Pernille Undrum Fathi (left) and Irene Occhiodori (right) in the lab.

Tailor-made, large nonlinearities within nanophotonic devices?

Codesign of material properties and electromagnetic responses opens the door to higher-efficiency nanophotonic devices within smaller footprints.

Andrea Arduin (left) and Professor Ole Bang, who heads the Fiber Sensors and Supercontinuum Group at DTU Electro, in the lab.

Lasers & Sources

‘Cooked’ fiber doubles range of ultralow-noise supercontinuum lasers

Bio&Life Sciences

PODCAST: Meet Eric Diebold, Waters Biosciences

Following the Photons: A Photonics Podcast

UC Riverside and LIGO Laboratory researchers move a 40-kg LIGO mirror into position to test a prototype FROSTI wavefront actuator in vacuum.

Detectors & Imaging

Wide-aperture wavefront sensing from thermal imaging

Resources

Photonics Hot List: September 25, 2026

Optics

PODCAST: Meet Garrett Cole, University of Arizona Wyant College of Optical Sciences (PART TWO)

Following the Photons: A Photonics Podcast

Resources

Photonics Hot List: September 18, 2026

Voices of the Industry

Quantum

Is quantum computing playing out like mobile phones, circa 1995?

Quantum computing isn’t waiting to become useful—its practical hybrid phase is already underway.

Siegfried Glenzer and Arianna Gleason in front of the chamber for Matter in Extreme Conditions (MEC) instrument at LCLS. Credit: Jacqueline Ramseyer Orrell/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

Lasers & Sources

The race for laser-driven fusion energy heats up

Is putting carbon-free laser-driven fusion energy on the grid by the 2030s possible?

Learning Resources

Sponsored

11 Common Breadboarding Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

From optics and autofocus to illumination and packaging, explore 11 common breadboarding mistakes and the expert guidance that can help accelerate development and improve system...

Oct. 1, 2026

Sponsored

Cancer Vision Goggles: Transforming Precision Oncologic Surgery

Discover how Cancer Vision Goggles bring real-time, hands-free NIR fluorescence imaging directly into the surgeon’s field of view, offering an innovative way to visualize tumor...

Oct. 1, 2026

Sponsored

White Papers

Validating Free-Space Optical (FSO) Communications for Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTN)

Field trials in space are costly and unrepeatable, so learn how to recreate orbital link conditions in the comfort of your lab instead.

Oct. 1, 2026

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Sponsored

Overcoming the AI Scaling Wall: The New Era of Optical Connectivity

As standard data center architectures reach their physical limits, a breakthrough in multichannel active alignment is solving CPO manufacturing bottlenecks, increasing alignment...

Sept. 30, 2026

Podcast

Lasers/Sources

Simplified representation of early PureFize Far-UVC prototype emission, showing deep-UV output below 240 nm. The chart is intended to illustrate the demonstrated wavelength region, not final product performance. Prototype data. Further development, system optimization, performance validation, and safety validation are ongoing.

Lasers & Sources

Field-emission cathodoluminescent far-UVC source below 240 nm?

A new approach to generate far-ultraviolet C (far-UVC) taps field emission from a nanostructured cathode and electron excitation of a phosphor layer rather than using a conventional...

Sept. 15, 2026

Lasers & Sources

A new record set for attosecond isolated light pulses?

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

Handheld laser materials processing performed with compliant equipment and controls.

Laser Processing

Handheld laser devices for materials processing: From viral video to workplace risk

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

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.

Optics

Can an all-optical photonic time crystal advance unlock the terahertz frequency range?

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

Optics

Schematic of the group’s multilayer photonic device that integrates a laser-programmable Sb2S3 phase-change layer and an UV-patterned humidity-responsive hydrogel. Optical information is encoded within the Sb2S3 layer via reversible amorphous-crystalline transitions using focused laser pulses.

Optics

Optical data storage approach dynamically conceals/reveals images

A three-layer photonic device combines phase-change materials with hydrogels to enable reversible, full-color image multiplexing for high-density optical storage devices via ambient...

Sept. 17, 2026

Optics

PODCAST: Meet Garrett Cole, University of Arizona Wyant College of Optical Sciences (PART ONE)

Following the Photons: A Photonics Podcast

This episode of Following the Photons: A Photonics Podcast features Part One of our interview with Garrett Cole, an associate professor at the University of Arizona's Wyant College...

Sept. 15, 2026

FIGURE 1. Legacy Eleven Parameter Image Intensifier Nomograph.4

Optics

The lost art of nomography is reborn through AI

AI-assisted nomography is a valuable tool for engineers because it helps show relationships in a different way, recognizes possibilities that might otherwise be overlooked, and...

Sept. 15, 2026

Optics

Momentum story: Xavveo’s CEO Sven Otte talks production-ready silicon photonic chips for imaging radar

Manufacturing monolithically at complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) scale using established foundry processes means silicon photonics can now compete on cost and volume...

Sept. 14, 2026

Quantum

Building quantum computers from the qubit up

Nord Quantique embeds error correction directly into its hardware via superconducting bosonic codes for a 1:1 logical-to-physical qubit ratio.

Sept. 7, 2026

Quantum

Diamond quantum emitter decoupled from vibrations may be a gamechanger

A newly discovered type of diamond color center has a desirable quirk: It couples to a single, stable local vibration that shows potential to be controlled.

Sept. 1, 2026

Quantum

Quantum-safe free-space connectivity?

Free-space optical quantum key distribution (QKD) is poised to be a connectivity gamechanger for ad hoc or remote networks, or whenever mobile users are involved.

Aug. 31, 2026

An artist’s impression of a frozen optical fiber core within a glass capillary that efficiently guides and couples light and sound waves.

Optics

Frozen liquid-core optical fiber enhances nonlinear optics response

When researchers in Germany froze liquid-core optical fibers to see what would happen, they discovered a larger-than-expected in-fiber Brillouin gain.

Aug. 28, 2026

Test/Measurement

A 20 Euro bill photographed via conventional camera on left, and with its security feature revealed via NIR device on the right.

Detectors & Imaging

Tiny ‘upconverter’ turns invisible near-infrared patterns into visible green light

A device created by an international team of researchers converts a near-infrared (NIR) image into visible green light that can be captured via conventional or smartphone cameras...

Sept. 3, 2026

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Bio&Life Sciences

PODCAST: Meet Jennifer Kehlet Barton, University of Arizona

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 ...

Sept. 1, 2026

Executive Forum

EPIC’s Jérémy Picot-Clémente talks to Opto’s CEO Daniel Kraus about his new role and AI’s future in microscopy

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

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.

Detectors & Imaging

Behold: A ‘black hole star’

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

Detectors/Imaging

Sponsored

LED Illumination for Spatial Biology

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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Sponsored

Custom LED Illumination for Automated Fluorescence Imaging

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

Detectors & Imaging

A microscope designed around recoverable blur?

Automated imaging devices GANscan and BlurryScope show how acquisition and reconstruction can be codesigned—as long as validation boundaries remain explicit.

Aug. 20, 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.

Optics

AI redefines performance metrics for AR optical systems

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