Optics | Laser Focus World

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

Optical surface measurements include alignment error from rigid-body position uncertainty; challenges exist when fitting such errors on aspheres and freeforms.

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

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

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

Lasers for lidar and more

The leading kHz CEP-stabilized amplifiers – from Coherent

The leading kHz CEP-stabilized amplifiers – from Coherent

Reliable 5 fs and EUV Generation with a One-Box Titanium Sapphire Amplifier

Reliable 5 fs and EUV Generation with a One-Box Titanium Sapphire Amplifier

Planar optics are tunable in wavefront output with speeds in milliseconds

An artist's concept shows a rover on Mars

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

In the first 5 years of system rollouts, 5G subscribers will significantly outpace 4G subscribers.

5G subscribers in Asia, North America to surpass 1.1 billion by 2023--triple the 4G pace

FIGURE 1. A real laser beam will have a divergence angle (θR) greater than that of an ideal Gaussian beam (θG); the beam’s wavefront is planar in the near field near the beam waist and curved in the far field.

Laser Beam Quality: Beam propagation and quality factors: A primer

FIGURE 1. An illustration of liquid-crystal metasurface (LCM) beam steering depicts its operation. The incident light is TM-polarized. Shown here, the LCM steers to two different output angles (a and b), determined by the spatial frequency of the phase-modulation pattern applied to the array of tunable resonators on the LCM (c and d). Higher spatial frequencies steer the output beam closer to the incident beam.

Optics for Automotive Lidar: Metasurface beam steering enables solid-state, high-performance lidar

FIGURE 1. The basic schematic of a silicon photonics (SiPho) integrated tunable laser includes the waveguides and filter components, a spot-size converter (SSC), and the on-chip tunable laser gain module that is input to the semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA).

Tunable Lasers: Silicon photonics expands tunability options for communications and scientific lasers

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

Doughnut-shaped intensity point spread functions (IPSFs) are compared before (a) and after (c) application of a machine-learning-based adaptive-optic (AO) correction; the IPSF profiles (b, d) along lines I and II are also charted before (blue) and after (magenta) correction.

Machine-learning-based adaptive optics maintain doughnut-shaped beams in scattering media

This DNA-type structure was laser-printed from five different materials.

3D molding and direct laser writing prints nanostructures from multiple materials at once