The UN designation of 2015 as the International Year of Light and Light-based Technologies (light2015.org) provides an excellent framework for highlighting the role and value of light in the world at large. For those of us working within the photonics community of engineers and scientists, the value of light-based technologies is far more specific—the community is personally and professionally rewarding, and a great place to do research and business.
Our cover story, the Annual Laser Market Review & Forecast, provides one explanation of why photonics is so rewarding: for the second consecutive year, global sales of lasers in 2015 are expected to grow more than 6%, reaching $9.754 billion (see page 32). It's not only the strengths of the laser market in traditional application areas like materials processing and communications that feed this growth, but the continued development of new applications, from 3D printing and optogenetics to silicon photonics and the Internet of Things, as described in our SPIE Photonics West preview article (see page 52).
LFW at 50
Celebrating the 50th anniversary, Jeff Hecht, our long-time contributing editor and managing editor of LFW from 1974-1981, is writing a year-long series looking back and looking forward for each major category of technologies and products that we cover. His topic in this issue is optics—a core photonics technology (see page 65).
Finally, to our loyal readers, thank you—you have been the foundation of our 50 years of success.
