Laser Focus World articles from January 2002

Laser Focus World archives from January 2002

A window opportunity. (editor's desk).
January 1, 2002... For more than a quarter century Laser Focus World has kicked off each New Year with a review and forecast of the laser markets. In recent years, the review has been based directly on a survey of laser manufacturers and the resulting articles...

Chip for 2.5 Gbit/s combines four functions. (newsbreaks).
January 1, 2002... Research in short-haul fiberoptics continues with the development of a fully monolithic optoelectronic receiver chip for 850 nm that combines a large-area metal-semiconductor-metal (MSM) diode, a 2.5-Gbit/s transimpedance amplifier (TIA), and a...

Single ion probes optical field. (newsbreaks).
January 1, 2002... Scientists at the Max Planck Institut fur Quantenoptik (Garching, Germany) have reported near-field probing of a three-dimensional, spatial optical-field structure at atomic-scale resolution without perturbing the field. The probe consisted of...

Tunable laser exceeds 3 dBm over 40-nm range. (newsbreaks).
January 1, 2002... Researchers at Agility Communications (Santa Barbara, CA) reported a fiber-coupled time-averaged power from a tunable laser in excess of 3 dBm across a 40-nm tuning range and error-free 2.5-Gbit/s transmission over 200 km of standard...

Phase-locked VCSEL arrays show stable polarization. (newsbreaks).
January 1, 2002... One of the most elegant versions of the laser diode is the single-transverse-mode vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL), which produces a high-quality circularly symmetric beam from a small, easily fabricated and characterized...

Ion exchange enables first beamsplitter system for fiberoptics. (newsbreaks).
January 1, 2002... The first example of a prototype hybrid diffractive/graded-index beamsplitter has been demonstrated by collaborating scientists at five different institutions in Russia, Spain, and Finland: the Research Institute Polyus (Moscow, Russia), the...

Saturable SOA aims for spectral equalization. (newsbreaks).
January 1, 2002... At the annual meeting of the IEEE Lasers and Electro-Optics Society (LEOS) in San Diego, CA, last November, researchers from the University of Southern California (Los ,Angeles, CA) reported on the design and fabrication of a saturable...

Heated polymer in microstructure fiber varies attenuation. (newsbreaks).
January 1, 2002... An air-silica microstructure optical fiber containing six air holes and a solid central core is at the heart of an all-fiber variable attenuator developed by researchers at Lucent Technologies (Murray Hill, NJ). The fiber contains a 1-cm-long...

Shot shifting reduces sidebands in gratings. (newsbreaks).
January 1, 2002... Shot shifting is a technique for writing optical gratings--for example, those used in distributed-feedback (DFB) lasers--by repeatedly lithographically writing a grating pattern while shifting it by an integral number of periods (plus a small...

Method enables coherent coupling of fiber lasers. (newsbreaks).
January 1, 2002... Researchers at Jaycor Inc. (San Diego, CA) and the Air Force Research Laboratory (Kirtland Air Force Base, NM) have demonstrated coherent coupling of fiber lasers by placing cavity feedback after one of the outputs of the coupler, thereby...

First optical link between satellites uses lasers. (Optoelectronics: world news).
January 1, 2002... For the first time, an optical data link between satellites orbiting Earth was established in November 2001 using a laser beam as a signal carrier. The satellites were able to transmit images from space to the ground in real time, promising...

Single ZnO nanowires lase. (Optoelectronics: world news).
January 1, 2002... Zinc oxide (ZnO), a semiconductor, is potentially a gain medium for ultraviolet diode lasers. The difficulty in making the material emit light coherently stems from its high 300-kW/[cm.sup.2] lasing threshold. Low-dimensional structures such as...

Economy slows LEOS attendance as computers enliven presentations. (Conference Review).
January 1, 2002... By the day before the last day of the annual meeting of the IEEE Lasers and Electro-Optics Society (LEOS) in San Diego, CA, in November, attendance had climbed just above 650, which was about 25% below attendance at the previous annual meeting...

OLED manufacturers and researchers contemplate technology disruption. (Organic Light-Emitting Diodes).
January 1, 2002... Manufacturers of organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) are pushing display products and technology into an opening window of market opportunity to compete with liquid-crystal diodes (LCDs). Polymer-based technology may ultimately offer needed...

New LED design doubles efficiency. (Light-Emitting Diodes).
January 1, 2002... Osram Opto Semiconductors (Regensburg, Germany) has put much effort into developing light-emitting diodes (LEDs) for room illumination. The company's engineers have now made a breakthrough in the luminous efficacy of aluminum gallium indium...

Photorefractive crystal helps classify data. (Nonlinear Materials).
January 1, 2002... Using optically interconnected electronics, researchers in France have constructed a type of self-organizing neural network called a Kohonen map. The network is constructed around a holographic refractive crystal. The team from the Laboratoire...

Fluorescence imager examines ocean floor. (Hyperspectral Imaging).
January 1, 2002... The sea is the Earth's ultimate repository. It swallows natural and artificial matter alike--both from rivers and directly from above--and cloaks its holdings in silt and gloom. Much of interest lies beneath the waves, but attempts to image...

Terawatt pulses probe air. (High-Energy Lasers).
January 1, 2002... Pulsed-laser-induced white-light generation in air is becoming an important tool for atmospheric studies. Applying time and spectrally resolved analysis to the backscatter data allows the remote sensing of many different atmospheric molecules...

Lifetime of the high-power QD laser is improved. (Quantum-Dot Lasers).
January 1, 2002... While quantum-dot (QD) lasers have attracted considerable attention for their potential to attain high power output with low current requirements, their reliability is rarely reported. The question is whether indium arsenide/gallium arsenide...

Spatial solitons extend depth of focus. (Nonlinear Optics).
January 1, 2002... Researchers at the Italian National Institute of Materials Physics and the University of Insubrio (both in Como, Italy) have shown how the second-order nonlinearity in some crystals can be exploited to extend the beam waist of a focused image...

Wavefront sensor ignores vibration. (Interferometers).
January 1, 2002... Optical wavefront error is usually measured one of two ways, depending on the application. For characterizing the quality of an optical system, an interferometer provides a phase map of the wavefront that is accurate, highly detailed, and...

Scientists build ultralight space telescope mirror. (Space-Based Optics).
January 1, 2002... Telescopes of the future will require larger apertures to gather more light than the existing Hubble Space Telescope. The challenge to designers is to create mirrors of larger apertures that can withstand the rigors of a space-shuttle launch...

Self-guiding trick works in solids as well as gases. (Laser Propagation).
January 1, 2002... In a phenomenon known since the mid-1990s, high-power laser beams under certain conditions can travel further through air than through a vacuum, an effect called "self-guiding." Now, for the first time, physicists at the National School of...

Read-write optical disk holds 50 Gbytes. (Japan watch).
January 1, 2002... TOKYO--Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. has developed an optical disk the size of a digital versatile disk (DVD) that can store more than four hours of digital high-vision moving images at a 25-Mbit/s recording speed. It is based on a...

Camera captures one million images per second. (Japan watch).
January 1, 2002... OSAKA--An ultrafast video camera that can record moving images at 1 million images per second has been jointly developed by an international collaboration involving three countries and five academic and industrial research groups. Kinki...

Inorganic EL is bright blue. (Displays).
January 1, 2002... TOKYO--Engineers at TDK have developed an inorganic electroluminescent (EL) blue-light display with an intensity over 100 cd/[m.sup.2]. The display originated from a joint venture with iFire Technology (Toronto, Ontario, Canada) beginning in...

Pure silver mirror is durable. (Optical Coatings).
January 1, 2002... KYOTO--Kyocera Optic Co. has developed a silver mirror with an average reflectance of 98% over the 420- to 680-nm range. By using a novel coating method, the front surfaces of resin foundations can be coated; thus, durability is high and the...

Market conditions challenge tunable laser suppliers. (Laser: industry report).
January 1, 2002... The competitive situation and financial condition of telecom carriers have severely delayed the market for tunable lasers, tunable filters, and wavelength converters, according to a report by Strategies Unlimited (Mountain View, CA). In recent...

Bandwidth9 inks development agreement with Metro-Optix. (Laser: industry report).
January 1, 2002... Bandwidth9 Inc. (Fremont, CA) announced a joint development agreement with Metro-Optix (Santa Clara, CA), to integrate the Bandwidth9 MetroFlex tunable transmitter, based on both vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) and...

Infinite group closes Osley & Whitney Plastics operations. (Laser: industry report).
January 1, 2002... The Osley & Whitney Inc. (O&W; Westfield, MA) subsidiary of Infinite Group Inc. (Warwick, RI) has ceased operations. Infinite blamed the decision on continuing losses for several quarters at O&W, due in part to price competition from foreign...

Fourth quarter revenues at Emcore increase by 41%. (Laser: industry report).
January 1, 2002... Emcore Corp. (Somerset, NJ) reported $48 million, in revenues for the quarter ended Sept. 30, up 41% compared to revenues of $34 million in the corresponding quarter of fiscal year 2000. Gross profit for the quarter was $16 million, an increase...

LED Christmas lights sell out in first season. (Laser: industry report).
January 1, 2002... Frustration with the annual ritual of finding and replacing the bad bulbs in strings of Christmas lights prompted the founders of Fiber Optic Designs (Yardley, PA) to replace the incandescent bulbs with light-emitting diodes (LEDs). Doing so,...

RapiTec Inc.
January 1, 2002... The RapiTec Inc. subsidiary of OSI Systems Inc. (Hawthorne, CA), has been awarded an additional $2.38 million above a recently announced $11 million subcontract for the production of multiple integrated laser-engagement system (MILES)...

Spectra-Physics Inc.
January 1, 2002... A special committee of the board of directors of Spectra-Physics Inc. (Mountain View, CA) chose to remain neutral with respect to the unsolicited tender offer for all outstanding shares by Thermo Electron Corp. (Waltham, MA).

Federal Aviation Administration.
January 1, 2002... If approved by the Federal Aviation Administration, United Airlines (Chicago, IL) may become the first carrier to equip cockpits with laser stun guns, or Tasers.

ARO acquires five-acre site for a new campus. (Optics: industry report).
January 1, 2002... Alpine Research Optics (ARO; Boulder, CO) has recently completed the purchase of a five-acre site on which it plans to build a state-of-the-art facility. "We believe that the market for high-performance coated optics will continue to grow,...

MEMS collaboration seeks to accelerate time-to-market. (Optics: industry report).
January 1, 2002... Colibrys SA (Neuchatel, Switzerland) and Coventor Inc. (Cary, NC) have entered into joint development and manufacturing agreements for the development of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). Focusing initially on MEMS for optical...

Motorola forms subsidiary for new wafer technology. (Optics: industry report).
January 1, 2002... Motorola Inc. (Chicago, IL) has created a wholly owned subsidiary, Thought-beam Inc. (Austin, TX), led by Padmasree Warrior, Motorola corporate vice president, to commercialize its new semiconductor-on-silicon technology. "This breakthrough...

Zeiss reports record results and deal with Asclepion Meditec. (Optics: industry report).
January 1, 2002... The Carl Zeiss Group (Oberkochen, Germany) has reported the best financial results in its history for the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, 2001. Net income doubled from 53 million [euro] (US$47.1 million) a year ago to 110 million [euro] (US$97.7...

RSoft and NDTI merger seeks a vertical swath of design market. (Optics: industry report).
January 1, 2002... The merger of RSoft Inc. (Ossining, NY) and Network Design Tools Inc. (NDTI; Eatontown, NJ) combines the RSoft focus on physical-layer design software for components and links with the NDTI emphasis on network design in the logical layer, said...

INRAD reports eighth consecutive profitable quarter. (Optics: industry report).
January 1, 2002... For the nine-month period ended Sept. 30, 2001, INRAD Inc. (Northvale, NJ) reported increases in operating income and product sales of 23% and 45%, respectively. Operating income was $335,000 and net income was $297,300 on revenues of $6.4...

NanoOpto Corp.
January 1, 2002... NanoOptp Corp. (Somerset, NJ) has closed a $16-million Series A round of venture funding for its nano-optics and nanomanufacturing technology.

Pemstar Inc.
January 1, 2002... Pemstar Inc. (Rochester, MI) and Cirex Corp. (Alpharetta, GA) are collaborating to manufacture transceiver modules.

Agilent Laboratories.
January 1, 2002... Agilent Laboratories. (Palo Alto, CA) has agreed to a $6.1-million collaboration with DARPA that could potentially double the speed of DNA synthesis for disease characterization and drug discovery.

PerkinElmer Inc.
January 1, 2002... PerkinElmer Inc. (Boston, MA) has entered an agreement to become the exclusive distributor for the Seiko Instruments Inc. (SII; Chiba, Japan) Thermal Analysis products outside of Japan.

CDT licenses LEP display technology to Dow. (Imaging & detector: industry report).
January 1, 2002... Cambridge Display Technology (CDT; Cambridge, England) and the Dow Chemical Company (Midland, MI) have reached an agreement licensing CDT's polyfluorene light-emitting polymer (LEP) technology to Dow. The two companies had been working...

Toshiba and Matsushita form LCD alliance. (Imaging & detector: industry report).
January 1, 2002... Toshiba Corp. (Tokyo, Japan) and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. (Osaka, Japan) will unify their liquid-crystal display (LCD) and next-generation display businesses in a joint venture company that will be incorporated in April 2002 in...

BAE Systems opens infrared-imaging production facility. (Imaging & detector: industry report).
January 1, 2002... BAE Systems (Plymouth, England) has opened a new research, development, and manufacturing facility for uncooled infrared-imaging detectors in Southampton, England. The 5 [pounds sterling] million (US$7.1 million) facility is specifically...

Kamiokande PMTs implode in chain reaction. (Imaging & detector: industry report).
January 1, 2002... On Nov. 12, 2001, photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) in the Super-Kamiokande neutrino detector at the Kamioka Observatory (Tokyo, Japan) imploded, apparently in a chain reaction. The detector contained 11,000 20-in. PMTs made by Hamamatsu Photonics...

The envelope, please. (Imaging & detector: industry report).
January 1, 2002... Eastman Kodak Co. (Rochester, NY) has received an Emmy award for its role in the development of the consumer camcorder. The award was presented by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, which also named Hitachi, JVC, Matsushita,...

Virtual Vision Inc.
January 1, 2002... Virtual Vision Inc. (Redmond, WA) demonstrated a head-wearable display at Comdex Fall 2001 (Las Vegas, NV) that contained an OLED-on-silicon microdisplay made by eMagin Corp. (East Fishkill, NY).

Basler AG.
January 1, 2002... Vision-systems supplier Basler AG (Ahrensburg, Germany) reduced staff by 5% this past quarter.

Universal Display Corp.
January 1, 2002... Universal Display Corp. (Ewing, NJ) has received the remaining $5 million for the preferred stock it sold to investors in August.

International Diagnostic Technologies Inc.
January 1, 2002... International Diagnostic Technologies Inc. (IDT; Madison, AL) seeks investment partners to develop detectors for chemical and biological warfare agents.

Fiberoptic pioneers win 2001 Marconi Award at Columbia U. (Fiberoptics: industry report).
January 1, 2002... The Marconi International Fellowship Foundation at Columbia University (New York, NY) awarded the 2001 Marconi Award in telecommunications and information technology to pioneers in the development of fiberoptic technology: Herwig Kogelnik of...

Australia's largest submarine cable completed. (Fiberoptics: industry report).
January 1, 2002... Australia Japan Cable (Hamilton, Bermuda) has announced connection of a US$500 million cable that spans more than 12,000 km between Australia and Japan, via Guam. The newly completed 640-Gbit/s capacity fiberoptic submarine cable employs a...

Tellabs to acquire Ocular Networks. (Fiberoptics: industry report).
January 1, 2002... Tellabs (Naperville, IL) has announced plans to acquire Ocular Networks (Reston, VA) for about $355 million in cash and options. This acquisition is expected to expand Tellabs' addressable market by up to $5 billion in 2003 and $9 billion in...

Austin-Bergstrom Airport boasts fiberoptic hologram. (Fiberoptics: industry report).
January 1, 2002... Fiberoptic cables leap outward from a wall of equations in the new technology themed hologram at the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport (Austin, TX) that is set alongside two previously installed panels, entitled "Music" and "Nature." Each...

BTG licenses technology to Oki Electric and NEL. (Fiberoptics: industry report).
January 1, 2002... BTG (London, England) has signed licensing agreements with Oki Electric Industry Co. Ltd. (Tokyo, Japan), and NTT Electronics Corp. (NEL; Tokyo, Japan) for quantum-well electro-absorption modulator (EAM) technology developed by researchers at...

Tellium.
January 1, 2002... Tellium (Oceanport, NJ) points to a study by RHK (San Francisco, CA) in projecting a 50% share increase in the global optical-core switching market for 2001.

AcceLight Networks Inc.
January 1, 2002... AcceLight Networks Inc. (Pittsburgh, PA) has received more than $60 million in new equity and debt financing.

CiDRA Corp.
January 1, 2002... CiDRA Corp. (Wallingford, CT) has sold its Optical Sensing Systems (OSS) business to Weatherford International Inc. (Houston, TX) for $127.5 million.

Nortel Networks.
January 1, 2002... Nortel Networks (Brampton, Ont., Canada) has deployed a 1500-kin optical backbone cable in the North American network of Global Crossing (New York, NY) that supports 200 Gbit/s of data without optoelectronic regeneration, and that has a maximum...

Alcatel.
January 1, 2002... Alcatel (Paris, France) has announced an optical submarine transmission demonstration of 3.65 Tbit/s over 6850 km on a single fiber.

Is a recently funded small company a good place to work? (business forum).
January 1, 2002... Q: Should I join this small company that has just received funding? A: it is a positive sign for a company to get funded these days because most investors have become quite selective, post "bubble." If this is a seed round or the first...

Back to the business of making money. (comment).
January 1, 2002... Even for an industry that moves at Internet speed, optical networking has experienced unprecedented volatility. Fueled by the expanding telecom bubble, the industry rocketed from near nascence to supernova status and annual growth rates of 50%...

Trade authority takes a back seat to national security concerns. (Washington report).
January 1, 2002... The September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States have turned Washington politics on its head, with President George W. Bush and lawmakers focusing largely on military and internal-security matters. One casualty has been the prospects for...

Review and forecast of the laser markets: part I: Nondiode lasers. (Laser Marketplace).
January 1, 2002... The Laser Focus World 2002 Annual Review and Forecast of the Laser Marketplace is conducted in conjunction with Strategies Unlimited, an optoelectronics market research firm based in Mountain View, CA. Part I of the review reports on the...

Evolutionary change is prying open huge market: Advances in graphics technology are creating potentially large new markets in applications from computer-to-plate printing to electronic paper and ink. (Focus On: Graphic Arts).
January 1, 2002... In the venerable field of printing, with its tens of thousands of companies worldwide, change tends to come slowly. The transition to digital techniques is no exception to this rule. As yet, only 20% of the global industry has moved to...

Optical integrated circuits benefit from quantum-well intermixing: smearing lattice boundaries provides precise matchups at active passive regions without complex regrowth processes. (Micro-Optics).
January 1, 2002... While telecom applications have generated much of the excitement in optics during the past few years, the fact is that telecom represents one very lucrative and immediate family of opportunities that just happens to be perched on the tip of the...

Acousto-optic tunable filters improve optical microscopy: used with a laser-scanning confocal microscope, an acousto-optic tunable filter selects wavelengths and specific field regions for illumination. (Microscopy).
January 1, 2002... The acousto-optic tunable filter is playing an increasingly important role in modern optical microscopy. In the latest-generation laser-scanning confocal microscopes, these devices modulate both the wavelength and amplitude of the laser light...

Bright light from glass wires: piggybacking on the success of EDFAs for telecom, recent developments in fiber lasers have positioned this technology to compete with conventional solid-state lasers in many applications. (Back to basics: fiber lasers).
January 1, 2002... Fiber lasers were first proposed more than 40 years ago, and from the beginning they were attractive for obvious reasons. Coating the ends of the fiber forms a completely sealed resonator immune to misalignment and contamination, more similar...

Effective use of off-the-shelf-optics has many facets: an important decision in a system design is often whether and when off-the-shelf-optics are more appropriate than custom optics. (Optics).
January 1, 2002... When developing new optical systems for imaging, illumination, or other applications, designers must decide whether to develop custom hardware or use commercially available optical elements and optical assemblies. Commercial optics, called...

Beware the claims when shopping for a scientific camera: the confusing specifications given by CCD manufacturers can be simplified with a basic principle in mind: look for optimal signal-to-noise ratio. (Charge-Coupled Devices).
January 1, 2002... Sooner or later, most camera users need to push the performance envelope (see Fig. 1). Specifications for high-performance cameras can be confusing or even intentionally misleading. A simple rule--maximize signal and minimize noise--can help to...

Coarse WDM: a cost-effective choice for the short haul: dense WDM systems allow tremendous bandwidth in network communications--at a high price. Coarse WDM is designed to deliver the most bandwidth per dollar spent: wide channel spacing allows the use of inexpensive laser transmitters and WDM optics, which can save on variable-length fiber routes. (Optical Networking).
January 1, 2002... The bright new idea of coarse wavelength-division multiplexing (CWDM) is in some ways an old idea. Two decades ago, the old Bell System planned to send simultaneous signals through graded-index multimode fiber at 825, 875, and 1300 nm,...

Expertise in nano-alignment aids photonics manufacturing: successful active nano-alignment requires an understanding of the complex manufacturing processes used in producing photonics devices. (Positioning Equipments).
January 1, 2002... With photonic components becoming ore complex, integrated, and technically challenging, the importance of Nanopositioning becomes more critical. No longer is it thought that nanopositioning is only for use in research and development. ...

Software quality depends upon the development process. (software & computing).
January 1, 2002... While quality standards have increased substantially over the past decade, software products, including those used in optical manufacturing and design applications, still often fail to deliver "zero defects." Indeed, it seems that software...

High-gain photodetector.
January 1, 2002... A new high-gain, hybridized photodetector for OEM applications consists of a low-dark-current PIN photodiode, integrated with a transimpedance amplifier within a hermetically sealed TO-5 package. The CMOS amplifier works with an input bias...

Flexible fiberoptic lightguides.
January 1, 2002... A new line of flexible quartz fiberoptic light-guides is available in single- and multilegged assemblies with variable lengths, fiber count, and diameters to meet end user needs. Certified light output is maintained within [+ or -] 5%....

Optical tables.
January 1, 2002... Optical tables manufactured to four performance levels (OptiPlane, LabPlane, ValuPlane, and EconoPlane) provide a flat, stiff, highly damped surface with a high natural frequency. Using a proprietary Spillpruff design, entire rows of mounting...

Ultraviolet LED.
January 1, 2002... The E1L5M-3POAP-02 LED emits ultraviolet light with a peak wavelength of 385 nm and a FWHM of 20 nm. Output power of up to 1.7 mW is available. Using a forward voltage of 3.7 V, maximum allowed dc forward current is 30 mA. Two versions with...

Ergonomic workplace systems.
January 1, 2002... NanoDesk is a modular system designed for modern production and cleanroom environments in the telecommunications and manufacturing industries. System options include passive or active vibration isolation, load capacity to 540 kg, ESD surfaces,...

Industrial beam analyzer.
January 1, 2002... The BA-500 Industrial YAG laser-beam analyzer monitors the beam profile, temporal and spatial beam profile, power, energy, and frequency of a laser beam. All of these quantities can be recorded in digital form for storage and analysis. The...

Portable integrating sphere.
January 1, 2002... A new integrating sphere, IC2, forms a 2-in. integrating cube and has been designed for use with the portable EPP2000 SpectroRadiometers. The IC2 has a light input port of 5/8-in. diameter. The sphere can be used to measure spectral irradiance,...