Sensores

In the joint project “HiFi — Highly integrated quantum frequency converter of highest fidelity based on innovative laser, fiber and production technology” funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), researchers are working on the realization of all necessary technologies to provide quantum frequency converters (QFK) with high efficiency and low noise for initial test tracks.

The Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Solid State Physics IAF has contributed to the project with the successful development of vertical-external-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VECSELs) based on gallium antimonide (GaSb). These are optically pumped, surface-emitting semiconductor lasers with an external resonator and...

Lumencor, a developer of light engines and scanners, has opened a new sales and demo center at the University of Pittsburgh Applied Research Center (U-PARC). The facility features a biological research laboratory with capabilities in stem cell and cardiac tissue culture, in support of the company’s VOLTA Scanner, a dual-laser optical system for the detection and functional analysis of transient cellular processes.

An aerial view of the city of Pittsburgh. Courtesy of Lumencor. VANCOUVER, British Columbia — The Innovative Optical and Wireless Network Global Forum (IOWN Global Forum) will be holding its first public event in Vancouver, British Columbia titled “FUTURES - Powering Tomorrow with Photonics.” The...

Quantum networking and single-photon technology company Nu Quantum and quantum software developer SoftwareQ are collaborating to build the theoretical framework for a fault-tolerant quantum computer. Sponsored by the U.K. and Canadian governments, the collaborators have announced plans to propose and benchmark practical architectural solutions.

Working as part of the Quarrefour project, Nu Quantum and SoftwareQ are using hardware-software codesign techniques to integrate SoftwareQ’s compiler technology into the real-time firmware of Nu Quantum’s control system. This allows the team to build an architecture that takes maximum advantage of every qubit and link available in a computer, as soon as it becomes ready,...

Honeywell intends to acquire Civitanavi Systems, a provider of position navigation and timing technology for the aerospace, defense, and industrial markets. Honeywell will initiate a voluntary tender offer to acquire all outstanding shares, a transaction worth approximately €200 million ($217.4 million) at closing. The acquisition will strengthen Honeywell's capabilities in autonomous operations in aircraft and other vehicles.

Civitanavi, like Honeywell, has a history of developing inertial navigation solutions. These solutions are used to track the position and orientation of a vehicle by using accelerometers, gyroscopes, and other sensors.

According to Jim Currier, president and CEO of Honeywell Aerospace Technologies,...

Laser treatment has gained popularity for the treatment of skin blemishes. To improve the efficacy and reduce complications from laser treatment, a research group led by Osaka Metropolitan University developed an index of the threshold energy density, or fluence, for melanosome disruption, corresponding to the dependent wavelengths of the picosecond (ps) lasers used for treatment. The wavelength-specific irradiation index will help clinicians determine the optimal endpoint for pigmented lesion treatment based on numerical indicators.

Ps lasers remove lesions from the skin by delivering energy beams in pulses that last for about a trillionth of a second. The lasers target melanosomes, which produce, store, and transport the melanin...

Micro-LED developer Mojo Vision appointed Achin Bhowmik to its board of directors. Bhowmik is a former executive at Intel, the current CTO of Starkey, and president of the Society for Information Display. He has 23 years of experience in perceptual computing, display, and semiconductor business.
Tom Brown. Courtesy of TiniFiber. LINDENHURST, N.Y. — Optical cabling solutions manufacturer TiniFiber named Tom Brown vice president of business development. Prior to joining TiniFiber, Brown served as president and CEO of CDIL Data Center and held leadership positions at Windstream from 2015 to 2018 and Fibernet Telecom from 1999 to 2010.

Femtosecond (fs) fiber oscillators are a standard technology used to generate fs laser pulses. They offer a compact design, outstanding performance, and are cost-effective to use. However, the operating wavelengths for these oscillators are located primarily in the infrared (IR) region. Extending their reach to the visible (VIS) range, so they can be used in a variety of applications that require VIS light sources, has been a longstanding goal of laser science.

In an advancement for ultrafast laser technology, researchers at Xiamen University developed a VIS-wavelength, 635-nm, soliton, mode-locked fs fiber oscillator and amplifier. They constructed the oscillator on a phase-biased nonlinear amplifying loop mirror (PB-NALM).
VIS...

If there is one thing that fuels science researchers, it’s an unwavering dedication to their craft. If there are two things, it’s unwavering dedication — and a metric ton of caffeine creating a feedback loop of calculated madness and scientific discovery.

In fact, caffeine’s history is incomplete without mention of its (purported) direct link to advancements; it is often cited for kickstarting the Enlightenment period in Europe, which commenced along with the increased presence of coffeehouses in 17th century cities.

Really, it ought to come as no surprise that researchers would take such a significant distinguisher and turn it into an analogy for quantum computing.


Courtesy of iStock.com/Alvaro...

The relationship between industrial applications — mainstays such as materials processing, quality control, and chemical analysis — and photonic solutions is hardly steeped in mystery. By the time Bell Labs’ Kumar Patel introduced his first iteration of the CO2 laser 60 years ago, society had fully committed to, walked back, and then reassessed the notion of tying its collective growth to advancements of the factory.

Despite the absence of any question of “what came first,” there is still a chicken-and-egg element to the industrial applications-photonics dynamic. Simply, photonic innovation drives progress in industry. And industrial applications ensure a continuous stream of photonic innovation.

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On February 1, the biggest North American photonics convention concluded. It was busier than ever, at over 24,000 registered attendees.

Guests once again enjoyed a great reunion for the photonics family, and, beyond a meet and greet for the community, Photonics West again featured an overwhelming number of events: conferences with thousands of presentations, short courses, four distinct exhibitions (another record), and many, many parties.

Though it is impossible to cover such a wealth of information, a few points topped my personal Photonics West 2024 agenda.

Secondary sources

The topic of secondary sources has been around for some time. Now, the engagement of one of the biggest players in the laser industry, TRUMPF,...

CMOS manufacturing has undergone a significant transformation in the last 12 months. The manufacturing processes that even seasoned developers regarded as fundamentally experimental 20, or even 10, years ago have come within reach of enabling an entirely new set of commercial applications. These breakthroughs are emerging in addition to the applications that industry innovators have already demonstrated owing to advancements in CMOS manufacturing processes.

Among the multitude of manufacturing processes currently under development, 3D stacking is prompting system developers, manufacturers, and end users to reconsider the possibilities of CMOS image sensor technology. A camera on a chip, an optical network on a chip, and even a neural...

At a system architecture level, software-defined networking (SDN) has transformed data center management in the last decade, decoupling the control plane element from the data plane element. The flexibility in this design innovation enables dynamic traffic routing, network adjustments, and resource allocation — all through software control.

Already, this highly coveted advancement has demonstrated massive benefits for network communications. Yet, the full potential of SDN’s orchestration capabilities for the data center remains limited, due largely to the rigidity of the physical hardware needed to support such an application. In addition, many existing network devices, particularly in telecom settings, lack open...

Far above an oil pipeline, a drone bobs and weaves. The drone, dispatched by Denver, Colorado-based Project Canary, is collecting high-resolution imaging data of the site, while also scanning for any indications that the pipeline is leaking methane.

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, and Project Canary cofounder and co-CEO Will Foiles saw a valuable opportunity to act against climate change by giving oil and gas facilities the ability to quickly detect and prevent its release into the atmosphere.


A cloud of pollution emanates from an oil and gas facility. Giving such facilities the ability to quickly detect and prevent the release of methane gases into the atmosphere can help in the fight against climate change. Courtesy of...

The meaning of “high power” varies considerably by sector. Indeed, the high powers that industry applications command, for example, differ vastly from those that are considered high power in the field of biomedicine.

The identifiable attributes of high power also differ by application. Where clean energy research prioritizes precision and control at extreme energy levels, military and defense place intense focus on beam quality and environmental resilience.


Corner cube retroreflectors retro-reflect over a wide range of incident angles, which is useful in applications where precise alignment is difficult to achieve or where vibration is present. Courtesy of Altechna.
Industry, for its part, demands a balance...

Approximately 250,000 men in the U.S. receive a prostate cancer diagnosis each year. While overall morbidity and mortality rates for this type of cancer are low, a subset of cases requires aggressive treatment.

A machine-learning model developed by researchers at the University of Washington provides 3D segmentation of the glandular tissue structures that are used for prostate cancer risk assessment by evaluating microscopy images. The deep learning-based model for gland segmentation could help guide critical treatment decisions for patients with prostate cancer and accelerate future research on how to optimize treatment decisions for individual patients.

To train a model for direct 3D segmentation of prostate glands, professor...

ViaLase, a clinical-stage medical technology company developing lasers for the treatment of glaucoma, has closed a $40 million series C funding round. Proceeds from the round will be used to continue commercialization of the ViaLase Laser technology including clinical, regulatory, and other commercial milestones. If approved, the ViaLase Laser will be the first femtosecond laser used for the treatment of primary open angle glaucoma, ViaLase said.

The ViaLase Laser combines femtosecond laser technology with micron-accurate image guidance for a noninvasive glaucoma treatment called femtosecond laser image-guided high-precision trabeculotomy, or FLigHT. The novel FLigHT procedure, ViaLase said, will provide physicians with precision and...

Researchers at the University of Central Florida (UCF) are investigating ways to enhance the development of new drugs and therapies.

A tunable plasmonic platform from UCF, which enables accurate detection of chiral molecules, could help pharmaceutical companies and biomedical labs classify enantiomers with speed and precision, leading to more efficient drug development. The platform for sensing chiral molecules is the work of a team led by professor Debashis Chanda at the UCF Nanoscience Technology Center.

Enantiomers are pairs of chiral molecules, meaning they are mirror images of each other. Each enantiomer in a pair can have different effects in the body or in chemical reactions. Some enantiomers have an efficacious effect,...

Oriole Networks, a startup focused on light-based technology for AI systems and data centers, has raised £10 million ($13 million) in seed funding. The 2023 spinout of University College London (UCL) founded by George Zervas, James Regan, Alessandro Ottino, and Joshua Benjamin holds intellectual property licensed through UCL’s technology transfer company, UCLB.

(From left) Joshua Benjamin, George Zervas, James Regan, and Alessandro Ottino. Courtesy of Oriole Networks. “AI computational needs are increasing by 10 times every 18 months. This leads to distributed training and inference across large numbers of xPUs,” said George Zervas, Oriole's CTO. “Collective data movement across the servers in the data...

Keysight Technologies has made an offer to acquire Spirent Communications in a deal worth £1.16 billion ($1.46 billion). The offer represents an increase over VIAVI Solutions’ $1.3 billion offer earlier this month. Keysight said that Spirent’s board of directors has unanimously withdrawn its recommendation to accept VIAVI’s offer and intends to accept the proposal from Keysight.

With Spirent’s offerings, Keysight added that it expects to address new serviceable available market opportunities of up to $1.5 billion. Keysight anticipates greater efficiency post-integration by leveraging its existing administrative and sales infrastructure and through consolidation of office space, equipment, and other...

A group of networking, semiconductor, and optics companies have formed the Linear Pluggable Optics Multi-Source Agreement (LPO MSA) to develop the specifications for networking equipment and optical modules required to enable a broad ecosystem of interoperable LPO solutions. Founded by Semtech Corporation, NVIDIA, Intel, and Broadcom, these specifications target the industry-wide challenge of reducing the power, cost, and latency of high-speed optical interconnects while improving the reliability. The initial target of the MSA is an optimized optical interconnect with LPO modules on both ends of the link. This will define the electrical and optical requirements to ensure interoperability between multiple vendors of networking equipment and...