Photonics/​Optics

Cree, Inc. (Durham, NC) released the white Cree XLamp® 7090 power LED. Available in volume quantities, the unit produces luminous flux of up to 95 lumens or 85 lumens per watt at 350 mA, and up to 160 lumens at 700 mA (typical luminous flux is 80 lumens at 350 mA, yielding 70 lumens per watt). Designed for general lighting...

Alpine Research Optics (ARO, Boulder, CO) provides off-the-shelf intracavity resonator optics for excimer lasers. These are rear high reflectors and uncoated output couplers for use with ArF (193 nm), KrF (248 nm), and XeCl (308 nm) excimer lasers. Both rear mirrors and output couplers are offered in 38.1 mm diameter MgF2...

Time-Bandwidth Products, Inc. (Westfield, MA) offers a compact and sealed OEM version of its picoseconds, high repetition rate DuettoTM laser system for industrial and scientific applications like material processing, micro machining, biological tissue manipulation, pump-probe spectroscopy, surface metrology, and...

Astronomers have woven NASA Hubble Space Telescope images of Saturn, its rings, and several of its moons into three movies. Each movie highlights unique times in the planet's 30-year waltz around the Sun. Hubble snapped only about a dozen images during each of these three events, so astronomers created software to extend the photos...

Using lasers and tuning forks, researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have developed a chemical weapon agent sensing technique called Quartz Laser Photo-Acoustic Sensing (QPAS) that promises to meet or exceed current and emerging defense and homeland security chemical detection requirements. The instrument is...

A new technique for laser-cooling atoms in a cesium atomic fountain frequency standard relies on recirculation of laser light through the atom-collection region of the fountain. The recirculation, accomplished by means of reflections from multiple fixed beam-splitter cubes, is such that each of two...

A relatively simple technique for characterizing an all-resonant intracavity continuous- wave (CW) solid-state Raman laser involves the use of ring-down spectroscopy. As used here, “characterizing” signifies determining such parameters as threshold pump power, Raman gain, conversion...