When old hands in photonics talk about the telecom boom at the turn of the century, they tend to get a little misty-eyed and fondly recall those glory days of stunning acquisitions, free-flowing venture capital, and hockey-stick-shaped projections of growth. I plead guilty as well, having spun off from Laser Focus World a boom-fed publication called WDM Solutions (RIP, 1999-2004; see http://bit.ly/1Omlm1P). Contributing editor Jeff Hecht brings this era back to us in his feature on the history of fiber optics as told in the pages of Laser Focus World and starting in 1966, with Charles Kao's reduction of attenuation in bulk silica glass (see page 27).
As the history of photonics shows, such advances in materials science have led to many advances in the science and technology of light. For example, machining fused silica or glass ceramics leads to optical systems of excellent precision and strength, and light weight—characteristics of great interest to optical designers, as described in an article from Zygo (see page 53). Likewise, the repair of fused-silica optics is becoming increasingly important as science and industry use ever-more energetic laser systems. Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory are using multiphysics simulation to develop techniques for repairing these expensive optics (see page 33).
Optical fiber itself has been found to have many more uses than communications, including medical and military imaging and environmental sensing. An article from OptaSense describes one form of fiber-optic sensing technology—distributed acoustic sensing (see page 39)—good for new deployments like security and monitoring oil and gas production, but also able to make use of some of that spare fiber installed an era ago, during the previous boom years.
