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  • Volume 47, Issue 8

    • Volume 47, Issue 8

    More content from Volume 47, Issue 8

    (Courtesy of J. Wierer, Jr.)
    A four-color laser illuminator produces white light with a quality as high as that of conventional white-light sources.
    An enormous amount of effort is being expended worldwide in efforts to create more efficient white-light sources for general illumination.
    Aug. 1, 2011
    Photosynthetic cyanobacteria, when harnessed in a photobioreactor or solar collector, can convert atmospheric carbon dioxide and light energy into usable biofuels.
    Aug. 1, 2011
    Dark plasmons, in contrast to emissive or bright plasmons with short lifetimes and broad linewidths greater than 50 nm, are nonradiative modes that enable subwavelength guiding...
    Aug. 1, 2011
    FIGURE 1. A high-brightness 9XX nm fiber-coupled pump (top) produces 100 W from a 105-µm-core-diameter, 0.15 NA fiber. A 10 W single emitter (bottom) is shown for size comparison.
    Groups of single-emitter laser diodes in a mutual package, combined with innovative beam-combining technologies, provide an interesting new lower-cost approach to direct-diode...
    Aug. 1, 2011
    (Courtesy of Prof. A. Saito, Osaka University)
    FIGURE 1. Nanotechnology can reproduce nature’s highly reflective structures [3]; that is, the wing structure of a Morpho blue butterfly (Morpho didius) shows an omnidirectional color, unlike a reflection from a grating structure.
    A new photonic-crystal fabrication method creates high-aspect-ratio three-dimensional (3D) structures by removal of dielectric host material in an arbitrary fashion—a major step...
    Aug. 1, 2011
    (Courtesy of Netherlands Infrared Consulting and Modelling)
    FIGURE 1. The infrared signature of a typical commercial airliner in the 3–5 µm band shows strong thermal emission from the engines—an easy target for heat-seeking missiles.
    Infrared countermeasures (IRCM)—designed to prevent missiles from reaching their target—are standard equipment for military aircraft. Progress is also being made on deploying ...
    Aug. 1, 2011
    (Photo and graphic courtesy of Boston Micromachines Corp.)
    FIGURE 1. An adaptive optics deformable mirror corrects the aberrations of incident starlight through deflections of its reflective top surface (a). MEMS technology has been used to fabricate devices with thousands of simple electrostatically driven actuators per device (b).
    Adaptive optics systems with MEMS deformable mirrors enable large ground-based telescopes to achieve diffraction-limited images by correcting for the light-distorting effects ...
    Aug. 1, 2011
    (Courtesy of E. Goulielmakis)
    FIGURE 1. A team at the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics generated a 3.8 fs pulse containing about 1.5 cycles (measured FWHM).
    Techniques for extending the spectral width of an optical pulse across an octave make it possible to compress pulse lengths to a single cycle of light. So far, erbium-doped fiber...
    Aug. 1, 2011
    FIGURE 1. A microspectrophotometer integrates a microscope and a spectrophotometer for broad coverage in the ultraviolet-visible-infrared region.
    By combining the magnification capabilities of a microscope with the spectral analysis capabilities of a spectrophotometer, microspectrophotometers acquire transmission and reflectance...
    Aug. 1, 2011
    1304qa Chang New
    None of the recent Internet IPO companies—Pandora and LinkedIn, and soon Facebook—is profitable. Maybe in the photonics market we should focus on creating something that's cool...
    Aug. 1, 2011
    (Courtesy of the University of Fribourg)
    Atomic-force-microscopy images show a damaged film of the new self-healing material before healing (a), after partially healing (b), and after complete healing (c), by exposure to ultraviolet radiation.
    Researchers at Case Western Reserve University, the US Army Research Laboratory, and the University of Fribourg have developed a class of optically active metallosupramolecular...
    Aug. 1, 2011
    (Courtesy of Chalmers University of Technology)
    The experimental setup is shown for a fiber-based copier-PSA link, which is compatible with multichannel and complex-modulated signals.
    Commercial optical fiber amplifiers such as erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs) are phase-insensitive with a well-known 3 dB quantum-limited noise figure.
    Aug. 1, 2011
    FIGURE 1. Devices for detecting the position of a laser beam include: a) a position-sensitive detector (PSD), b) a quadrant-cell detector (quad cell), and c) a CMOS camera. The X and Y beam position on both the PSD and quad cell can be calculated from the detectors’ current outputs iA, iB, iC, and iD. The beam position on the camera is determined by finding the beam’s centroid.
    Accurate measurement of the position of a laser beam can be achieved in several ways, each with its strengths and weaknesses. A comparison of these has resulted in an active beam...
    Aug. 1, 2011
    (Courtesy of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
    A 3D negative-index metamaterial several centimeters on a side was printed with a silicon stamp onto a flexible substrate.
    Three-dimensional negative-index metamaterials (NIMs) have unusual properties that can make possible some very strange optics indeed, including those that produce an inverse Doppler...
    Aug. 1, 2011
    (Courtesy of Lytro)
    Because the Lytro light-field camera captures additional spatial information from an image scene, the focus can be adjusted electronically after the image is taken.
    Nearly all professional and backyard photographers have experienced the frustration of taking what they thought was the perfect shot, only to see later that the object of interest...
    Aug. 1, 2011
    30573
    The James Webb space telescope—successor to the Hubble space telescope—may be in serious trouble. Last month the US House Committee on Appropriations approved a plan to slash ...
    Aug. 1, 2011
    A living cell doped with a fluorescent protein emits laser light at 516 nm and has a pump-energy threshold of approximately 1 nJ.
    It's alive, and it lases! Single living cells genetically engineered to produce a fluorescent protein have operated as tiny living lasers when placed in a resonant cavity with...
    Aug. 1, 2011