In this uncertain world of social distancing and ubiquitous online connection, one thing hasn’t changed—the need to make each day count. For us at Laser Focus World, that means improving the quality of information you find when you read our magazine, website, and newsletters, or view our webcasts. In the coming months, we will seek to bridge the social distance with new content and ways of connecting that can make a difference. To start, we've assembled a great variety of content in this issue to help you make the most of this time.
Our cover story this month highlights tapered double-clad fiber technology that stands poised to deliver multikilowatt power, ultrashort pulse durations, repetition rates up to 1 GHz, and high beam quality in a small package (see article). Senior Editor John Wallace focuses on how the evolution of new lens-design software capabilities enables modern precision optics by easing the modeling, optimizing, and tolerancing of complex optical systems (see article).
We also explain how efficient terahertz generation and high-speed asynchronous optical sampling enable 10,000 pixel-per-second spectroscopic imaging with a signal-to-noise ratio greater than 100 (see article). Then, we cover a portable Raman spectroscopy system that promises to increase the safety of field testing using collinear laser excitation and Raman scattering collection to take measurements of samples through paper and plastic packaging (see article).
Next, we round up how block-matching, 3D filters, nonlinear means filtering, and Shearlet transform techniques for machine vision applications can eliminate Gaussian image noise (see article). Finally, BioOptics World Editor-in-Chief Barbara Gefvert puts the spotlight on an industry session at SPIE BiOS 2020 that revealed where new developments will be taking OCT in the future (see article). As always, I hope you enjoy this issue.
