Laserati

Berthold Leibinger Stiftung offers two prizes dedicated on applied laser technology. The Berthold Leibinger Innovationspreis honors advancements in the application or generation of laser light, while the Berthold Leibinger Zukunftspreis honors research milestones regarding the application or generation of laser light.

The jury includes the following members: Stephen Anderson Associate Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Laser Focus World Prof. Dr. med. Hans-Peter Berlien Chief Physician of the Laser Medical Department, Elisabeth Hospital Berlin Prof. Dr.-Ing. Hubertus Christ President of the DVT – German Federation of Technical and Scientific Associations Prof. Dr. Theodor Hänsch Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics Prof. Dr.-Ing. Helmut Hügel University of Stuttgart, Institute for High-Power Beam Technologies Prof. Dr. Ursula Keller Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, Institute of Quantum Electronics Prof. Dr. med. John Stuart Nelson Medical Director of the Beckmann Laser Institute Prof. Dr. Hans-Jürgen Quadbeck-Seeger Former Research Executive Director of BASF AG Prof. Dr. Orazio Svelto Technical University of Milan, Department of Physics Prof. Dr.-Ing. Hans-Jürgen Warnecke Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation

May 16, 2008. Above is today’s Google logo.

The first working laser was demonstrated on May 16, 1960 by Theodore Maiman at Hughes Research Laboratories.

According to Wikipedia.

Laserful.com is a very interesting blog on lasers. As described by itself:

Laserful.com is a blog on all the wonderful laser-y things. The tagline “a directory of laserful things” intentionly mimics Boing Boing’s “a directory of wonderful things”. You can consider laserful.com as a Boing Boing for lasers.

It focuses on wonderful light side of lasers for general public. Laserweb.org focuses on providing "hard core" information and communication forum for laser researchers and manufactors.

Now laserful.com allows laserweb.org to aggregate its updates as a partnership.

The past two weeks were busy for laser peoples, because SPIE Photonics West was held on 19 - 24 January 2008 in San Jose, California, USA, soon after that, ASSP 2008 on January 27-30, 2008 in Nara, Japan. These two conferences are considered to be most important. If you missed Photonics West 2008, you may get some sense from reports on SPIE website and Optics.org's Showblog.

While ASSP is considered to be most valuable laser conference by many laser researchers, it attracts very little industrial exhibitions, and media coverage. I was there. I feel ASSP 2008 was not as successful as previous ones. The banquet talk is off topic, not even interesting for most of attendees. There was a ceramic laser special session. But no new technical information is presented. What's obvious from the conference is that ultrafast laser and laser ignition are hot.

January 2008 issue of Nature Photonics has a technology focus on fiber lasers. Some recent research highlights are presented, like report of millijoule femtosecond fiber laser from Jena University. Several people from companies (SPI Lasers, IPG Photonics, Koheras) are invited to write their perspective on fiber lasers. Prof. Andreas Tuennermann, head of the Fraunhofer Insititute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering in Jena, Germany, is interviewed on developments of fiber laser and his views on its future.

Among all the highlights, I think ultrashort pulse fiber laser is the center of spotlight. It seems suddenly, lot of companies emerge competing on femtosecond fiber lasers. Just point a few of them: IMRA, MenloSystem, Koheras, Toptica, Fianium, and FEMTO Lasers, etc.

Following is the Editorial of this Technology Focus:

Market-analyst company Strategies Unlimited believes that the fibre laser “represents the most important new technology in the laser industry in a decade,” and it’s easy to understand why.

The fibre laser is unlike any other laser on the market. Its unique geometry means it is extremely versatile, giving it applications ranging from ophthalmology to welding cars. In this month’s Technology Focus, industry experts look at using fibre lasers for marking, industrial applications and metrology.

Although these articles show that the fibre laser is already being used in commercial applications, there is still much to learn about this fascinating technology and new applications are emerging all the time. Researchers are constantly pushing the parameters to get more out of the fibre laser. Pulses are becoming shorter, pulse energies higher and power scaling is reaching unprecedented levels.

And because of these interesting advances, business is booming and fibre-laser companies are among the fastest growing firms in the laser market.

That said, Andreas Tünnermann, director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering, believes there are still many challenges ahead. In his opinion, if industry is going to fully exploit the high-power capabilities of the fibre laser then a challenge for industry is the development of a suitable passive beam-delivery system. However, given the pace of the innovation and improvements in performance it is probable that fibre-laser technology will succeed in rising to the challenges ahead.

OSA will launch a new publication, Advances in Optics and Photonics, an online quarterly journal of invited reviews and tutorials, on January 2008. Bahaa E. A. Saleh will be the first editor.

Designed to capture the most significant advances in optics and photonics, AOP will include both traditional long review articles and peer-reviewed tutorials. Submissions of long reviews and tutorials are invited only. Tutorials will feature interactive components like animation and video to maximize their reach. Each article will have navigational links and external reference-linking for easy sourcing and enhanced learning. Authors will enjoy timely publication as each article is published online immediately upon completion.

OSA will provide free introductory access to the journal for a limited time following its launch. AOP tutorials will remain open access.

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The Open Optics Journal, yet another open access Optics journal, from Bentham Science Publications, which is not known in Optics field before. They are launching more than 200 peer-reviewed open access journals during this year, under the banner of "Bentham OPEN". Wow ;)

Together with Optics Express and Journal of the European Optical Society:Rapid publications, there are three open access Optics journals now.

Populaser is educational flash on laser. The creator is a Russian company called GRTOV studio. The flash is a winner of Amazing Laser Light Challenge. Contents include general infos on laser, like What is the laser? How it works, Type of laser, Laser safety, and introducation of laser inventors etc. It is well done and very cool. It even includes a laser game.

Just know OSA has launched a podcast in January. OSA will produce free audio, video and enhanced podcasts of popular meeting speakers and special topics. The first and only podcast up to now is about science and technology in China.

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