Latest Content

Information Acquisition, Processing, and Display

  • Spotlight Summary by Paul Steinvurzel

    • Raman probes based on optically-poled double-clad fiber and coupler
    • “You really ought to get more fiber” is an increasingly common refrain told to doctors by many biomedical imaging research groups. Whereas fibers are still often considered primarily as pipes for light, many of the...
    • Opt. Express 20(27) 28563-28572 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Roarke Horstmeyer

    • Multispectral integral imaging acquisition and processing using a monochrome camera and a liquid crystal tunable filter
    • 3D-camera technology’s rise in popularity over the past several years suggests that both consumers and researchers alike desire something beyond just “conventional” photographs. Recent commercially successful 3D cameras...
    • Opt. Express 20(23) 25960-25969 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Jeffery J. Puschell

    • Dynamic range and sensitivity requirements of satellite ocean color sensors: learning from the past
    • Routine measurements of sunlight reflected from the ocean have been made continuously from space since 1997 by a variety of US, European, Indian, Chinese and South Korean instruments. These imaging spectroradiometers in...
    • Appl. Opt. 51(25) 6045-6062 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Emishaw Iffa and Wolfgang Heidrich

    • Laser-absorption tomography beam arrangement optimization using resolution matrices
    • In the last few decades. optical diagnostics tools have become the most commonly used techniques for measuring concentration distribution of gas species The facts that they have high spatial and temporal resolution,...
    • Appl. Opt. 51(29) 7059-7068 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by David M. Paganin

    • Understanding the twin-image problem in phase retrieval
    • Time and again I find myself returning my mind’s eye to a small number of archetypal experiments in optics, examining them afresh from a (hopefully!) ever deeper perspective.

      The Young’s double-slit...
    • J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 29(11) 2367-2375 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Shakil Rehman

    • Development of a scalable image formation pipeline for multiscale gigapixel photography
    • Capturing digital images with gigapixel resolution is of great interest in a variety of applications from astronomy to landscape photography, photomicrography, computer graphics and potentially many others. Typically, a...
    • Opt. Express 20(20) 22048-22062 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Prof. Zhi-shen Liu

    • Remote sensing of seawater and drifting ice in Svalbard fjords by compact Raman lidar
    • This article reports on a new compact ocean lidar developed by researchers at the Russian Academy of Science’s Wave Research Center at the Prokhorov General Physics Institute, the Shirshov Institute of Oceanology, and...
    • Appl. Opt. 51(22) 5477-5485 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Lorenzo Scalise

    • Measurement of wide frequency range structural microvibrations with a pocket digital camera and sub-pixel techniques
    • Non-destructive testing in large civil structures often requires the measurement of low-frequency sub-millimetric displacements. Few are the cases in which this can be achieved by the use of contact sensors, which...
    • Appl. Opt. 51(14) 2664-2671 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Shakil Rehman

    • Edge enhancement of color images using a digital micromirror device
    • In image processing, edge detection is used for segmentation, classification and identification of objects. Edges are discontinuities in image brightness and represent variations associated with changes in illumination,...
    • Appl. Opt. 51(16) 3439-3444 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Brynmor Davis

    • Face recognition performance with superresolution
    • Automated facial recognition from imagery is a valuable tool, particularly in law enforcement where it allows screening against criminal databases in situations where that may not otherwise be possible. Due to the...
    • Appl. Opt. 51(18) 4250-4259 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Edward Fry

    • Measurement of light absorption by aquatic particles: improvement of the quantitative filter technique by use of an integrating sphere approach
    • Traditionally, one measures the optical absorption in a medium by measuring the transmission of a beam of light through it. Unfortunately, this does not work well if there are particulates suspended in the medium, e.g....
    • Appl. Opt. 51(9) 1336-1351 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by David M. Paganin

    • Experimental compressive phase space tomography
    • Compressive sensing—the foundations of which are associated with names such as Candès, Romberg, Tao and Donoho—is sweeping through many areas at the forefront of optics research. The basic idea is that with an...
    • Opt. Express 20(8) 8296-8308 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Brynmor Davis

    • Using phase diversity for the measurement of the complete spatiotemporal electric field of ultrashort laser pulses
    • Ultrafast laser sources offer extremely brief bursts of energy and correspondingly high peak optical powers. For example, commercially available sources can exceed a megawatt of peak power and produce pulses of...
    • J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 29(2) 244-248 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Shalin Mehta

    • Super deep 3D images from a 3D omnifocus video camera
    • If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a stereoscopic scene seems like worth a million words. Ability to communicate a 3D scene as the observer perceives it can have fundamental impact on human communication....
    • Appl. Opt. 51(6) 763-770 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Kedar Khare

    • Tracking of multiple objects in unknown background using Bayesian estimation in 3D space
    • Automated tracking of objects in an image scenery is an important practical problem for remote sensing, surveillance, security imaging, robotic vision and related areas. While it may seem straightforward to track an...
    • J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 28(9) 1935-1940 (2011) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Shakil Rehman

    • High-speed scattering medium characterization with application to focusing light through turbid media
    • Seeing through scattering media is a fundamental problem in optics. Scattering in inhomogeneous media are of particular interest in many areas such as acoustics, radiofrequency communications and microscopy. In optics,...
    • Opt. Express 20(2) 1733-1740 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

Light–Matter Interactions

  • Spotlight Summary by Ilya Shadrivov

    • High temperature epsilon-near-zero and epsilon-near-pole metamaterial emitters for thermophotovoltaics
    • Solar panels are becoming more and more widespread, and they can be seen in different backgrounds, from individual houses to space stations, providing electricity on the scales of solar power plants to portable...
    • Opt. Express 21(S1) A96-A110 (2013) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Richard Bowman

    • Orbital angular momentum generation and mode transformation with high efficiency using forked polarization gratings
    • The trouble with diffraction gratings is that you get more than you ask for---light is sent into several diffraction orders, meaning that the input light is split between several spots. Gratings that have a single...
    • Appl. Opt. 51(34) 8236-8245 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Kirankumar Hiremath

    • Analysis of bistable memory in silica toroid microcavity
    • Microcavity-assisted optical resonators are one of the important building blocks for all-optical signal processing. These microresonators have been explored for a variety of applications like filters, modulators,...
    • J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 29(12) 3335-3343 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Andrey N. Kuzmin

    • High-finesse cavity external optical feedback DFB laser with hertz relative linewidth
    • Precise optical experiments, like the measurement of variations in the Earth’s gravity field, employ lasers with highly stabilized emission frequency, or, in other words, extremely narrow linewidth. To develop the...
    • Opt. Lett. 37(22) 4729-4731 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by John Ballato

    • Silica exposed-core microstructured optical fibers
    • Having made a wide variety of specialty optical fibers for more than 20 years now, I never cease to be amazed by the possibilities of microstructured (and photonic crystal) fibers. Without question, optical fibers have...
    • Opt. Mater. Express 2(11) 1538-1547 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Periklis Petropoulos

    • Mid-infrared supercontinuum generation in tapered chalcogenide fiber for producing octave-spanning frequency comb around 3 μm
    • The mid-infrared region of the spectrum, that is, the wavelengths covering the range between 2 and 20um, offers important benefits in many areas of science and technology, including chemical and biological sensing (e.g....
    • Opt. Express 20(22) 24218-24225 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Brad Deutsch

    • Broadband mid-infrared frequency upconversion and spectroscopy with an aperiodically poled LiNbO3 waveguide
    • What makes tomatoes look red or green? When sunlight, composed of all of the visible colors, hits carotenoids in a ripe tomato, the red light is picked out and scattered toward our eyes. By contrast, chlorophyll in...
    • Opt. Lett. 37(20) 4332-4334 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Silvia Vignolini

    • Disordered packings of core-shell particles with angle-independent structural colors
    • The brightest colours in nature are obtained in nature by nanostructuring materials on length scales of the order of the light wavelength. Self-assembly techniques that lead the production of such materials allow...
    • Opt. Mater. Express 2(10) 1343-1352 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Ossi Kimmelma

    • Blue-pumped whispering gallery optical parametric oscillator
    • For many quantum information applications, quantum optics or spectroscopy, the ideal light source has narrow linewidth, tunable wavelength and it is at the same time stable and small. These requirements are met by the...
    • Opt. Lett. 37(20) 4224-4226 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Jesper Lægsgaard

    • New approach to pulse propagation in nonlinear dispersive optical media
    • Nonlinear optical propagation in waveguides is a rich and flourishing research field due to the simultaneous development of ever more powerful short-pulse lasers on the one hand, and novel waveguide types, such as...
    • J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 29(10) 2958-2963 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Giovanni Cirmi

    • Generation of 30 fs pulses tunable from 189 to 240 nm with an all-solid-state setup
    • Ultrashort pulses in the femtosecond and attosecond regimes are able to catch the dynamics of electrons, atoms and molecules. Such pulses make it possible to take “movies” of these particles via spectroscopic...
    • J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 29(10) 2765-2769 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Alan Heins

    • Tailoring a 67 attosecond pulse through advantageous phase-mismatch
    • A strobe light can “freeze” mechanical motion, provided the object being strobed moves very little during the duration of the light flash. Conventional electronics can produce picosecond (1 ps = 10-12 s)...
    • Opt. Lett. 37(18) 3891-3893 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Alan Bristow

    • Ultrafast field-resolved semiconductor spectroscopy utilizing quantum interference control of currents
    • The flow of ideas sometimes takes a circuitous route. Photocurrents, for example are ubiquitous in optoelectronic devices, but often this subject is more to do with the electrons than the photons. The group of Markus...
    • Opt. Lett. 37(18) 3879-3881 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Matthew Evans

    • Multicolor cavity metrology
    • The direct detection of gravitational waves with kilometer-scale laser interferometers has become a monumental effort involving many hundreds of researchers worldwide. When Einstein first predicted the existence of...
    • J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 29(10) 2092-2103 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Andrey N. Kuzmin

    • Design of ultrahigh brightness solar-pumped disk laser
    • As mentioned in the article of D. Liang and J. Almeida published in the Applied Optics, the idea of direct converting the broad-band non-coherent solar radiation into coherent and narrow-band laser radiation is almost...
    • Appl. Opt. 51(26) 6382-6388 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Taek Yong Hwang

    • Pulse synthesis in the single-cycle regime from independent mode-locked lasers using attosecond-precision feedback
    • In quantum mechanics, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle limits the minimum uncertainty of the measurements of energy and time. This fundamental principle demands that a pulse’s temporal width times its frequency...
    • Opt. Lett. 37(17) 3579-3581 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Liang Pan

    • Integrated head design using a nanobeak antenna for thermally assisted magnetic recording
    • With the goal of overcoming the superparamagnetic limit in magnetic data storage, many researchers have focused on the long-known approach of recording data on hard magnetic media with the assistance of laser heating to...
    • Opt. Express 20(17) 18946-18954 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Xuan Yang and Claire Gu

    • Surface enhanced Raman scattering in the presence of multilayer dielectric structures
    • Since its discovery in 1974, surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) has become a promising spectroscopic technology for molecular identification due to its high sensitivity and molecular specificity, with applications...
    • J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 29(8) 1863-1874 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Periklis Petropoulos

    • Dispersion-dominated nonlinear fiber-optic channel
    • The face of optical communications has changed drastically in the last few years. New – seemingly contradictory – challenges have emerged, relating to the imminent capacity crunch looming upon optical networks on one...
    • Opt. Lett. 37(14) 2931-2933 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Andrey N. Kuzmin

    • Unified theoretical model for calculating laser-induced wavefront distortion in optical materials
    • One of the great advantages of laser sources is the high quality of their output beams, which are close to diffraction-limited Gaussian beams. A high beam quality can be important in a wide range of applications, e.g....
    • J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 29(7) 1772-1777 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by David M. Paganin

    • Generalized laws of refraction that can lead to wave-optically forbidden light-ray fields
    • I still fondly remember the first time I learned of the connection between Snell’s law of refraction, and Fermat’s principle of least time. From that day forth, I looked at Snell’s law in a new and more general light,...
    • J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 29(7) 1407-1411 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by David Hostutler

    • Gain and lasing of optically pumped metastable rare gas atoms
    • An area of active research in lasers is to identify new schemes that leverage the advantages of both gas and solid state concepts. The goal of these hybrid laser systems is to efficiently produce high output power light...
    • Opt. Lett. 37(11) 2157-2159 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Brad Deutsch

    • Electron acceleration driven by ultrashort and nonparaxial radially polarized laser pulses
    • Undergraduate physics students are very good at solving about five problems in electromagnetics. Why so few? After all, everything in classical optics and electronics can be solved exactly using Maxwell’s equations. The...
    • Opt. Lett. 37(13) 2442-2444 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Shalin Mehta

    • Polarization-resolved four-wave mixing microscopy for structural imaging in thick tissues
    • Probing the structure of tissues with light presents the microscopist with contradictory requirements of imaging deeper, with good signal to noise ratio, and with structural specificity. Many cellular and extra-cellular...
    • J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 29(6) 1541-1550 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Cesar Jauregui, Jens Limpert, and Andreas Tuennermann

    • Origin of thermal modal instabilities in large mode area fiber amplifiers
    • Over the last decade, fiber laser systems have gained the reputation of being a power-scalable concept with power-independent, nearly-diffraction-limited beam quality. This reputation is grounded on the unparalleled...
    • Opt. Express 20(10) 11407-11422 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Willie Padilla

    • THz near-field Faraday imaging in hybrid metamaterials
    • The electronic and magnetic structure of materials can be studied through characterization of the interaction of electromagnetic waves and matter. Although the spatial resolution of such investigations is fundamentally...
    • Opt. Express 20(10) 11277-11287 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Aaron E. Leanhardt

    • Hyperfine Paschen–Back regime realized in Rb nanocell
    • Atomic spectroscopy is a sensitive probe of the interactions amongst the constituents of an atom as well as between the atom and its environment. Historically, this has lead to numerous fundamental discoveries as well...
    • Opt. Lett. 37(8) 1379-1381 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Zhipei Sun and Andrea C. Ferrari

    • Observation of white-light amplified spontaneous emission from carbon nanodots under laser excitation
    • Light sources have an indispensable role in everyday life. From the first lamp using animal fat around 70,000 BC, to modern light sources, these have been widely used and developed for diverse applications going much...
    • Opt. Mater. Express 2(4) 490-495 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Ilya Shadrivov

    • Low-loss plasmonic metamaterial based on epitaxial gold monocrystal film
    • Modern physics establishes links between many areas of research and pushes technological limits. Metamaterials and plasmonics are amongst such multidisciplinary branches of physics, as they require the best material...
    • Opt. Express 20(9) 9545-9550 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Chih-Hao Li and Ronald Walsworth

    • Demonstration of on-sky calibration of astronomical spectra using a 25 GHz near-IR laser frequency comb
    • The mode-locked laser frequency comb (LFC) provides a broad spectrum of regularly-spaced emission lines, which can be stabilized by an atomic clock and serve as a coherent link between the optical and radio-frequency...
    • Opt. Express 20(6) 6631-6643 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Shakil Rehman

    • Cross-phase modulation imaging
    • The nonlinearity of the index of refraction is responsible for various effects in optical beam propagation, such as self-phase modulation (spatial and temporal), self-focusing, self-dispersion and self-steepening. These...
    • Opt. Lett. 37(5) 800-802 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Andrey Kuzmin

    • Continuous-wave interband cascade lasers operating above room temperature at λ = 4.7-5.6 μm
    • The development of new laser sources that operate in the mid- and longwave-infrared wavelength range between 3.5 and 25 µm, also known as the molecular fingerprint region, is a task of great importance due to wide...
    • Opt. Express 20(3) 3235-3240 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by S. Mark Ammons

    • Piston and tilt cophasing of segmented laser array using Shack-Hartmann sensor
    • High-power, high-radiance lasers are becoming increasingly important for a multitude of applications. Yet it is difficult to scale up the power of a single laser beam due to operational problems like the avoidance of...
    • Opt. Express 20(4) 4663-4674 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Goery Genty

    • Supercontinuum generation in ZBLAN fibers—detailed comparison between measurement and simulation
    • With the advent of photonic crystal fibers and availability of suitable pump sources producing high energy pulses in the visible and near-IR, supercontinuum (SC) generation has been extensively studied in the last...
    • J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 29(4) 635-645 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by R. V. Mehta

    • Magnetic field sensing based on V-shaped groove filled with magnetic fluids
    • Magnetic colloids have an age-old bond with optics. More than a hundred years have elapsed since Quirino Majorana first published a detailed investigation on magnetic birefringence and dichroism in a special type of...
    • Appl. Opt. 51(8) 1010-1020 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Brad Deutsch

    • Large-area plasmonic hot-spot arrays: sub-2 nm interparticle separations with plasma-enhanced atomic layer deposition of Ag on periodic arrays of Si nanopillars
    • Michelangelo carved his statue of David using top-down fabrication, removing material from a chunk of marble until the desired form emerged. But the figures in his ceiling fresco at the Sistine Chapel required bottom-up...
    • Opt. Express 19(27) 26056-26064 (2011) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Periklis Petropoulos

    • Ultrafast nonlinear optics in gas-filled hollow-core photonic crystal fibers [Invited]
    • The capability to engineer the core-cladding characteristics of optical fibers in the micron scale has allowed the fabrication of fibers with precise control over their dispersive and nonlinear properties....
    • J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 28(12) A11-A26 (2011) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Andrew Sarangan

    • In-line rotation sensor based on VCSEL behavior under polarization-rotating optical feedback
    • Vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSELs) emerged in the 1990’s as an attractive alternative to edge-emitting semiconductor lasers. The edge-emitters, though they have been the work horse of the telecommunication...
    • Opt. Express 19(24) 23683-23688 (2011) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Ilya Shadrivov

    • Waveguides in three-dimensional photonic bandgap materials for particle-accelerator on a chip architectures
    • When you hear ‘particle accelerator’ you picture something very large, probably spanning over several kilometres. Researchers from Germany and United States have managed to make a prototype of a new accelerator that is...
    • Opt. Express 20(5) 5607-5612 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Richard Bowman

    • Nonconservative forcing and diffusion in refractive optical traps
    • Optical traps are often described as springs made of light, and their linearity makes them excellent force measurement tools. However, a more detailed look reveals that a conservative force field is not the whole...
    • J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 28(10) 2369-2373 (2011) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

Optical Design and Instrumentation

  • Spotlight Summary by Wenbo Sun

    • Subpixel smoothing finite-difference time-domain method for material interface between dielectric and dispersive media
    • When modeling curved material interfaces, the standard Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) technique uses the staircasing approximation, in which any structure surface, no matter whether it is curved or flat, normal or...
    • Opt. Lett. 37(22) 4802-4804 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Kedar Khare

    • Short temporal coherence digital holography with a femtosecond frequency comb laser for multi-level optical sectioning
    • Optical sectioning refers to imaging of slices of a 3D sample along its depth dimension by optical means as opposed to cutting the sample into thin slices and imaging the individual slices using some imaging system...
    • Opt. Express 20(7) 7237-7242 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by James Leger

    • External cavity beam combining of 21 semiconductor lasers using SPGD
    • Laser radiance, defined as the power per unit area per unit solid angle, directly relates to two laser characteristics: output power and beam quality. In many applications, radiance is the quantity of practical interest...
    • Appl. Opt. 51(11) 1724-1728 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Michael Henoch Frosz

    • Operation of Brillouin dynamic grating in single-mode optical fibers
    • Fiber Bragg gratings are used widely as the basic components in both optical communication systems and strain sensors. In optical communications they can be used to filter specific wavelengths in a wavelength-division...
    • Opt. Lett. 36(23) 4686-4688 (2011) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Nadav Gutman

    • Formulation of rigorous coupled-wave theory for gratings in bianisotropic media
    • When considering the reflection from a grating, along with the specular reflection, a set of diffraction orders may appear. The angles of each diffraction order can easily be calculated by using the incoming wave vector...
    • J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 28(8) 1747-1758 (2011) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

Optics in Biology and Medicine

  • Spotlight Summary by Kedar Khare

    • Complete polarization and phase control for focus-shaping in high-NA microscopy
    • The numerical aperture (NA) of a microscope objective nominally represents the angular range of light rays accepted at its pupil. High NA objectives are particularly useful for tight focusing of beams and have many...
    • Opt. Express 20(13) 14015-14029 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Richard Bowman

    • Dynamical hologram generation for high speed optical trapping of smart droplet microtools
    • At first glance, it would seem that the closest computer games get to the physics laboratory is distracting grad students from their research. However, the technology that enables us to fight ever more realistic...
    • Biomed. Opt. Express 3(7) 1609-1619 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Linbo Liu, Joseph Gardecki, and Gary Tearney

    • Ultrathin fiber probes with extended depth of focus for optical coherence tomography
    • Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is an interferometric optical tomographic technique, which is widely accepted in ophthalmology, cardiology and other biomedical applications requiring micron-scale axial and lateral...
    • Opt. Lett. 37(10) 1616-1618 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by B. Hyle Park

    • Forward imaging OCT endoscopic catheter based on MEMS lens scanning
    • The advent of minimally-invasive surgery has been a huge boon to medicine. The constant improvement and evolution of therapeutic and surgical tools in these procedures has necessitated the development of better and...
    • Opt. Lett. 37(13) 2673-2675 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Micah Ledbetter and Szymon Pustelny

    • Magnetoencephalography with a chip-scale atomic magnetometer
    • The ability to measure biomagnetic fields is an important tool in clinical contexts as well as in basic research. Magnetocardiography, measurement of magnetic fields produced by the heart, can provide crucial...
    • Biomed. Opt. Express 3(5) 981-990 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Sylvain Gigan

    • Dual-modality fluorescence and full-field optical coherence microscopy for biomedical imaging applications
    • In our daily interactions with others, oral communication is advantageously complemented by visual information that allows discriminating between sometimes ambiguous or contradictory signals. In optical imaging too,...
    • Biomed. Opt. Express 3(3) 661-666 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Robert J. Zawadzki

    • Simultaneous optically sectioned fluorescence and optical coherence microscopy with full-field illumination
    • In this paper Makhlouf, Perronet, Dupuis Levêque-Fort and Dubois introduce, in a very elegant way, a method to simultaneously acquire morphological information offered by Optical Coherence Microscopy (OCM) and...
    • Opt. Lett. 37(10) 1613-1615 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Summer Gibbs-Strauss

    • Endoscopic imaging of Cerenkov luminescence
    • Cerenkov radiation, visible as emitted optical photons, is produced when a charged particle moves faster than the speed of light in the medium within which it travels. This phenomenon is what produces the ‘blue glow’...
    • Biomed. Opt. Express 3(6) 1215-1225 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Jason Porter

    • Phase-sensitive imaging of the outer retina using optical coherence tomography and adaptive optics
    • The development of high-resolution imaging techniques to examine the living retina has yielded increased understanding of cellular structure and function in normal and diseased eyes. One exciting area of research being...
    • Biomed. Opt. Express 3(1) 104-124 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Summer Gibbs-Strauss

    • Noninvasive diffuse optical monitoring of head and neck tumor blood flow and oxygenation during radiation delivery
    • Functional imaging for cancer therapy monitoring is a dream for oncologists, theoretically enabling additional treatment decisions to be made prior to any tumor size change that may follow. Functional imaging requires...
    • Biomed. Opt. Express 3(2) 259-272 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

Optoelectronics

  • Spotlight Summary by Kedar Khare

    • Digital holographic interferometry with CO2 lasers and diffuse illumination applied to large space reflector metrology [Invited]
    • Manufacturing and testing of large (1-4 m diameter) reflectors is an important technological problem for space agencies. Traditional optical testing methods typically use laser-based metrology where the phase difference...
    • Appl. Opt. 52(1) A102-A116 (2013) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Richard Bowman

    • Orbital angular momentum generation and mode transformation with high efficiency using forked polarization gratings
    • The trouble with diffraction gratings is that you get more than you ask for---light is sent into several diffraction orders, meaning that the input light is split between several spots. Gratings that have a single...
    • Appl. Opt. 51(34) 8236-8245 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Kirankumar Hiremath

    • Analysis of bistable memory in silica toroid microcavity
    • Microcavity-assisted optical resonators are one of the important building blocks for all-optical signal processing. These microresonators have been explored for a variety of applications like filters, modulators,...
    • J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 29(12) 3335-3343 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Taek Yong Hwang

    • Investigation of active filter using injection-locked slotted Fabry–Perot semiconductor laser
    • Although, in principle, single mode fibers can transport information at bit rates larger than 10Tb/s (1013 bits per second), the low speed of electronic components and the dispersive and nonlinear effects...
    • Appl. Opt. 51(30) 7357-7361 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Andrey N. Kuzmin

    • High-finesse cavity external optical feedback DFB laser with hertz relative linewidth
    • Precise optical experiments, like the measurement of variations in the Earth’s gravity field, employ lasers with highly stabilized emission frequency, or, in other words, extremely narrow linewidth. To develop the...
    • Opt. Lett. 37(22) 4729-4731 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Nadav Gutman

    • Three-dimensional photonic crystals by large-area membrane stacking
    • In nature, the largest energy gap for electrons is found in crystals with a diamond lattice. The quest today is to create a photonic diamond, i.e. an artificial three-dimensional (3D) crystal in the optical range (a...
    • Opt. Lett. 37(22) 4726-4728 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Theodore D. Moustakas

    • Handheld deep ultraviolet emission device based on aluminum nitride quantum wells and graphene nanoneedle field emitters
    • The development of an efficient deep UV emitter, as described in this article, is likely to find applications in the analysis of patient’s fluids at the point of care as well as water purification and air and food...
    • Opt. Express 20(22) 24320-24329 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Francesco Morichetti

    • Direct fabrication of silicon photonic devices on a flexible platform and its application for strain sensing
    • Don’t be so rigid, even photonics can be softer...

      Everybody working in photonics has the perception that the natural substrate for integrated devices is a bit of a rigid material, which is normally provided by...
    • Opt. Express 20(18) 20564-20575 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Matthew Evans

    • Multicolor cavity metrology
    • The direct detection of gravitational waves with kilometer-scale laser interferometers has become a monumental effort involving many hundreds of researchers worldwide. When Einstein first predicted the existence of...
    • J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 29(10) 2092-2103 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Andrey N. Kuzmin

    • Design of ultrahigh brightness solar-pumped disk laser
    • As mentioned in the article of D. Liang and J. Almeida published in the Applied Optics, the idea of direct converting the broad-band non-coherent solar radiation into coherent and narrow-band laser radiation is almost...
    • Appl. Opt. 51(26) 6382-6388 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Taek Yong Hwang

    • Pulse synthesis in the single-cycle regime from independent mode-locked lasers using attosecond-precision feedback
    • In quantum mechanics, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle limits the minimum uncertainty of the measurements of energy and time. This fundamental principle demands that a pulse’s temporal width times its frequency...
    • Opt. Lett. 37(17) 3579-3581 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Michael Henoch Frosz

    • Dispersion-stabilized highly-nonlinear fiber for wideband parametric mixer synthesis
    • Is it possible to design your way out of optical fiber fabrication tolerances that would otherwise require molecular-size accuracy of the fiber structure? A recent series of papers show that the answer is...
    • Opt. Express 20(17) 18611-18619 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Paul Steinvurzel

    • Effectively single-mode all-solid photonic bandgap fiber with large effective area and low bending loss for compact high-power all-fiber lasers
    • Over the past 15 years, novel optical fiber designs have been generated at an unprecedented rate, many based on microstructuring the cladding with high or low index rings, high or low index rods, airholes, or some...
    • Opt. Express 20(14) 15061-15070 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Nicolai Granzow

    • Chalcogenide glass layers in silica photonic crystal fibers
    • Silica photonic crystal fibers (PCF) have been of great interest to the optics community and have been used for a wide range of applications over the past decade. Their optical properties can be strongly modified by...
    • Opt. Express 20(14) 14814-14824 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by David Hostutler

    • Gain and lasing of optically pumped metastable rare gas atoms
    • An area of active research in lasers is to identify new schemes that leverage the advantages of both gas and solid state concepts. The goal of these hybrid laser systems is to efficiently produce high output power light...
    • Opt. Lett. 37(11) 2157-2159 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Pier Giorgio Raponi

    • Energy Implications of Photonic Networks With Speculative Transmission
    • Power consumption is becoming more and more a primary research topic, pushed by economic, environmental and physical reasons. In particular in the computer field, years of development aimed at achieving the maximum...
    • J. Opt. Commun. Netw. 4(6) 503-513 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Francesco Morichetti

    • Nanolasers grown on silicon-based MOSFETs
    • A laser source on the head of a silicon transistor? Don’t worry, they both work…

      Data transport in the optical domain is believed today to be the most promising technology, or more likely the only viable one,...
    • Opt. Express 20(11) 12171-12176 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Cesar Jauregui, Jens Limpert, and Andreas Tuennermann

    • Origin of thermal modal instabilities in large mode area fiber amplifiers
    • Over the last decade, fiber laser systems have gained the reputation of being a power-scalable concept with power-independent, nearly-diffraction-limited beam quality. This reputation is grounded on the unparalleled...
    • Opt. Express 20(10) 11407-11422 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Michael Henoch Frosz

    • Low loss silica hollow core fibers for 3–4 μm spectral region
    • To make an optical fiber with low loss in the mid-infrared (MIR) wavelength region, it is absolutely critical to make the fiber of a material which itself has low loss in the MIR, right? Actually, no. Sometimes the...
    • Opt. Express 20(10) 11153-11158 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Michael Henoch Frosz

    • Characterization and modeling of Bragg gratings written in polymer fiber for use as filters in the THz region
    • Working in the near-infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum has allowed photonics researchers to significantly simplify their development of complex and advanced setups. Transferring spatially and temporally...
    • Opt. Express 20(9) 9564-9571 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Salvador Sales Maicas

    • Programmable multiple true-time-delay elements based on a Fourier-domain optical processor
    • Photonic processing of microwave signals has attracted a huge interest from both the research community and the industrial sector over the last decades. This is due to the fact that photonic processors enable the...
    • Opt. Lett. 37(4) 608-610 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Periklis Petropoulos

    • Role of pump coherence in the evolution of continuous-wave supercontinuum generation initiated by modulation instability
    • The availability of efficient high power lasers and the development of dispersion and nonlinearity tailored optical fibers have allowed significant advances to be achieved in the field of nonlinear fiber optics over the...
    • J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 29(3) 502-512 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Andrey Kuzmin

    • Continuous-wave interband cascade lasers operating above room temperature at λ = 4.7-5.6 μm
    • The development of new laser sources that operate in the mid- and longwave-infrared wavelength range between 3.5 and 25 µm, also known as the molecular fingerprint region, is a task of great importance due to wide...
    • Opt. Express 20(3) 3235-3240 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by S. Mark Ammons

    • Piston and tilt cophasing of segmented laser array using Shack-Hartmann sensor
    • High-power, high-radiance lasers are becoming increasingly important for a multitude of applications. Yet it is difficult to scale up the power of a single laser beam due to operational problems like the avoidance of...
    • Opt. Express 20(4) 4663-4674 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Seunghyup Yoo

    • Spontaneous buckling in flexible organic light-emitting devices for enhanced light extraction
    • Wrinkles are something that everyone wants to avoid. According to the work of Park and Jeon, however, things could be a little different when it comes to organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), whose unparalleled high...
    • Opt. Express 19(S5) A1117-A1125 (2011) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Andrew Sarangan

    • In-line rotation sensor based on VCSEL behavior under polarization-rotating optical feedback
    • Vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSELs) emerged in the 1990’s as an attractive alternative to edge-emitting semiconductor lasers. The edge-emitters, though they have been the work horse of the telecommunication...
    • Opt. Express 19(24) 23683-23688 (2011) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Richard Bowman

    • Nonconservative forcing and diffusion in refractive optical traps
    • Optical traps are often described as springs made of light, and their linearity makes them excellent force measurement tools. However, a more detailed look reveals that a conservative force field is not the whole...
    • J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 28(10) 2369-2373 (2011) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Andrey N. Kuzmin

    • Efficient laser emissions at 1.06 μm of swift heavy ion irradiated Nd:YCOB waveguides
    • A planar waveguide dielectric laser (PWL) consists of a thin layer of laser active medium with a higher refractive index than that of substrate in which it is embedded. The reduction of the cavity volume through optical...
    • Opt. Lett. 36(23) 4521-4523 (2011) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Francesco Morichetti

    • Surface nanoscale axial photonics: robust fabrication of high-quality-factor microresonators
    • Trapping electrons dynamically in a three dimensional microscopic volume by means of artificial potential barriers is a relatively simple task. Indeed, this is what happens inside any electronic device we use in...
    • Opt. Lett. 36(24) 4824-4826 (2011) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

Vision and Color

  • Spotlight Summary by Jason Porter

    • The use of forward scatter to improve retinal vascular imaging with an adaptive optics scanning laser ophthalmoscope
    • The development of techniques to image and examine the retinal microvasculature has important implications for better understanding vessel structure and blood flow in normal eyes and the pathological changes that occur...
    • Biomed. Opt. Express 3(10) 2537-2549 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Roarke Horstmeyer

    • Spectral imaging by synchronizing capture and illumination
    • As digital post-processing continues to enable new camera designs and functionalities, the role of the camera flash has remained largely unaltered over the past several decades. In their recent article, Tominaga and...
    • J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 29(9) 1764-1775 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Jessica Ramella-Roman

    • Reflectance confocal microscopy of optical phantoms
    • Measurement of biological tissue optical properties is the basis of many bio-photonics techniques. Methodologies to measure the absorption coefficient (µa [cm-1]) and the reduced scattering coefficient (µs' [cm-1]) have...
    • Biomed. Opt. Express 3(6) 1162-1172 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Brendan Kennedy

    • Microfluidics based phantoms of superficial vascular network
    • Quantitative assessment of blood flow continues to be of considerable interest in biomedical research. A number of diseases, including cancer and diabetes, have been linked to changes in blood flow and in blood...
    • Biomed. Opt. Express 3(6) 1350-1364 (2012) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF

Topics

Recent Comments

  1. 180 Gbit/s Si3N4-waveguide coupled germanium photodetector with improved quantum efficiency [1]
  2. Photonic nanojet generation under converging and diverging beams [1]
  3. Al:ZnO as a platform for near-zero-index photonics: enhancing the doping efficiency of atomic layer deposition [1]