Newport to Acquire Femtolasers

6 February, 2015—Supplier of advanced optoelectronics products Newport Corporation (Irvine, Calif., USA) announced yesterday an agreement to acquire ultrafast laser systems manufacturer Femtolasers (Vienna, Austria). Femtolasers, which spun out of the Vienna University of Technology in 1994, is a pioneer of ultrafast lasers for attosecond (10^-18 seconds) science for studying the atomic and subatomic characteristics of physical, chemical and biological phenomena. Newport expects the acquisition to advance their industry hold in and development of ultrafast lasers.

In February 2014, Femtolasers inked an agreement to provide a seed laser for the petawatt laser beamline at the Extreme Light Infrastructure project in Prague, which is a collaboration with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (USA). Femtolasers also has 850 systems installed in more than 30 countries. The deal is expected to close by 31 March 31. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed, but Newport predicts that sales from Femtolasers for the first 12 months to range from US$8 million to US$12.