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Following the Photons: A Photonics Podcast
This episode of Following the Photons: A Photonics Podcast features Jennifer Kehlet Barton, Ph.D., Professor and Thomas R. Brown Distinguished Chair of Biomedical Engineering ...
Credit: Swetapadma Sahoo
Swetapadma Sahoo in the lab.
The QuINSiDa project demonstrates how free-space optical links extend quantum-secure connectivity between fixed infrastructure and mobile platforms; the picture depicts the vision driving the project.
Credit: Philipp Denghel
An artist’s impression of a frozen optical fiber core within a glass capillary that efficiently guides and couples light and sound waves.
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Learning Resources

hybridbonding
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Hybrid bonding is transforming semiconductor packaging with higher density, improved performance, and greater reliability. Learn how MKS motion solutions enable the precision,...
Aug. 20, 2026
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Optimize optical system performance with the right motion technologies. Learn how to select galvo scanners, DC motors, and piezo motors to improve speed, precision, and reliability...
Sept. 10, 2026
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Designing an asphere? Learn the manufacturing-critical tolerances — irregularity, MSF errors, slope specification, clear aperture, and center thickness — that keep your design...
Aug. 4, 2026
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As AI and data rates push high-speed interfaces to new limits, even tiny timing mismatches can cause signal degradation and bit errors. Learn how to evaluate, measure, and manage...
Aug. 4, 2026

Podcast

Lasers/Sources

Credit: Meng Han
The group’s experimental setup.
In an advance for photonics and ultrafast science, researchers generate 18-attosecond isolated light pulses via a high-power Yb-laser platform.
Aug. 26, 2026
Credit: IPG Photonics, LightWELD
Handheld laser materials processing performed with compliant equipment and controls.
Part 1 of a 4-part series: Why should prospective buyers verify before purchasing high-power handheld laser devices? A device ordered online and delivered to your door passes ...
Aug. 25, 2026
Credit: B. Schröder/HZDR
A THz electromagnetic wave induces strong, fast temporal modulations that result in a photonic time crystal—a.k.a. a crystal lattice in time for photons.
In a breakthrough, researchers in France and Germany demonstrate a photonic time crystal—with optical properties that change over time—and it has the potential to dramatically...
Aug. 13, 2026
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Following the Photons: A Photonics Podcast
This episode of Following the Photons: A Photonics Podcast examines the increasing number of optics and photonics technician training programs around the U.S.
Aug. 11, 2026

Optics

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Following the Photons: A Photonics Podcast
This episode of Following the Photons: A Photonics Podcast features Shankaran Janardhanan, senior vice president and general manager of the Photonics and RF division at GlobalFoundries...
Aug. 25, 2026
Context-aware AR applications require optical systems to maintain readable, high-contrast information across changing real-world environments, which makes legibility and visual comfort increasingly important measures of performance.
Artificial intelligence (AI) doesn’t replace the traditional metrics of augmented-reality (AR) optical performance, but it does change how optical engineers prioritize and balance...
Aug. 19, 2026
Credit: Christopher R. Shelton
VAR Lab researchers capture the Liberty Bell with a Canon EOS R5 Mark II for documentation and photogrammetry during one of three limited-access scanning sessions inside the Liberty Bell Center.
The mission: A nine-hour access window to create a high-res digital twin of the Liberty Bell forced our team to combine four forms of optical capture and check every dataset before...
Aug. 17, 2026
Credit: Nvidia
Artist rendering of quantum GPU-supercomputing, with integration via Nvidia NVQLink.
Nvidia works with companies building quantum computers, including ones with photonics-based quantum processing unit (QPU) approaches, and provides a quantum platform they can ...
Aug. 10, 2026

Quantum

Credit: Terra Quantum
Terra Quantum's loss-control-based quantum key distribution system delivers quantum-safe keys over optical fiber, enabling network operators to secure critical infrastructure links.
Quantum computing isn’t waiting to become useful—its practical hybrid phase is already underway.
Aug. 24, 2026
FIGURE 1. Longitudinal multimode spectrum of conventional 488-nm Fabry-Perot laser diode (left) and of single-frequency DFB laser diode (right) with monolithic grating. Chip schematics are shown in inset.
Laser subsystems are a constraint in scaling quantum technologies, but advances in visible distributed feedback (DFB) lasers provide an alternative that offers intrinsic single...
Aug. 11, 2026
Credit: Vexlum
Vexlum’s CEO Jussi-Pekka Penttinen (left) and Stefan Truppe, managing director of the company’s new U.K. R&D lab.
Vexlum’s CEO and Cofounder Jussi-Pekka Penttinen shares how the Finnish company differentiates itself, why they’re expanding operations into the U.K., and three intriguing trends...
Aug. 5, 2026
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Celebrate innovation in optics, photonics, and quantum by entering the Laser Focus World Innovators Awards.
Aug. 3, 2026

Test/Measurement

Credit: Opto GmbH
Daniel Kraus, CEO of Opto.
Jérémy Picot-Clémente, EPIC’s Photonics Technologies program manager, talks to Daniel Kraus, CEO of Opto, a Germany-based producer of advanced AI-enabled microscope sensors for...
Aug. 26, 2026
Illustration: Rohan Naidu/ University of Hawai’i
Stars like our Sun (left) may be thought of as a dense ball of gas powered by nuclear fusion. Black holes (center) typically grow by consuming matter via pancake-like accretion disks. Black Hole Stars (right) represent a new kind of astrophysical object—black holes enshrouded in dense gas so they effectively radiate in a star-like manner. The dense envelope of gas gives the black hole its star-like features. Black Hole Stars are >100,000 times larger than the Sun (~1000 au vs. ~0.01 au), but span a size similar to black hole accretion disks.
Astronomers discover an extremely bright ‘Little Red Dot’ within the earliest galaxies of the Universe—dating back a few hundred million years after the Big Bang—and it appears...
Aug. 17, 2026
Credit: ESA
FIGURE 1. LISA will use three spacecraft separated by ~2.5 million kilometers to exchange laser beams and detect low-frequency gravitational waves.
NASA selected Exail’s flight-proven lithium-niobate phase modulators for its Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) space mission, which highlights how industrialized electro...
July 31, 2026
Credit: STMicroelectronics
Combined multi-zone distance and infrared monitoring enhance flexibility to design powerful system features.
Advanced LiDAR modules can simultaneously deliver multiple data streams, including depth maps, infrared imagery, reflectance information, ambient light measurements, and confidence...
July 20, 2026

Detectors/Imaging

Introducing the new CoolLED pE-10
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Fast, repeatable 365–850 nm LED excitation gives OEMs a competitive edge with reliable high-plex data for spatial biology.
Sept. 1, 2026
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Automation is reshaping fluorescence imaging. In life science research, pharmaceutical drug discovery, and industrial inspection, instrument developers are under pressure to acquire...
Sept. 1, 2026
Credit: Adapted from M. Fanous et al., npj Dig. Med., 8, 506 (2025); https://doi.org/10.1038/s41746-025-01882-x, CC BY 4.0
BlurryScope workflow.
Automated imaging devices GANscan and BlurryScope show how acquisition and reconstruction can be codesigned—as long as validation boundaries remain explicit.
Aug. 20, 2026
Credit: Viktor Gruev, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The camera, inspired by mantis shrimp vision, captures ultraviolet, near-infrared, and visible images using a single chip.
Scientists are now harnessing one of the most sophisticated visual systems in nature—the mantis shrimp—with the goal of making cancer surgery more effective via more thorough ...
July 29, 2026