Optics & Photonics News

EpoQ has won the 2026 Global Photonics Engineering Contest! The company's winning proposal focused on the development of a compact trapped-ion atomic clock based on integrated photonics. Read the OPN story: https://bit.ly/3W1RnL8 💡 ⚛️

Attosecond X-ray pulses hit record intensity! Researchers focused attosecond pulses through total-reflection optics to create record peak intensity of roughly 10^20 W/cm^2. They hope the work could lead to new studies of atomic and molecular dynamics. Read the story: https://bit.ly/3VPwXFb 💡 ⚛️

Researchers analyzed 17 visual pigments in the mantis shrimp eye, discovering two red-light-absorbing proteins that can switch on and off using different wavelengths of light and that could potentially serve as molecular switches to modulate disease signaling pathways. https://bit.ly/4i0dZnN 💡 ⚛️ 🧪

OPN's November issue is now live! 🥳 The issue includes features about staffing the growing global photonics industry, XPO optics for scaling data centers, replacing heat-intensive chemical processes with photon-driven reactions and so much more! Check it out online: https://bit.ly/4ywvVva 💡 ⚛️ 🧪

Image of the Week: Droplet on FP Cavity Optical image of a fabricated MDM Fabry–Pérot cavity with water droplets placed on its surface. Read more here: http://bit.ly/3Uj2QCf

25 years ago Flagstaff became the world’s first International Dark Sky City. Now, scientists, lighting designers and dark-sky advocates are showing how better optics can help reverse the spread of artificial light at night. Check out OPN's feature to learn more! https://bit.ly/4sqeSd3 💡 ⚛️ 🧪

Artificial light at night can have a negative effect on both plants and animals. Check out OPN's latest infographic to see some of the ways light disrupts nighttime behaviors: https://bit.ly/3TZIalS 💡 ⚛️ 🧪

A new optogenetic therapy restored partial vision in blind patients. The researchers believe that the findings from this early-stage study provide the foundations for developing more sensitive and effective optogenetic therapies. Read the OPN story: https://bit.ly/4eb2Yxw 💡 ⚛️ 🧪

A new type of self-aligning frequency comb has the potential to bring the technology to mass-market chip-based products and find applications in compact devices for navigation, timekeeping and sensing. Read the OPN story: https://bit.ly/47PhW8S 💡 ⚛️

"Laser sales for optical #communications are going through a once-a-generation expansion from investments in #AI data centers." -Tom Hausken Check out OPN's latest Market Report for a zoomed-in look at the laser market: https://bit.ly/4hQZWj6 💡 ⚛️

Is thin-film lithium niobate becoming the modulation engine of the next era of optical interconnects? OPN's October feature "TFLN: Reliable Performance at Scale" explores the advantages and challenges of this platform and its potential for co-packaged optics. https://bit.ly/47T205m 💡 ⚛️

Laser manufacturer LITILIT announced it is building a new automated femtosecond-laser factory in Vilnius. The company plans to ramp up annual production capacity to as many as 3,000 systems over the next few years. Read the OPN story: https://bit.ly/4zpHi9a

Researchers developed an ultrathin metasurface platform that may enable greater flexibility for reconfigurable nonlinear signal processing and adaptive photonic computing. The system leverages liquid crystals and light to manipulate both linear and nonlinear responses. https://bit.ly/4yzgrHE 💡 ⚛️

"One of the best ways to accelerate your growth is surprisingly simple: bring possible solutions, not just problems." OPN's October Career Focus features Caroline Boudoux's story of becoming a researcher. Check it out: https://bit.ly/4zrM8Tt #academicsky 💡 ⚛️ 🧪

In the latest installment of Journeys in Optics, OPN spoke with Thomas Luhmann about his career in photogrammetry, founding an institute at his university, writing and collaborating on a successful textbook and advice for early-career researchers. https://bit.ly/4zhwppO 💡 ⚛️ #academicsky

New work, out of UC San Diego, shows how a shaped and focused light beam can control magnetic bits in multilayered materials with no external magnetic field. The study could lead to optical switches more than three orders of magnitude faster than magnetic ones. https://bit.ly/3VumgYo 💡 ⚛️

Excimer lasers made their debut 50 years ago. Today, they remain vital tools in vision correction, semiconductor lithography and display manufacturing, with fusion research on the horizon. Check out OPN's October issue feature article for more! https://bit.ly/3VP35sf 💡 ⚛️ 🧪

A new digital-optical processor can accurately detect deepfake videos when analyzing 15+ videos simultaneously. The high-speed and scalable system offers a robust and efficient solution for content providers to identify AI-generated visual media. Read the OPN story: https://bit.ly/4zhV0uL 💡 ⚛️ 🧪

💡 🧪 What is #optogenetics? Starting with the study of an alga, this field supplied a molecular tool for manipulating neurons in mammals, creating new ways to map the brain. Read about the foundational work of #NobelPrize winners Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann & Georg Nagel: https://bit.ly/4dOsGru

Congratulations Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and George Nagel, awarded the #NobelPrize in Physiology/#Medicine for their pioneering work in light-gated ion channels and optogenetics. Their work established the use of light-sensitive proteins to control specific cells' activity with light. 💡🧪

Image of the Week: Snowflake in Phase A melting snowflake is shown as a quantitative phase map in which color encodes the optical path length of light through the crystal, proportional to its thickness. Read more here: http://bit.ly/3Uj2QCf

Startup Singular Photonics launched a single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD) image sensor they say is the first capable of supporting simultaneous intensity, timing and histogramming modes. Read the OPN story: https://bit.ly/4xVjWHi 💡 ⚛️ 🧪

Optical fiber manufacturer Lightera announced it plans on tripling submarine optical fiber production by 2029. To make that happen, the company is making a significant capital investment to expand its fiber manufacturing operations in Denmark and the United States. https://bit.ly/3VnMtrx 💡 ⚛️

Researchers found a new scheme they believe could make it easier to scale up #quantum #computers and networks. The work leverages heterogenous integration to seamlessly combine diamond quantum emitters with a titanium dioxide chip. Read the OPN story: https://bit.ly/46WlJkp 💡 ⚛️

An Affo(el)gato...? A Catpuccino or a Café Meowcha? Today we celebrate #coffee. The coffee we serve at Optica meetings, coffee in #science, coffee in your coffee, and, we hope, coffee in an Opticat mug. Learn more about coffee's role in #optics and #photonics: https://bit.ly/4xOCRDA

Ahead of his #FiO26 plenary talk, Alexander Gaeta spoke with OPN about innovations in frequency combs that are leading to the commercialization of the technology. Check out the interview for a sneak peek of his talk, happening tomorrow at FiO! https://bit.ly/4iYdMm5 💡 ⚛️

Attalon announced a long-term supply agreement with AeroVironment (AV). Under the deal, Attalon’s new Valaris high-energy laser platform will be deployed as part of AV’s LOCUST system to counter drone threats. Read the OPN story: https://bit.ly/4yjXYyR 💡 ⚛️ 🧪

#FiO26 has begun! 🤩 What are you attending today? Today, 28 September, you can find sessions covering #SpaceOptics, #quantum information processing, deep learning and more. Make sure you stop for a coffee break at Riverside Court to chat with your colleagues!

Image of the Week: Painting with Infrared Beyond the visible spectrum, thermal radiation sketches a vibrant pattern of hot and cool regions, illustrating how infrared imaging reveals an otherwise unseen world of heat. Read more here: http://bit.ly/3Uj2QCf

Solar cells struggle to charge underwater deeper than 10 meters because longer wavelengths of light attenuate. Now, researchers have developed perovskite solar cells with wide band gaps customized to the blue-green spectrum seen underwater, overcoming this limitation. https://bit.ly/3T2cHPB 💡 ⚛️ 🧪

Researchers at @tuwien.at proposed a more efficient and reliable method for transferring #quantum information between qubits with photons. The new work leverages a dispersion-engineered waveguide that reshapes the photon pulse into its time-reversed counterpart. https://bit.ly/4yNVkkA 💡 ⚛️

Image of the Week: Explosion of Color Crystals of magnesium sulfate dissolving and crystalizing in solution, photographed using compensated polarization microscopy. [Winner Ireland Wiki Science Competition 2025; CC-BY-4.0] Read more here: http://bit.ly/3Uj2QCf

📣 OPN's October issue is now live 📣 The latest issue has stories covering the 50 years of excimer-laser innovation, thin-film lithium niobate's potential for optical interconnects, the history and importance of Dark Sky Places and so much more! Read the issue: https://bit.ly/4ydyR0E 💡 🧪

Check out OPN's latest Light Touch "From Newton to Eddington" to learn about the historical controversy around the theory of general relativity and the eclipse that helped validate it: https://bit.ly/4yE5K6e 💡 ⚛️ 🧪

Researchers at Kobe University created a nanostructured coating that creates vivid, glossy colors. The coating provides a uniform and long-lasting color that is unaffected by the protective layers typically used for cars, planes and architectural structures. https://bit.ly/3UOIx2P 💡 ⚛️ 🧪

"AI won’t make as many spelling mistakes, but it also can’t make as logical a story as you can." Check out OPN's latest Career Focus to learn all about using AI intelligently! Follow the link for more: https://bit.ly/4iw3mdc 💡 ⚛️ 🧪 #academicsky #academicsky

In the OPN feature article "Computational Optical Sensing and Imaging at 25" Joseph Mait gives a brief history of the inaugural Integrated Computational Imaging Systems meeting in 1999, discusses the meeting’s impact, and assess current computational imaging. https://bit.ly/4yEYNSD 💡 ⚛️

Image of the Week: Psyche Approaches Mars This composite photo shows the crescent of Mars grow as NASA’s Psyche spacecraft approached the planet for a gravity assist from 2 to 15 May 2026. Read more here: http://bit.ly/3Uj2QCf

Start-up iPronics has raised $125 million in funding to accelerate deployment of its optical circuit-switching (OCS) technology for AI data centers. OCS is not a new concept, but the scale and power requirements of AI computing are giving the technology fresh momentum. https://bit.ly/4A9nhVk 💡 ⚛️

OPN's September Profile "Shining Light on Silk" highlights Fiorenzo Omenetto and the work he and his team are doing at SilkLab. Check it out to learn more about the many innovative ways the multipurpose lab is using this remarkable material. Read the story: https://bit.ly/46iVzbk 💡⚛️ 🧪

Image of the Week: The Corona Image of a corona formed behind the Dreifaltigkeits-Pestsäule in Graz, Austria. Andrea Aiello, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light, Erlangen, Germany Read more here: https://bit.ly/3Vny7qQ

Researchers have combined a semiconductor multi-quantum-well material with a metasurface to enable giant effective nonlinearities in the near-infrared to visible spectrum—all in a device less than a micrometer thick. Read the OPN story: https://bit.ly/3V6vYjf 💡 ⚛️

In new work, researchers developed a low-cost multispectral imaging system that helps archaeologists distinguish between different dirt layers as they excavate. The system uses 16 different wavelengths of light to evaluate the properties of the dirt layers. https://bit.ly/4gLe0eD 💡 ⚛️ 🧪

In OPN's September feature "The Invisible Half of Light," researchers Seemesh Bhaskar and Brian Cunningham talk about how engineered nano-assemblies are opening a new route to biosensing by tapping the long-overlooked magnetic component of light. Read the article: https://bit.ly/4yojpOy 💡 ⚛️

Researchers at the University of Innsbruck found that entangling a molecular ion with an atom creates a “Schrödinger’s cat” state that is more sensitive to external disturbances than the individual particles. Read the OPN story: https://bit.ly/4igJdrr 💡 ⚛️

⌛ TIME IS RUNNING OUT ⌛ The deadline for OPNs photo contest is fast approaching! Submit your large, high-impact images that showcase an aspect of optics. Winning entries will be featured in OPN's December special issue! Deadline: 15 September. More information: https://bit.ly/4iugLT5 💡 ⚛️

In new work, researchers sent skyrmions, a form of structured light, across several hundred meters of turbulent air with very little distortion. They hope the scheme will one day speed up free-space communication. Read the OPN story: https://bit.ly/4gxyqI7 @univbordeaux.bsky.social💡 ⚛️

Image of the Week: Painting the Rainbow Bright structural colors emerge from nanoscale metal-dielectric-metal (MDM) Fabry-Pérot cavities fabricated by sputtering. Read more here: http://bit.ly/3Uj2QCf