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In this episode: An AI and IR imaging approach could thwart whale/cargo ship collisions, the latest photonics business news, and a biohybrid sensor mimics retinas.
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FIGURE 1. Comparison of laser frequency deviation: The unlocked laser (gray) exhibits significant environmental drift, while the analog lock (blue) suppresses most of this noise but is limited by hardware-induced drift and component tolerances. The digital implementation (green) leverages high-speed DSP to achieve a near-zero error signal and provide the superior stability required.
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Following the Photons: A Photonics Podcast
Credit: R. Jacobson/NIST
Shot of the team’s chip glowing blue.
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Learning Resources

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Register to learn how a retina-inspired biohybrid image sensor mimics human photoreceptors, delivers real-time color imaging on microsecond scales, and hints at new bio-optoelectronic...
June 17, 2026
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Avoid unplanned laser failures. Learn how threshold-based predictive monitoring exposes diode degradation early, enabling scheduled maintenance and protecting critical safety ...
May 28, 2026
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Explore chalcogenide glass photonics with Dr. Park, featuring high-Q microresonators for IR sensing, lasers, frequency combs, and quantum devices. Register now!
May 20, 2026
Courtesy of Avantier Inc
Submeter High Resolution Optical Payload
Technological Heritage & Safeguard Measures Our development process is rooted in a mature industrial chain and extensive flight heritage. We utilize a “design-for-success...
April 6, 2026

Podcast

Lasers/Sources

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Justine Murphy chats with Dr. Brian Monacelli, a professor and director of Laser Technology at Pasadena City College and a Principal Optical Engineer and supervisor of the Optical Implementation group at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Following the Photons: A Photonics Podcast
This episode of Following the Photons: A Photonics Podcast features Dr. Brian Monacelli, a professor at Pasadena City College and principal optical engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion...
April 21, 2026
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Following the Photons: A Photonics Podcast
This episode of Following the Photons: A Photonics Podcast features our Light News photonics news roundup for April 14, 2026.
April 14, 2026
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
Is putting carbon-free laser-driven fusion energy on the grid by the 2030s possible?
April 6, 2026
Credit: Comptek Solutions
FIGURE 1. Passivation-enabled process decoupling in laser diode manufacturing. Cleaving in air is decoupled from passivation, and passivation decouples mirror coatings. Both safe windows reduce time pressure while maintaining oxidation-inert facets, which enables predictable downstream coatings, burn-in, and final test.
Crystalline oxide passivation extends facet stability for weeks or months—without molecular beam epitaxy or in situ coatings.
April 2, 2026

Optics

Credit: Haoran Ren
Mosaic pattern artwork that inspired this work.
A controlled chaotic metasurface design approach assigns different groups of metapixels each a distinct function. By distributing them across the surface in a disordered mosaic...
April 15, 2026
Phononic’s CPO-ready thermal kit offers advanced packaging and localized cooling for copackaged optical engines in scale-out and scale-up applications.
Without precise predictive cooling, bandwidth gains promised by advanced optics and integrated ASICs can’t be fully achieved within production environments.
April 13, 2026
Credit: M. King/NIST
NIST scientist Nikolai Klimov holds a PIC with tweezers.
A new photonic chip packaging approach may open the door to applications where conventional photonic packaging simply can’t survive—such as space missions, nuclear environments...
April 8, 2026
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Following the Photons: A Photonics Podcast
This episode of Following the Photons: A Photonics Podcast features Dr. Judy Wu, the Thomas A. Albright Professor of Chemistry at the University of Houston.
April 7, 2026

Quantum

Credit: MicroAlign
12- and 24-channel high-accuracy fiber arrays.
A European Innovation Council (EIC) Accelerator award is helping MicroAlign industrialize nanometer-accurate fiber arrays designed for ultralow-loss photonic systems.
March 19, 2026
Credit: Bowen Li
Adam Shaw, Anna Soper, Danial Shadmany, and Da Yeon Koh in front of the cavity array microscope apparatus.
Microlenses inside optical cavities allow physicists to tightly focus light onto single atoms in a way that’s both efficient and massively parallel—and it looks promising for ...
March 4, 2026
Credit: Infinita Lab
Post-silicon validation.
The shift beyond silicon photonics is an expansion of the photonic materials toolkit. While silicon remains valuable for electronic-photonic integration and certain passive functions...
Feb. 24, 2026
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Following the Photons: A Photonics Podcast
This episode of Following the Photons: A Photonics Podcast features Dr. Patrick Heissler, CEO of SCRONA, a microfabrication technology provider.
Feb. 17, 2026

Test/Measurement

Credit: E. Joseph et al., Adv. Mater. Technol., 11, 2, e01461 (2026); https://doi.org/10.1002/admt.202501461
Design of BIOPIX polymer pixel arrays. a) Left: A schematic of the BIOPIX device architecture featuring a 2 × 2 polymer pixel array. Right: A photograph of a 2 × 2 BIOPIX device. b) Left: Schematic of the BIOPIX device architecture with a 4×4 polymer pixel array. Right: Photograph of a 4 × 4 BIOPIX device.
A “retina emulator” generates detectable signals for light pulses of 20- to 50-millisecond durations, which are typical “slow” timescales found within real living retinas—and ...
April 14, 2026
FIGURE 1. A schematic comparison of a conventional semiconductor laser and a QCL.
Quantum cascade lasers (QCLs) are powerful mid-infrared (MIR) light sources for gas sensing, but factors such as manufacturing complexity, efficiency, system integration, and ...
March 31, 2026
Credit: Bloom Lasers
Every manufacturing step to build a Bloom laser is accompanied by measurements from the beam propagation system.
Case study: MKS Ophir's high-speed M2 beam measurement device boosts laser manufacturing quality for Bloom Lasers.
March 20, 2026
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Following the Photons: A Photonics Podcast
This episode of Following the Photons: A Photonics Podcast features our Light News photonics news roundup for March 10, 2026.
March 10, 2026

Detectors/Imaging

Credit: Pacific Optica
A moment of focus in the Smith Lab: perfecting a prototype SAM-integrated multiphoton imaging system for the next leap in imaging technology.
An inertia-free scan angle multiplication design overcomes a long-standing mechanical bottleneck to enable high-speed scanning across massive fields of view, with large beams ...
April 3, 2026
System-level optimization in AR glasses requires balancing optical performance, power consumption, and form factor across integrated display and waveguide architectures.
Waveguide architectures require engineering tradeoffs to achieve high brightness, low power consumption, and lightweight optical systems suitable for everyday use.
April 1, 2026
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Following the Photons: A Photonics Podcast
This episode of Following the Photons: A Photonics Podcast features Jennifer Cable, president of Thorlabs.
March 17, 2026
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Following the Photons: A Photonics Podcast
This episode of Following the Photons: A Photonics Podcast features Kevin Curtis, senior VP of advanced optics at Magic Leap.
March 3, 2026