Hamamatsu Photonics West | Laser Focus World

Hamamatsu Corporation VP of Marketing Earl Hergert discusses some of the company’s newest products showcased at Photonics West 2019 in San Francisco, including their new Prism Award nominated SMD mini-spectrometer.

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New Suite of Femtosecond Lasers Lowers Costs and Complexity of Microscopy

New Suite of Femtosecond Lasers Lowers Costs and Complexity of Microscopy

With breakthrough price in a common form-fit-function package, the Axon family of lasers decrease the entry barrier to two-photon and harmonic generation microscopy, as well as applications to material modification, photopolymerization, and inspection.

Multi-order diffractive optical elements could lead to extremely light space telescopes

University of Arizona Project Nautilus aims to create a space telescope that can survey transiting exo-earths for biosignatures 1000 light years away.

Antimonide-based SAM-APDs make sensitive gamma-ray detectors

Using carefully grown GaSb/AlAsSb heterostructures that act as separate absorption and avalanche layers, gamma rays are easily absorbed and multiplied with high signal-to-noise ratio for sensitive gamma-ray detection.

FIGURE 1. A flowchart shows the point-by-point design method used to create imaging optics systems from both freeform and planar phase elements.

Imaging Optics: Freeform and planar phase elements combine for better imaging optics

Using an iterative process that begins with simple geometric planes, freeform surfaces combine with flat phase elements to create compact, lightweight, easily aligned optical imaging systems.

FIGURE 1. The new diode laser can emit more than 400 W; however, its point of operation is chosen to be about 275 W to achieve maximum conversion efficiency.

High-power Laser Diodes: Diode-laser enhancements boost efficiency and reliability

Passively cooled high-power laser diodes with nonsoldered joints and new cooling scheme show high reliability under hard-pulsed and continuous-wave operation.

FIGURE 1. In a Fizeau interferometer, the reflected beam from the reference surface and the reflection from the test surface combine and both reverse their direction, passing through the same optics on their way to the camera.

Interferometry: Tradeoffs in fixed vs. continuous-zoom interferometry factor into optics test optimization

Digital-, discrete-, and continuous-zoom configurations can optimize testing of large and small optics with modern interferometers; however, each method has tradeoffs that users should be aware of when considering a solution.

This Cell Atlas diagram allows interactive investigation, and it’s backed by a database for exploring details of individual genes and proteins, as well as systematically analyzing transcriptomes and proteomes in broader contexts.

High-resolution Imaging: AI opens a new era in scientific imaging

Today’s game-changers in optical microscopy are not the usual suspects.

FIGURE 1. These freeform optics were designed in LightTools (a). The software can help identify manufacturing tolerances for tailored surfaces used in freeform optics for illumination. Head models are created from image data using Synopsys Simpleware software (b). Simpleware can be used in conjunction with LightTools to run detailed optical scenarios in 3D anatomical models for biomedical applications.

Illumination Optical-design Software: Illumination-design software optimizes complex geometries

In its many different forms, illumination-design software models and optimizes complex optics and the illumination fields that they produce.

IceCube ice anisotropy could be due to birefringent polycrystals

A twofold difference in ice attenuation in perpendicular directions in the IceCube experiment could be explained by a birefringent structure of the microcrystals in the ice.

A photonic crystal (PhC) with a heterostructure cavity achieves double resonance even though it has only one bandgap, not two; the second resonance is provided by a “bound state in the continuum” (BIC). The heterostructure cavity includes a core, a transition region, and an outer region (delineated here by dotted lines). The relevant resonant mode is confined to the core region. Creating such a PhC out of a nonlinear optical material allows PhC-based optical frequency doubling for the first time.

Nonlinear Optics: Light-trapping, frequency-doubling photonic crystal is first of its kind

The photonic crystal traps the fundamental frequency via a conventional bandgap and the doubled frequency using a “bound state in the continuum.”

Biological nanomaterials with fluorescence properties, DNA-stabilized metal quantum clusters promise to enable quick and reliable biosensors.

Biosensors: Quantum technology promises better biosensors

Applying quantum technology to biosensing, for example, using DNA-stabilized metal ‘quantum clusters,’ will help extend the capabilities of modern optical biosensing.

FIGURE 1. The rubidium titanyl phosphate (RTP) Q-switch is assembled in a thermally compensated double-crystal configuration in which two matched crystals are placed in line with the propagation axis (x or y) with one crystal rotated by 90° with respect to the other.

Optical Materials: RTP optical crystal helps boost performance of LIGO

Upgrading the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) included the addition of a rubidium titanyl phosphate (RTP) Q-switch to handle high optical powers.

The single-photon detector being developed leverages the Quanta Image Sensor (QIS) semiconductor chip as shown.

RIT and Dartmouth to develop single-photon QIS for exoplanets with NASA grant

The extremely sensitive detector will allow scientists to see the faintest observable objects in space, such as Earth-like planets around other stars.

Dr. Constantin Häfner.

Constantin Häfner named new director of Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology ILT

Effective November 2019, laser physicist Dr. Constantin Häfner will be taking on the Directorship of Fraunhofer ILT in Aachen, Germany. He is currently Program Director for Advanced Photon Technologies at LLNL in the U.S.