OPN November 2011
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Keeping It Together with Laser Welding
Breck Hitz
Laser welding is faster and cheaper than conventional joining technology, and it may even lead to lower greenhouse-gas emissions. Although laser welding is by no means easy to do, technological advances are making it an increasingly viable option within various industries, including transportation, electronics and sensing. more>>
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Ludwig Boltzmann A Pioneer in Atomic Theory
Barry R. Masters
Ludwig Boltzmann’s pioneering work in atomic-molecular kinetics, statistical mechanics and thermodynamics bridged the gap between Maxwell’s classical physics of the 19th century and the quantum era ushered in by Planck and Einstein. more>>
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Spontaneous Parametric Processes in Modern Optics
Hector Cruz-Ramirez, Roberto Ramirez-Alarcon, Maria Corona, Karina Garay-Palmett and Alfred B. U’Ren
Spontaneous parametric processes have proved to be integral to the advancement of quantum information science. Their incredible versatility, in terms of the emission properties of entangled photons, allows for nearly unimaginable applications in the transmission and processing of quantum information. more>>
Making Materials with No Phase Delay
Yvonne Carts-Powell
By stacking alternating layers of an engineered negative-refractive-index photonic crystal and positive-index material, researchers built a structure with an average refractive index of zero in the near infrared. more>>
Imaging Living Organisms with Sheets of Light
Yvonne Carts-Powell
Caltech researchers developed a type of microscopy that simultaneously achieves high resolution, penetration depth and imaging speed, filling biologists’ need for fast 3-D imaging methods of organisms that don’t perturb the sample. more>>
Education
The Art of Seeing: Educating Kids with Partial Vision
Danuta Bukowska and Ewa Kwiatkowska
Educating young children with partial vision presents a special set of challenges. The Nicolaus Copernicus University OSA student chapter in Poland rose to the occasion by developing a national contest to design optical toys geared toward kids with significant visual impairment. more>>
Light Touch
The Violet Ray: A Handful of Lightning to Cure What Ails You
Thomas Easton and Jeff Hecht
Promoters of the first Civil War-era medical electrical generators claimed
that applying an electric current to the body would fix whatever ailed you.
Although most health benefits have been dismissed as quackery, the
technology has a legitimate yet minor role in scientific research. more>>
Optical Engineering
Fabricating Aspherical Lenses
Oliver Fähnle
Although aspherical lenses are essential to many optical systems, their manufacture
is notoriously complicated. Here, Oliver Fähnle from FISBA OPTIK AG shares his
views on aspherical lens fabrication and the methods his lab applies in order to
achieve optimum results with minimal slope and shape errors. more>>
Policy Matters
Australian Senator Advocates National Broadband Plan
Ken Baldwin
Australian Senator Stephen Conroy was recently named as OSA’s 2011 Advocate of Optics.
He was chosen for his work in championing a National Broadband Network for Australia
that will establish fiber optic communications directly to 93 percent of Australian homes,
schools and businesses. more>>