Laser Focus World articles from January 2007

Laser Focus World archives from January 2007

Diverse markets buoy laser business.(editor's desk)
January 1, 2007... Last month I noted the picture of a flourishing photonics industry painted by the recently released Optoelectronics Industry Development Association market report (www.oida.org)--a more detailed look at this report will follow in February's...

Geothermal heat comes from within.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2007... I enjoyed your article on solar energy and applaud your efforts ("Special Report: Photonics and the energy crisis," September, p. 68). We have solar panels on our home's roof and enjoy putting power back on the grid. One minor item in one...

Thanks for spelling it out.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2007... I have been in the optical business for 30 years and ! am still unable to keep up with constantly evolving acronyms. I am comfortable with laser and LED, but would never have known that SERS stood for "surface-enhanced Raman scattering" had...

Kagome photonic-crystal fiber spans broad wavelength range.(newsbreaks)
January 1, 2007... Applications for hollow-core photonic-crystal fibers (HC-PCFs) continue to proliferate as fabrication processes improve and insertion losses decrease (see www.laserfocusworld.com/articles/274709 and www.laserfocusworld.com/ articles/250395)....

Gallium nitride LEDs fabricated on silicon substrates boost luminous intensity.(newsbreaks)
January 1, 2007... At the 2006 IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (San Francisco, CA) last December, researchers from Matsushita Electric (Osaka, Japan) and the Nagoya Institute of Technology (Nagoya, Japan) described highly efficient gallium nitride...

True negative-index metamaterial operates at 780 nm.(newsbreaks)
January 1, 2007... Besting their own previous world record by almost a factor of two, researchers at the Universitat Karlsruhe (Karlsruhe, Germany), Iowa State University (Ames, IA), and the Forschungzentrum Karlsruhe in der Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft (Karlsruhe,...

Fiber lasers improve rapid prototyping.(newsbreaks)
January 1, 2007... Rapid prototyping (also called generative manufacturing) is evolving from polymer-based prototyping to metal-based prototyping, thanks to the development of titanium, stainless, aluminum, and cobalt-chrome powders that can be melted or...

Microfluidics and photonic crystals may yield optical integrated circuits.(newsbreaks)
January 1, 2007... Researchers at the European Laboratory for Non-Linear Spectroscopy (Firenze, Italy), the University of Trento (Trento, Italy), and the University of Paderborn (Paderborn, Germany) have used precisely controlled microscopic quantities of liquid...

Imaging system records ocular interface reflections in vivo.(newsbreaks)
January 1, 2007... Pablo Artal and Juan Tabernero at the University of Murcia (Murcia, Spain) have built a prototype imaging system for recording reflections (called Purkinje images) from four ocular interfaces--air-cornea (PI), cornea-aqueous (PII), aqueous-lens...

Subwavelength overlay targets show visible offsets.(newsbreaks)
January 1, 2007... As the feature sizes on silicon integrated-circuit (IC) chips become smaller (65 nm feature sizes are in production and 45 nm sizes are coming soon), precisely overlaying the different lithographic levels in IC-chip fabrication becomes ever...

Elliptical beam speeds laser cutting.(newsbreaks)
January 1, 2007... Using patented technology from JMAR Technologies (San Diego, CA) in which an elliptical laser beam is used to improve material ablation, scientists at Coherent (Santa Clara, CA) and HBL (Daejeon, Korea) have determined the optimum focal-spot...

Surface-discharge lamp zaps away lead paint.(newsbreaks)
January 1, 2007... Engineers at Phoenix Science and Technology (Chelmsford, MA) have demonstrated an optical approach to cleaning up the stubborn problem of lead paint in older housing; in the technique, short, intense pulses of light vaporize the paint's surface...

Laser link offers fiber quality through cloud cover.(FREE-SPACE OPTICS)
January 1, 2007... The dream of global communication at terabit speeds appears to have moved closer to reality. Researchers at The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State; University Park, PA) have developed signal-processing technology for free-space optics...

Incoherent light improves rainbow refractometry.(optoelectronics: world news)
January 1, 2007... Optical-metrology techniques benefit from the use of semiconductor lasers as bright, low-noise sources with good beam properties, attractive emission properties, small dimensions, and high wall-plug efficiencies. Because the interference...

Single-shot x-ray diffraction aims at imaging macromolecules.(X-RAY IMAGING)
January 1, 2007... The desire to image macro- and bio-molecules is driving the move to very short wavelengths. X-rays have long been used to examine periodic structures such as atoms in crystals; while this use requires only fairly weak x-ray radiation to...

Hybrid microscope probes plasmonic nanostructures.(IMAGING MICROSCOPY)
January 1, 2007... Researchers at JILA, a joint institute of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST; Boulder, CO) and the University of Colorado (Boulder), are developing a method of imaging nanostructures that is intended to enhance and...

Telecom technology enters competition to supplant argon-ion lasers.(SOLID-STATE LASERS)
January 1, 2007... Technology developed during the telecom boom of a few years ago is currently turning plenty of heads in the commercial laser markets with the rapidly expanding use of industrial fiber lasers. It appears, however, that the fiber laser is not the...

Femtosecond pulses leave thermal footprints.(WAVEGUIDE FABRICATION)
January 1, 2007... A decade ago, experiments first showed that focusing femtosecond laser pulses into a piece of undoped glass could permanently change its index of refraction. (1) Yet the underlying physical mechanisms behind this effect remain elusive; while...

Optomechanical sensing gets very cool indeed.(LASER COOLING)
January 1, 2007... Radiation pressure--the ever-present but (usually) exceptionally weak effect of incident light--is already predicted to play a role in some of the most sensitive optical measurements, such as the next generation of gravitational-wave...

LED approach may yield inexpensive field systems.(CAVITY-RING-DOWN SPECTROSCOPY)
January 1, 2007... Researchers at the University of Nebraska (Kearney, NE) have reported successful use of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) instead of laser sources to perform cavity-ring-down spectroscopy (CRDS). (In CRDS, a high-finesse optical cavity containing...

Miniature stretchable dye laser tunes in the visible.(OPTOFLUIDICS)
January 1, 2007... Small, broadly tunable lasers can be of great use in spectroscopy (see www.laserfocusworld.com/articles/259939). In the interest of developing such lasers for use in the visible spectrum, researchers at the California Institute of Technology...

SERS and silver nanorods quickly reveal viral structures.(RAMAN SPECTROSCOPY)
January 1, 2007... Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS)--a process that increases the sensitivity of Raman spectroscopy by exploiting surface-plasmon effects--is emerging as a promising nanoscale-imaging modality. Still, while this 30-year-old technique...

Ultrafast pulses raise optical absorbance in metals.(FEMTOSECOND-LASER ABLATION)
January 1, 2007... In the process of studying laser-matter interactions, researchers at the University of Rochester (Rochester, NY) have found evidence that the underlying physics may not be thoroughly understood. For instance, the commonly accepted idea that...

Compact femtosecond laser emits white light.(SUPERCONTINUUM SOURCES)
January 1, 2007... Supercontinuum or white-light laser sources--suitable for applications in spectroscopy and microscopy--usually consist of a pump laser and a micro-structured fiber (either a photonic-crystal fiber or a tapered fiber). Although 80 fs pulses from...

Airborne lidar system finds hidden fault lines.(LASER RANGING)
January 1, 2007... A team of British and Slovenian scientists has published the results of the first airborne lidar survey flown in Europe for the purpose of mapping earthquake-prone faults. The technique is especially valuable in areas of thick forest cover,...

Trapped sodium atoms lose remaining degrees of freedom.(QUANTUM COMPUTING)
January 1, 2007... A technique demonstrated by researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST; Gaithersburg, MD) appears to complete a decades-long quest for total control of atomic motion. For many years scientists have controlled atomic...

Mobius comes out of stealth mode.(industry report: laser)
January 1, 2007... Founded in 2005 by former engineers and executives from Lightwave Electronics, Mobius Photonics (San Jose, CA) plans to informally launch its fiber-laser technology at Photonics West. The company will hold private demonstrations of its green...

Laser specialist Exitech acquired by Oerlikon.(industry report: laser)
January 1, 2007... Oerlikon (Pfaffikon, Switzerland) acquired the laser technology, staff, and equipment of Exitech (Oxford, England), a worldwide provider of nano and micro laser systems. Oerlikon's optics, solar, and wafer-processing business units will benefit...

Iridex to buy Laserscope aesthetic business.(industry report: laser)
January 1, 2007... A definitive agreement has been signed with American Medical Systems Holdings for Iridex (Mountain View, CA) to acquire the laser aesthetics business of medical-laser systems manufacturer Laserscope (San Jose, CA). American Medical purchased...

QPC & Finisar terminate license agreement.(industry report: laser)
January 1, 2007... An agreement initiated in September 2003 that gave Finisar (Sunnyvale, CA) a nonexclusive license to the technology and intellectual property (IP) of QPC Lasers (parent of Quintessence Photonics; Sylmar, CA) was terminated. "Since we became a...

BinOptics receives additional funding.(industry report: laser)
January 1, 2007... To support the scaling of its line of telecom and datacom lasers designed for high-speed applications (up to 10 Gbit/s), BinOptics (Ithaca, NY) closed its Series C round of funding totaling $6 million. The funding will also be used to...

Oxford Lasers.(Also in the news ...)
January 1, 2007... Oxford Lasers (Dicot, England) announced that its management team now owns 100% of the equity in the company through a management buyout.

NL Nanosemiconductor (Dortmund, Germany) acquired Zia Laser (Albuquerque, NM).(Also in the news ...)
January 1, 2007... NL Nanosemiconductor (Dortmund, Germany) acquired Zia Laser (Albuquerque, NM); both companies are developers of quantum-dot lasers.

SPI Lasers.(Also in the news ...)
January 1, 2007... Fiber laser manufacturer SPI Lasers (Southampton, England) is opening a business support office in Shenzhen, China.

Rofin-Sinar Technologies.(Also in the news ...)
January 1, 2007... Rofin-Sinar Technologies (Plymouth, Mt and Hamburg, Germany), developer and manufacturer of high-performance laser beam sources and laser-based solutions, experienced net sales of $420.9 million for the 12 months ended Sept. 30. 2006-an...

Diode-laser manufacturer Alfalight (Madison, WI) has named Pacer International (England) and Appletec (Israel).(Also in the news ...)
January 1, 2007... Diode-laser manufacturer Alfalight (Madison, WI) has named Pacer International (England) and Appletec (Israel) as new distributors.

Lytron.(Also in the news ...)
January 1, 2007... Lytron (Woburn, MA), manufacturer of cooling systems for optoelectronic equipment and lasers, launched a new German Web site at www.Lytron.de.

Axsun Series D funds MEMS spectrometers.(industry report: optics)
January 1, 2007... A $15 million Series D financing round led by Electro Scientific Industries (ESI; Portland, OR)--a supplier of production laser systems for microengineering applications--was closed by Axsun Technologies (Billerica, MA) to enhance its...

Star Instruments sues Meade over optics.(industry report: optics)
January 1, 2007... Optical systems manufacturer Star Instruments (Newnan, GA) filed a federal lawsuit against Meade Instruments (www.meade.com) citing deceptive claims that Meade's RCX400 and LX200R line of telescopes use the Ritchey-Chretien technology. The...

InPhase technology wins CPIA award.(industry report: optics)
January 1, 2007... The Colorado Photonics Industry Association (CPIA; Longmont, CO) awarded InPhase Technologies (also in Longmont, CO) The Photonics Innovator of the Year award. Formed as a spinoff from Lucent Technologies in 2000, InPhase has successfully...

Europe intensifies support for photonics.(industry report: optics)
January 1, 2007... Photonics has been given a firm place in the European Union's 7th Framework Programme (FP7). The European Commission plans to create a new unit dedicated to photonics and to increase funding for the enabling technology by more than 40% ($120...

Barr Associates to provide filters for JWST.(industry report: optics)
January 1, 2007... Lockheed Martin has selected Barr Associates (Westford, MA) to provide filters for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) near-infrared camera (NIR-Cam), a filter-based instrument covering the spectral range of 0.6 to 5.0 microns. Barr is...

BCC Research.(Also in the news ...)
January 1, 2007... According to a new technical market research report entitled "Spectroscopy (IAS004C)" from BCC Research (Wellesley, MA), the total U.S. market for spectroscopic instruments will cross $5.2 billion by 2010.

Crystal and optical component suppliers Crystech (Qingdao, China) and VLOC (New Port Ritchey, FL; a subsidiary of II-VI) signed an agreement.(Also in the news ...)
January 1, 2007... Crystal and optical component suppliers Crystech (Qingdao, China) and VLOC (New Port Ritchey, FL; a subsidiary of II-VI) signed an agreement under which VLOC will market, sell, and distribute Crystech products in the U.S. and Canada...

Sterling Precision Optics.(Also in the news ...)
January 1, 2007... Sterling Precision Optics (Evanston, IL), manufacturer of optical filters, tempered optics, lenses, and optical windows, is approaching its 50th year in the optics industry.

Oakley (Foothill Ranch. CA) is expanding its military optics business by acquiring all the assets of Eye Safety Systems (ESS; Sun Valley, ID).(Also in the news ...)
January 1, 2007... Oakley (Foothill Ranch. CA) is expanding its military optics business by acquiring all the assets of Eye Safety Systems (ESS; Sun Valley, ID), supplier of military, law enforcement, and firefighting protective eyewear.

Subaru Telescope.(Also in the news ...)
January 1, 2007... Researchers at the 8.2 m Subaru Telescope (Mauna Kea. HI) achieved "first light" with the instrument's new adaptive-optics system that includes a laser guide star for a 10x resolution improvement.

Corning.(Also in the news ...)
January 1, 2007... Corning (Corning, NY) announced that its wholly owned subsidiary in the People's Republic of China hosted a groundbreaking ceremony for a new liquid-crystal-display (LCD) glass substrate finishing facility in Beijing, China.

Emcore invests in photovoltaics.(industry report: imaging & detector)
January 1, 2007... Semiconductor-based components and subsystems provider Emcore (Somerset, NJ) has agreed to invest $18 million in WorldWater & Power (Pennington, NJ), a developer and marketer of photovoltaic systems for terrestrial power generation, including...

New IR-detector factory approved.(industry report: imaging & detector)
January 1, 2007... Sofradir (Veurey-Voroize, France), a developer and manufacturer of advanced infrared (IR) detectors, received building permission to construct a new factory near Grenoble, France, allowing the company to practically double its production...

Alps Electric secures pocket-projector license.(industry report: imaging & detector)
January 1, 2007... Electronic components manufacturer Alps Electric Co. (Tokyo, Japan) was granted an exclusive license to the University of Cambridge's (Cambridge, England) core patent for a holographic video projector technology, developed in the the school's...

Northrop Grumman acquires Essex.(industry report: imaging & detector)
January 1, 2007... In a transaction valued at approximately $580 million, Northrop Grumman has signed a definitive agreement to acquire for cash all of the outstanding shares of Essex (Columbia, MD), a company that provides signal-processing services and products...

Imaging-sensor contracts go to Dalsa.(industry report: imaging & detector)
January 1, 2007... Dalsa (Waterloo, ON, Canada) received contracts totaling $5 million to deliver image sensor chips to two customers in the x-ray imaging and photogrammetry fields over the next two years. For the first contract, the image-sensor chips will be...

Northrop Grumman.(Also in the news ...)
January 1, 2007... The U.S. Army has awarded Northrop Grumman (Apopka, FL) a $15 million dollar contract for the company's battle-proven Lightweight Laser Designator Rangefinder (LLDR) with reduced weight and improved night-vision capability.

The District Court of Dusseldorf, Germany ruled in favor of OC Oerlikon Balzers (Oerlikon, Germany) that its German patent DE 197 089 49 C2 was infringed by Prodisc's (Taiwan).(Also in the news ...)
January 1, 2007... The District Court of Dusseldorf. Germany ruled in favor of OC Oerlikon Balzers (Oerlikon. Germany) that its German patent DE 197 089 49 C2 was infringed by Prodisc's (Taiwan) projection-display color wheels

NanoOpto (Somerset, NJ) and Moxtek (Orem, UT) are jointly developing a suite of nanotechnology-based products.(Also in the news ...)
January 1, 2007... NanoOpto (Somerset, NJ) and Moxtek (Orem, UT) are jointly developing a suite of nanotechnology-based products that will initially support applications addressing the projection display and consumer imaging markets.

Goodrich.(Also in the news ...)
January 1, 2007... Goodrich (Princeton, NJ) was awarded a contract from the U.S. Air Force Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Battlelab (Neltis Air Force Base, NV) to develop and fabricate a shortwave-infrared (SWIR) sensor for the Spectre-Finder initiative to demonstrate...

Andor Technology.(Also in the news ...)
January 1, 2007... Digital-imaging company Andor Technology (Belfast, Northern Ireland) was listed (for the seventh consecutive time) on the Deloitte 2006 Fast 50 Ranking for Irish companies.

IPG share price soars after IPO debut.(industry report: fiber optics)
January 1, 2007... After IPG Photonics (Oxford, MA) announced the pricing of its initial public offering (IPO) of 9 million shares of common stock at $16.50 per share (see www.laserfocusworld.com/articles/279683), Reuters reported later in the day that IPG shares...

Alcatel-Lucent finalizes merger.(industry report: fiber optics)
January 1, 2007... Lucent Technologies (Murray Hill, NJ) and Alcatel (Paris, France) announced the completion of their merger transaction. The new company Alcatel-Lucent is incorporated in France, with executive offices located in Paris; its stock will be traded...

JDSU reports positive first-quarter earnings.(industry report: fiber optics)(Financial report)
January 1, 2007... Optical products and communications test-and-measurement provider JDSU (Milpitas, CA) announced positive results for its fiscal 2007 first quarter. On a non-GAAP EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) basis, the...

LSI to buy Agere for $4 billion.(industry report: fiber optics)
January 1, 2007... In a new combined company to be called LSI Logic, LSI Logic (www.lsilogic.com) and Agere Systems (www.agere.com) have entered into a definitive merger agreement under which the companies will be combined in an all-stock transaction with an...

Luxtera awarded DARPA transceiver grant.(industry report: fiber optics)
January 1, 2007... CMOS photonics maker Luxtera (Carlsbad, CA) has been awarded the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Electronic and Photonic Integrated Circuits (EPIC) Phase II contract based on successful completion of Phase 1 of the project,...

NeoPhotonics expands DWDM product line.(industry report: fiber optics)
January 1, 2007... NeoPhotonics (San Jose, CA) acquired Paxera (Santa Clara, CA) as part a significant expansion of its product line for reconfigurable dense-wavelength-division-multiplexing (DWDM) highcapacity optical networks. Paxera's ultra-widely tunable...

The IEEE 802.3 Higher Speed Study Group is evaluating 20 Gbit/s 1310 nm lasers used in a five-channel coarse wavelength-division multiplexing.(Also in the news ...)
January 1, 2007... The IEEE 802.3 Higher Speed Study Group is evaluating 20 Gbit/s 1310 nm lasers used in a five-channel coarse wavelength-division multiplexing (CWDM) configuration and 25 Gbit/s lasers in a four-channel configuration from Apogee Photonics...

Opnext (Eatontown, NJ), an optical-networking subsidiary of Hitachi, hopes to raise $150 million in an initial public offering (IPO) of stock.(Also in the news ...)
January 1, 2007... Opnext (Eatontown, NJ), an optical-networking subsidiary of Hitachi, hopes to raise $150 million in an initial public offering (IPO) of stock, according to a prospectus filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Redfern Integrated Optics.(Also in the news ...)
January 1, 2007... Redfern Integrated Optics (Santa Clara, CA), developer and manufacturer of optical transmitters for the data and telecommunications markets, has secured an additional $7 million for continued development of silicon integrated-photonics...

Phoenix Contact and Siemens have selected Avago Technologies (San Jose, CA, and Singapore) Fast Ethernet optical transceivers with digital diagnostic monitoring interface.(Also in the news ...)
January 1, 2007... Phoenix Contact and Siemens have selected Avago Technologies (San Jose, CA, and Singapore) Fast Ethernet optical transceivers with digital diagnostic monitoring interface for future industrial networking applications.

Accurate part location is key to successful use of machine vision.(software & computing)
January 1, 2007... For simple vision-guided robotic (VGR) applications, a VGR package from a robot supplier can in some cases reduce integration time. Typically, however, companies experienced in industrial machine-vision provide the broadest range of...

University-industry relations play a key role in technology development.(comment)(Company overview)
January 1, 2007... The paradigm of the 20th century was a technology-driven economy, from railroads, air transportation, radio and television, to cell phones and the Web. In the 21st century we foresee a knowledge society sustaining the economy in balance with...

How can I get a patent license from my university?(business forum)
January 1, 2007... Q: What can I expect when negotiating a patent license with my university? I am particularly interested in getting an exclusive license. A: Generally, universities want to see their technology commercialized and tend to take a paternal...

Sensors get smarter: innovative sensors provide the functionalities needed for low-cost machine-vision applications.(inside imaging)
January 1, 2007... Error proofing is a systematic process for improving the reliability, quality, and stability of manufacturing methods. In factory-automation applications, this process often relies on the use of noncontact sensors to ensure that specific...

Laser industry navigates its way back to profitability it's been a few years in the making, but 2006 yielded some very positive returns.(LASER MARKETPLACE 2007)(Cover story)
January 1, 2007... There's nothing quite like taking a calculated risk--marrying instinct with intellect--and watching it pay off. Whether in business, investment, R&D, sports, or life, we surround ourselves with the right tools, data, and people to ensure an...

Organic LEDs try to live up to a bright promise: so far, OLEDs are capturing niche applications in small displays; improvements in lifetime, efficiency, and cost should help them spread widely in handheld devices.(PHOTONIC FRONTIERS: ORGANIC OPTOELECTRONICS)
January 1, 2007... A couple of years ago, organic LEDs seemed destined to be the Next Great Thing in optoelectronics. Organic LED displays were all over the Society for Information Display conference in May 2005 (Boston, MA). The biggest screens reached 40 in.,...

Moving toward the nanoscale: from diffractive optics at the microscle to plasmonics at the nanoscale, optical devices relying on microstructures have unique and valuable properties.(MICROSTRUCTURED OPTICS)
January 1, 2007... Diffractive optical elements are components that rely on the physical phenomena of diffraction and interference to control the propagation of light. (1, 2, 3) Such elements are usually macroscopically planar microstructures, consisting of...

CCD advances improve TDI imaging techniques: although performance of early time-delay-and-integration (TDI) charge-coupled-device imagers was limited by insufficient size and low resolution, modern TDI-CCD methods are benefiting from improvements in CCD imaging architectures.(CHARGE-COUPLED DEVICES)
January 1, 2007... While charge-coupled-device (CCD) sensors remain the imagers of choice for traditional imaging applications such as high-fidelity image capture and spectroscopy, time delay-and-integration (TDI) technology has changed the way we image moving...

Dispersion compensation sharpens multiphoton microscopy.(TUNABLE SOURCES)
January 1, 2007... Femtosecond lasers are the most popular form of tunable laser in use today. Their inherent peak power allows for efficient nonlinear frequency conversion that results in the broadest spectral coverage of any type of laser. Furthermore, the high...

Next-generation cytometers think outside the box: adoption has been slow, but solid-state lasers are enabling new kinds of analytical tools that are in some cases more complex, and in others, less.(OPTOELECTRONIC APPLICATIONS: INSTRUMENTATION)
January 1, 2007... It has been six years since the first commercial blue solid-state laser (Coherent's 488 nm diode-pumped Sapphire) entered the market, challenging air-cooled argon-ion lasers in digital imaging and bioinstrumentation. While the Sapphire now...

Chalcogenide fiber slows light: arsenic selenide optical fiber has optical nonlinear coefficients many times higher than silica fiber, allowing the efficient slowing of light in a short fiber length.(MID-IR FIBERS)
January 1, 2007... When used as the basis for nonlinear optical devices, single-mode optical fiber inherently provides the high light intensities needed for a good nonlinear response. Such fiber-based devices can be used in many optical-signal-processing...

High-speed and ultra-high-speed imaging offers broad application coverage: high-speed video systems record at maximum rates of 2000 to 200,000 images per second. The use of an intensifier enables ultra-high-speed video systems to perform at frame rates up to 200 million images per second.(ULTRA-HIGH-SPEED IMAGING)
January 1, 2007... Many high-speed and ultra-high-speed imaging systems are commercially available and provide multiple capabilities for imaging events over a wide range of length and time scales. In al most all cases, additional lighting beyond the ambient will...

Surface qualification demands a proper measurement technique: from interferometric methods to phase-measuring microscopes and scatterometers, understanding the proper measurement method is paramount to qualifying an optical surface.(SURFACE CHARACTERIZATION)
January 1, 2007... The characterization of optical surfaces is critical to assessing the performance of an optical system prior to system integration. Knowing what characterization needs to be performed is dependent on a detailed understanding of requirements....

FBGs enhance dispersion compensation: the multichannel character of fiber-Bragg-grating compensators offers a colorless, low-insertion-loss, compact, and widely tunable option for 10 Gbit/s and even 40 Gbit/s communications system designers.(DISPERSION COMPENSATION)
January 1, 2007... As data rates of telecom systems increase from 10 to 40 Gbit/s, new technical challenges appear, including the adverse effects of signal broadening caused by chromatic dispersion. This physical phenomenon originates from the wavelength...

Dielectric multilayer mirrors enable shortest pulse lengths: dispersive dielectric mirrors can be used to enable the generation of few-cycle pulses and to compensate the dispersion that occurs in complex optical systems.(ULTRAFAST OPTICS)
January 1, 2007... Initially driven by cutting-edge fundamental research, the development of femtosecond lasers must now respond to the specific needs of an increasing number of industrial and clinical applications. Pulse durations in the sub-7 fs range are, for...

Excimer-laser mirrors.(new products)
January 1, 2007... Tech Spec high-energy excimer-laser mirrors are designed to minimize scatter from high-power UV lasers, including KrF (248 nm), XeCl (308 nm), and XeF (351 nm) lasers. The mirrors are based on thin-film dielectric coatings on fused-silica...