Laser Technology

A retina-inspired biohybrid image sensor array (BIOPIX) created by a team of researchers led by Thomas M. Brown, a professor of organic and biological electronic engineering at Tor Vergata University of Rome in Italy, responds to light in a way remarkably similar to the photoreceptor cells of a retina—in terms of speed and how it […]

In this edition of Following the Photons’ Light News: Researchers in Hong Kong developed a metasurface-based optical learning machine that boosts optical neural network scalability.   Existing fiber-optic cables underground and under the sea in much of Europe could soon become more than just lines of communication. Thanks to a new initiative, they could someday double

In an intriguing advance for metasurfaces, researchers at Monash University’s School of Physics and Astronomy in Australia came up with a disordered mosaic design approach—nanostructured materials that perform multiple simultaneous optical functions within a single device. The idea of a mosaic-style design for metasurfaces came to Haoran Ren, an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career

A multidisciplinary group of scientists led by Nikolai N. Klimov, Ph.D., principal investigator and project leader of the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) Photonic Thermometry Program, created a new approach to couple optical fibers to a photonic integrated circuit (PIC) across an extraordinarily wide temperature range—from deep cryogenic conditions to very high

For laser scanning and adaptive optics, there are often tradeoffs in terms of speed, range, and beam size. Pick two, because you can’t have all three due to the inertia limits of high-speed laser scan mirrors, deformable mirrors, and other components. Whether you are a neuroscientist trying to map thousands of neurons firing across the

In this episode of Photonics Hot List: Light’s movement on a chip is typically restricted. But what if it could move more freely, including off of the chip, instead? A team led by researchers at MIT is now working on the possibility, which could potentially precisely broadcast and steer light into free space. Business news

Moving beyond passive alignment MicroAlign developed a micromanipulation platform to actively align individual fibers with nanometer-level precision. Traditional fiber arrays rely on passive placement into precision V-grooves, where mechanical tolerances accumulate across channels. Active alignment, by contrast, dynamically adjusts fiber position during assembly, correcting pitch deviations before permanent fixation. This approach enables multichannel arrays optimized

Xiaoke Yi’s group at the University of Sydney in Australia designed and built an AI nanophotonic chip prototype that manipulates light to perform calculations at a picosecond timescale (trillionths of a second)—the time it takes light to travel through its nanostructures (each one is tens of micrometers). The group’s combined on-chip nanostructures form a neural

This episode features Vivek Raghunathan, cofounder and CEO of Xscape Photonics, a Columbia University spinoff focused on silicon photonics and artificial intelligence (AI). He has nearly two decades of experience in the silicon photonics sector, including at Intel.  In this chat, he talks with host Justine Murphy about Xscape Photonics and its innovative work, as

In this episode of Photonics Hot List: Existing fiber-optic cables underground and under the sea in much of Europe could soon become more than just lines of communication. Thanks to a new initiative, they could someday double up as environmental monitoring sensor networks, too. Business news roundup: Strategic partnerships are in the works between Oxide