Products: Photonics/Optics
Waveguide Optics Design Suite
Optiwave Systems Inc. (Ottawa, ON) introduces the OptiBPM 9.0 waveguide optics design suite with integrated simulator dedicated for the design of electro-optic devices in arbitrary materials. The OptiBPM 9.0...
Who's Who: Photonics/Optics
Edward Austin, SOFIA Science Systems Project Manager
SOFIA (Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy) is a joint venture between NASA and the German space agency, DLR, involving the use of a modified Boeing 747SP aircraft as an...
Who's Who: Physical Sciences
Dr. Keith Gendreau, Physicist, Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
While working on designing an X-ray navigation system for NASA's next-generation Black Hole Imager, Dr. Keith Gendreau, a physicist at the Goddard Space Flight Center,...
Articles: Photonics/Optics
Fiber Optic Communications Systems
Communications and, more recently telecommunications, are needs deeply engrained in human history. These needs have significantly evolved over time enabling today’s content-rich (text, music, images and...
Application Briefs: Photonics/Optics
Designing Converged Optical Ethernet Networks
Transport networks have witnessed two significant trends over the past half-decade or so. The first has been an explosion in the bandwidth these networks can support and the distances over which...
Briefs: Photonics/Optics
Compact Two-Dimensional Spectrometer Optics
The figure is a simplified depiction of a proposed spectrometer optical unit that would be suitable for incorporation into a remote-sensing instrumentation system. Relative to prior spectrometer...
Briefs: Photonics/Optics
Graphite/Cyanate Ester Face Sheets for Adaptive Optics
It has been proposed that thin face sheets of wide-aperture deformable mirrors in adaptive-optics systems be made from a composite material consisting of cyanate ester filled with graphite. This composite material appears to offer an attractive alternative to low-thermal-expansion glasses...
Products: Photonics/Optics
Product of the Month: Biochemical Sensing Unit
Stratophase (Romsey, UK) introduces the Spectrosens sensing unit for biochemial detection of toxins, viruses, and bacteria in real-time. Based on an optical silicon micro-chip with an integral...
Products: Photonics/Optics
Machine Vision Software
EyeSpector Version 1.5 software from Vision Components GmbH (Ettlingen, Germany) is suitable for a variety of gauging, inspection, orientation, color inspection, and recognition tasks. The Eye-Spector works with...
Products: Photonics/Optics
Laser Diode Modules
Photonic Products (Hertfordshire, UK) introduces the PM-NEOLD 635nm photon laser diode modules with an integral “Near End of Life Detection” feature that alerts users when a laser diode approaches the end of its...
Briefs: Photonics/Optics
Spatial Combining of Laser-Diode Beams for Pumping an NPRO
A free-space optical beam combiner now undergoing development makes it possible to use the outputs of multiple multimode laser diodes to pump a neodymium-doped yttrium aluminum...
Briefs: Photonics/Optics
Curved Piezoelectric Actuators for Stretching Optical Fibers
Assemblies containing curved piezoceramic fiber composite actuators have been invented as means of stretching optical fibers by amounts that depend on applied drive voltages....
Features: Photonics/Optics
Combining Multimode Emissions from Broad Area Laser Diodes into Single-Mode Spots without Feedback
Broad-area laser diodes are the most efficient coherent light sources and are widely used today. The extraordinary efficiency, modulation...
Application Briefs: Photonics/Optics
Design of a Field-Mapped Beam Homogenizer
Light beam homogenizer designs used for decades are largely based upon lenticular lens arrays that date back to the 1940s and 1950s. A more recent design is from the late 1980s that comprises a pair...
Briefs: Photonics/Optics
Optical Displacement Sensor for Sub-Hertz Applications
A document discusses a sensor made from off-the-shelf electro-optical photo-diodes and electronics that achieves 20 nm/(Hz)1/2 displacement sensitivity at 1 mHz. This innovation was created using a fiber-coupled laser diode (or Nd:YAG) through a collimator and an aperture as the...
Briefs: Photonics/Optics
Tunable Optical Assembly With Vibration Dampening
Since their market introduction in 1995, fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) [wherein “fiber” signifies optical fiber] have emerged as excellent means of measuring such parameters as strain and...
Briefs: Photonics/Optics
Cylindrical Piezoelectric Fiber Composite Actuators
The use of piezoelectric devices has become widespread since Pierre and Jacques Curie discovered the piezoelectric effect in 1880. Examples of current applications of piezoelectric devices...
Briefs: Photonics/Optics
Micron-Accurate Laser Fresnel-Diffraction Ranging System
The figure schematically depicts two versions of an opto-electronic system, undergoing development at the time of reporting the information for this article, that is expected to be...
Briefs: Photonics/Optics
Polarization/Spatial Combining of Laser-Diode Pump Beams
The figure depicts a breadboard version of an optical beam combiner that makes it possible to use the outputs of any or all of four multimode laser diodes to pump a non-planar ring...
Briefs: Photonics/Optics
Web-Enabled Optoelectronic Particle-Fallout Monitor
A Web-enabled optoelectronic particle-fallout monitor has been developed as a prototype of future such instruments that (l) would be installed in multiple locations for which assurance of cleanliness is required and (2) could be interrogated and controlled in nearly real time by multiple remote...
Products: Photonics/Optics
Photonics West Exhibitor Preview
View these and other new products on display by exhibitors at Photonics West, January 22-24, in San Jose, CA. Visit Photonics Tech Briefs at Booth 1437.Visit http://spie.org/x2584.xml for more...
Briefs: Imaging
Mosaic-Detector-Based Fluorescence Spectral Imager
A battery-powered, pen-sized, portable instrument for measuring molecular fluorescence spectra of chemical and biological samples in the field has been proposed. Molecular fluorescence...
Briefs: Imaging
Design and Fabrication of High-Efficiency CMOS/CCD Imagers
An architecture for back-illuminated complementary metal oxide/semiconductor (CMOS) and charge-coupled-device (CCD) ultraviolet/visible/near infrared-light image sensors, and a...
Briefs: Imaging
Improved Underwater Excitation-Emission Matrix Fluorometer
A compact, high-resolution, two-dimensional excitation-emission matrix fluorometer (EEMF) has been designed and built specifically for use in identifying and measuring the...
Briefs: Imaging
Metrology Camera System Using Two-Color Interferometry
A metrology system that contains no moving parts simultaneously measures the bearings and ranges of multiple reflective targets in its vicinity, enabling determination of the...
Articles: Photonics/Optics
Image Sensors Decades Old But Not Yet Mature
There’s no rule that says when a technology becomes mature, but one might think that image sensors would be by now, 40 years after their conception. Nothing could be further from the truth....
Application Briefs: Photonics/Optics
DisplayPort Technology — Heir Apparent to VGA?
For the last 20 years we have connected our monitors to our computer systems having the confidence that upon turn-on, we could surf or create with never a consideration of whether the display would operate satisfactorily. VGA (Video Graphics Adaptor) technology enabled us to do that with CRTs as...
Briefs: Photonics/Optics
Optoelectronic System Measures Distances to Multiple Targets
An optoelectronic metrology apparatus now at the laboratory-prototype stage of development is intended to repeatedly determine distances of as much as several hundred meters, at...
Briefs: Photonics/Optics
Large Solar-Rejection Filter
An optical filter consisting of a multilayer spectral coating on a flexible membrane has been designed to be placed in front of the 200-in. (5.08-m) Hale telescope on Mt. Palomar. The filter is intended to protect the telescope against solar radiant flux and limit solar heating of the interior of the telescope dome...
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A Solid-State Alternative to the Vacuum Photomultiplier Tube