Arizona, SPIE launches $2.5 million endowment matching program

Gooch & Housego (G&H) is partnering with Optex Systems to provide acrylic sighting instruments to the European market. Shown here are some Optex sighting systems.

Gooch & Housego partners with Optex to supply acrylic optics

Thomas Crawford parlayed his research experience with disk drive technology into a startup company that eventually caught the eye of Thorlabs

University of South Carolina startup breaks ground in nano-optical manufacturing

This ultrafast laser is used for industrial transparent and brittle material cutting.

GTS and Vitritech create new types of laser glass

Northrop Grumman was awarded a $200M contract for its LAIRCM system that protects aircrews by automatically detecting, tracking, and jamming incoming IR threats. Shown is the Guardian (trademarked) Pointer/Tracker.

Northrop Grumman awarded $200M infrared countermeasures contract

Software & Accessories

When illuminated with laser light, a liquid-crystal elastomer robot (inset) about 1 cm long crawls up walls and across ceilings just like the banded snail sitting next to it.

Light-activated LC elastomer propels biomimetic “snail robot”

Synopsis is acquiring QTronic, provider of modeling software for validating and testing the interaction of networked ECUs, engine, transmission and other vehicle components through simulation.

Synopsys to acquire automotive software developer QTronic

New Femtosecond Amplifier Provides Unmatched Performance and Versatility

New Femtosecond Amplifier Provides Unmatched Performance and Versatility

Test & Measurement

$Operation principles of a differential diffractive optical neural network. Since diffractive optical neural networks operate using coherent illumination, phase and/or amplitude channels of the input plane can be used to represent information.$

With new differential detection scheme, all-optical diffractive neural networks get performance boost

A fast, low-cost, highly sensitive diffuse optical imaging system acquires optical transmission images dorsally to provide objective, quantitative analysis for rheumatoid arthritis (RA) diagnosis and monitoring.

Spectroscopy/Optical Imaging: Fourier-transform analysis helps optical method improve RA detection

FIGURE 1. A diagram of rigid-body motions shows the six possible degrees of freedom. For rotationally symmetric parts, the axis of symmetry is assumed to be along the Z axis.

Aspheres: Removing alignment errors from measurements of spherical, aspheric, and freeform optics

Webcasts

September 10th webcast: Robotic Eye for AR, VR, MR and Heads-Up Display Metrology

September 26th Webcast - New Developments in High Power Fiber Lasers

High performance optical interference coatings: An established technology facing new challenges

White Papers

Why HOT MWIR Might Be a Better Fit than Uncooled LWIR

Applications for Raman Spectroscopy

Precision Motion Actuators – Positioning vs. Adjustment

Tolerancing and its Role in Illumination and Nonsequential Optical Design

Editorial Guide: Infrared optics draw on unique materials

Videos

Vision Research Tn

Extreme High-Speed Imaging at Laser World

New faster RLSK

High Finesse Tn

HighFinesse: Laser Characterization

Optical Device Manufacture & Test

Optical Aligning/Probing Equipment

Commentary

Lasers for lidar and more

John Ambroseo, President and CEO of Coherent.

Business Forum: Laser markets evolve, price battles continue—an interview with John Ambroseo

Fiber sensing

More from Laser Focus World

Northrop Grumman was awarded a $200M contract for its LAIRCM system that protects aircrews by automatically detecting, tracking, and jamming incoming IR threats. Shown is the Guardian (trademarked) Pointer/Tracker.

Northrop Grumman awarded $200M infrared countermeasures contract

Tracks of heavy ions 'imprinted' in lithium fluoride crystals. At the top, spot tracks observed under a fluorescence microscope in plates perpendicular to the heavy ion beam. At the bottom, the ion tracks in the parallel oriented plate (the blurring at both ends of the trace is an artifact of the depth of focus of the microscope). False colors.

Lithium fluoride fluorescent crystals track high-energy heavy ions such as iron

Single-layer OLED design could dramatically reduce display costs

Optics & Design

FIGURE 1. A diagram of rigid-body motions shows the six possible degrees of freedom. For rotationally symmetric parts, the axis of symmetry is assumed to be along the Z axis.

Aspheres: Removing alignment errors from measurements of spherical, aspheric, and freeform optics

An artist's concept shows a rover on Mars

Jenoptik lenses will reveal the first images from NASA’s Mars 2020 mission

FIGURE 1. A spectral transmission curve for a high-LIDT polarizing beamsplitter (PBS) cube made by Thorlabs designed for use at 532 nm has a high polarization selectivity. A similar cube designed for use at 1064 nm is shown in the inset.

Optical Coatings: Coatings for laser optics achieve high LIDT

The leading kHz CEP-stabilized amplifiers – from Coherent

The leading kHz CEP-stabilized amplifiers – from Coherent

Metasurface optic for Gaussian beams accepts a nonplanar input beam

Nanoparticle-embedded stretchy optical fibers monitor body temperature

Frequency-comb Sources: One microresonator-based soliton comb replaces multiple WDM lasers

A fast, low-cost, highly sensitive diffuse optical imaging system acquires optical transmission images dorsally to provide objective, quantitative analysis for rheumatoid arthritis (RA) diagnosis and monitoring.

Spectroscopy/Optical Imaging: Fourier-transform analysis helps optical method improve RA detection

Several rotationally symmetric cavities are etched into a silicon wafer for glassblowing of 0.9-mm-diameter (left) and 1.8 mm (right) axicons.

Optical Fabrication: Glassblowing technique creates arrays of axicon lenses

Shown are tuning curves for three quantum dots positioned on the waveguide at the locations shown in the inset, to achieve identical emission (a). High-resolution Fabry-Perot interferometer measurements show all three quantum dots simultaneously from an output coupler with identical emission wavelength (b).

Quantum Sources: Squeezed quantum dots create coherent streams of quantum-ready photons

FIGURE 1. In the scalable setting of a spatial photonic Ising machine, binary spins are encoded in the phase of a laser beam (green) by spatial modulation. Tailoring of the beam’s amplitude fixes spin-spin interaction. To find the ground-state spin configuration, the machine recurrently evolves according to a feedback signal from the camera plane. By design, maximizing the intensity in a target region (blue square) corresponds to a spin state with minimum energy.

Photonics Modeling: Optical Ising machines solve complex engineering, science, and even business problems

FIGURE 1. The tip of a 30,000-core optical fiber bundle is shown next to an Australian 5 cent coin for scale (left) and a zoomed-in image (right) reveals a small region of the fiber bundle facet (dashed red box in left). Each core is roughly 2 µm in diameter and separated from its neighbors by an average of 3.3 µm.

Fiber-optic Components: Fiber-optic bundles provide 3D stereo imaging

FIGURE 1. Broad clinical applications of photobiomodulation therapy aim at reducing pain and inflammation while promoting healing and regeneration.

Phototherapy: Photobiomodulation therapy—easy to do, but difficult to get right