Lasers & Sources

The team’s experimental setup in an elevator: An optical fiber spool is kept within an enclosure for temperature control, while the white case insulates the optical fiber and all other fiber-optic components from the environment.
Researchers’ experimental results show photons interact with Earth’s gravitational field in ways that exert a subtle influence on the speed of light.
May 5, 2026
Credit: Urban Senica
3D illustration of the team’s device, in which an external microwave signal induces gain modulation along the entire semiconductor laser to generate widely tunable modelocked pulses/frequency combs.
May 4, 2026
FIGURE 1. Comparison of laser frequency deviation: The unlocked laser (gray) exhibits significant environmental drift, while the analog lock (blue) suppresses most of this noise but is limited by hardware-induced drift and component tolerances. The digital implementation (green) leverages high-speed DSP to achieve a near-zero error signal and provide the superior stability required.
April 29, 2026
Credit: R. Jacobson/NIST
Shot of the team’s chip glowing blue.
April 27, 2026
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Justine Murphy chats with Dr. Brian Monacelli, a professor and director of Laser Technology at Pasadena City College and a Principal Optical Engineer and supervisor of the Optical Implementation group at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Following the Photons: A Photonics Podcast
April 21, 2026
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Following the Photons: A Photonics Podcast
April 14, 2026
Siegfried Glenzer and Arianna Gleason in front of the chamber for Matter in Extreme Conditions (MEC) instrument at LCLS. Credit: Jacqueline Ramseyer Orrell/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
April 6, 2026
Credit: Comptek Solutions
FIGURE 1. Passivation-enabled process decoupling in laser diode manufacturing. Cleaving in air is decoupled from passivation, and passivation decouples mirror coatings. Both safe windows reduce time pressure while maintaining oxidation-inert facets, which enables predictable downstream coatings, burn-in, and final test.
April 2, 2026
FIGURE 1. A schematic comparison of a conventional semiconductor laser and a QCL.
March 31, 2026

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