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Information Acquisition, Processing, Display and Perception

  • Spotlight Summary by David M. Paganin

    • Approximate Fourier phase information in the phase retrieval problem: what it gives and how to use it
    • Very recently, I arranged to meet two people I had never seen before at a local cafe. As an experiment, I decided to not look up their photos on the Internet prior to the meeting. With about 50 or so people at the cafe,...
    • J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 28(10) 2124-2131 (2011) View: HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Kaori Fukunaga

    • Terahertz tomographic imaging of XVIIIth Dynasty Egyptian sealed pottery
    • Terahertz (THz) imaging has been the focus of a lot of attention recently, especially for applications related to homeland security, such as detecting concealed weapons at airports. However, terahertz technology can...
    • Appl. Opt. 50(20) 3604-3608 (2011) View: HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Brynmor Davis

    • Complete characterization of supercontinuum coherence
    • The femtosecond or attosecond timescales exhibited in ultrafast pulses pose a challenge for robust pulse characterization, as the response time of optical detectors is significantly longer than the required measurement...
    • J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 28(9) 2301-2309 (2011) View: HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by James Churnside

    • Instrumentation to measure the backscattering coefficient bb for arbitrary phase functions
    • What is bb? As light propagates through the ocean, it experiences an exponential attenuation due to absorption and scattering. The backscattering coefficient bb is that component of...
    • Appl. Opt. 50(21) 4134-4147 (2011) View: HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by David M. Paganin

    • Superresolution imaging via ptychography
    • For decades, and albeit with some notable exceptions, the limits on resolution imposed by the Rayleigh and related criteria were largely viewed as unassailable barriers. The superresolution community has long railed...
    • J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 28(4) 604-612 (2011) View: HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Richard Blackwell-Whitehead

    • Wavelengths of the 3d6(5D)4s a6D−3d5(6S)4s4p y6P multiplet of Fe II (UV 8)
    • Accurate atomic parameters are key to the comprehensive understanding of the fundamental laws of matter and the universe. The work by Nave and Sansonetti provides an important contribution to the study of high-accuracy...
    • J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 28(4) 737-745 (2011) View: HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by David M. Paganin

    • All-optical encrypted movie
    • We live in an increasingly virtual world. From contemporary role-playing interactive computer games and flight simulators to chess-playing computers and computer emulations of the globe’s climate, highly realistic...
    • Opt. Express 19(6) 5706-5712 (2011) View: HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Shakil Rehman

    • Clustering-driven residue filter for profile measurement system
    • Precise estimation of the surface profile of an object is a critical task in many industrial applications. It can be achieved by a variety of methods, including contact methods such as stylus-based profile measurement...
    • J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 28(2) 214-221 (2011) View: HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Mikhail Belkin

    • Room temperature continuous wave milliwatt terahertz source
    • The terahertz region (1–5 THz) of the electromagnetic spectrum remains one of the least developed spectral regions, despite its proven potential in a number of areas, including security screening, biochemical detection,...
    • Opt. Express 18(26) 27112-27117 (2010) View: HTML | PDF

Light–Matter Interactions

  • Spotlight Summary by Peter J. Collings

    • Electric-field controllable optical activity in the nano-segregated system composed of rod- and bent-core liquid crystals [Invited]
    • One of the most exciting aspects of soft-matter research is the constantly expanding number of complex fluid phases that nature provides. And when a newly discovered phase has the potential for unique applications, the...
    • Opt. Mater. Express 1(1) 27-35 (2011) View: HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Giovanni Piredda

    • Orbital angular momentum in noncollinear second-harmonic generation by off-axis vortex beams
    • Light beams can carry “orbital” angular momentum, that is, an angular momentum directed along the beam’s propagation. This angular momentum is in general associated with an azimuthal dependence of the phase of the type...
    • J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 28(11) 2806-2811 (2011) View: HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Robert J. Zawadzki

    • Lasing from Escherichia coli bacteria genetically programmed to express green fluorescent protein
    • A new class of bio-lasers using self-healing biological material as the active medium has been introduced with the demonstration of lasing from colonies of GFP-expressing Escherichia coli (E. coli)...
    • Opt. Lett. 36(16) 3299-3301 (2011) View: HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Shakil Rehman

    • Laterally chromatically dispersed, spectrally encoded interferometer
    • Accurate measurement of a surface profile, achieved by contact- or noncontact-based surface-profile measurement methods, is required in many applications. Some methods used for surface-profile estimation are...
    • Appl. Opt. 50(23) 4574-4580 (2011) View: HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Brad Deutsch

    • Temperature measurement and stabilization in a birefringent whispering gallery mode resonator
    • How precisely can temperature be measured? With patience and excellent eyesight, maybe you could read a mercury thermometer to a 10th of a degree, or with a good camera and a computer, maybe to a...
    • Opt. Express 19(15) 14495-14501 (2011) View: HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Katia Gallo

    • Ultraviolet nonlinear optical crystal: CsBe2BO3F2
    • Fifty years have passed since the landmark experiment by Peter Franken, generating second harmonic from a ruby laser in a quartz crystal, marked the birth of nonlinear optics. Nowadays, the latter still provides one of...
    • J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 28(9) 2186-2190 (2011) View: HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Taek Yong Hwang

    • Ultra-high-contrast few-cycle pulses for multipetawatt-class laser technology
    • Since the technique of chirped pulse amplification (CPA) was first introduced by D. Strickland and G. Mourou in 1985, ultraintense and ultrashort pulse laser systems have been rapidly developed in the past few decades...
    • Opt. Lett. 36(16) 3145-3147 (2011) View: HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Francesco Morichetti

    • Silicon-based monolithic optical frequency comb source
    • Optical frequency combs made of a large number of precisely spaced and sharp spectral lines distributed over a broad spectral range are becoming more and more attractive tools in many different fields. Optical clocks...
    • Opt. Express 19(15) 14233-14239 (2011) View: HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Andrey N. Kuzmin

    • Spectroscopic investigation of Nd3+-doped ZBLAN glass for solar-pumped lasers
    • Solar-pumped lasers are a reality. They have a history only three years less than that of general lasers, first built in 1960. Solar-pumped lasers differs from others in that they do not require an artificial energy...
    • J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 28(8) 2001-2006 (2011) View: HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Glenn R. Sellar

    • Schwarzschild spectrometer
    • In this work, the authors add a new design form, with a novel combination of properties, to those available to designers of imaging spectrometers. The Schwarzschild design employed here corrects astigmatism, a property...
    • Appl. Opt. 50(16) 2418-2424 (2011) View: HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Giovanni Piredda

    • Visible light reflection spectra from cuticle layered materials
    • Sometimes, when asked "What are the applications of Optics?" I get caught off-guard (because the applications of optics are very, very many), and I give a short, generic and conventional answer. I know for a fact that I...
    • Opt. Mater. Express 1(1) 85-100 (2011) View: HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Aliaksandr Kachynski

    • 465 nm laser sources by intracavity frequency doubling using a 49-edge-emitters laser bar
    • Compact, high-brightness, high-efficiency solid-state lasers (SSL) are widely used for a variety of technological, biomedical, telecommunication, and other applications. An important market for such lasers in the future...
    • Opt. Lett. 36(3) 361-363 (2011) View: HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Alfred U'Ren

    • Direct generation of a multi-transverse mode non-classical state of light
    • The observation of electric-field fluctuations below the shot-noise level in squeezed states represents a hallmark quantum effect, first experimentally observed in the 1980s. The initial work on squeezed states was a...
    • Opt. Express 19(5) 4405-4410 (2011) View: HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Thomas Udem

    • Spherical reference cavities for frequency stabilization of lasers in non-laboratory environments
    • Over the past decade the progress on optical atomic clocks, which use very rapid oscillations of light, has been tremendous. Such clocks are capable of measuring time intervals with a much finer ruler than conventional...
    • Opt. Express 19(4) 3471-3482 (2011) View: HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Brynmor Davis

    • Two-dimensional point spread matrix of layered metal–dielectric imaging elements
    • Linear shift-invariant (LSI) models are an indispensable tool in the design of imaging systems. Microscopy in particular makes extensive use of LSI models, with physical design considerations often described and...
    • J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 28(2) 111-117 (2011) View: HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Alessandro Restelli

    • Thermal blinding of gated detectors in quantum cryptography
    • “The discovery of security loopholes does not prove that Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) is insecure, but rather that principles of QKD are not sufficiently well implemented” After this reassuring statement, Lydersen et...
    • Opt. Express 18(26) 27938-27954 (2010) View: HTML | PDF

Optical Design and Instrumentation

  • Spotlight Summary by Shakil Rehman

    • Lensless vision system for in-plane positioning of a patterned plate with subpixel resolution
    • Studying biological processes in living organisms over extended periods sets stringent conditions and limitations on their visualization. The physiological properties of living organisms change over varying time scales...
    • J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 28(12) 2494-2500 (2011) View: HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Shakil Rehman

    • Laterally chromatically dispersed, spectrally encoded interferometer
    • Accurate measurement of a surface profile, achieved by contact- or noncontact-based surface-profile measurement methods, is required in many applications. Some methods used for surface-profile estimation are...
    • Appl. Opt. 50(23) 4574-4580 (2011) View: HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Eric Goodwin

    • Null test for a deeply aspheric lens
    • When visiting historic chapels, it is often easy to appreciate the architecture and artwork but not always so to recognize the illumination engineering that may have taken place to illuminate such wonderful structures....
    • Appl. Opt. 50(25) 4977-4981 (2011) View: HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Brad Deutsch

    • Temperature measurement and stabilization in a birefringent whispering gallery mode resonator
    • How precisely can temperature be measured? With patience and excellent eyesight, maybe you could read a mercury thermometer to a 10th of a degree, or with a good camera and a computer, maybe to a...
    • Opt. Express 19(15) 14495-14501 (2011) View: HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Kedar Khare

    • Holographic video at 40 frames per second for 4-million object points
    • The development and commercial availability of specialized high-speed digital processing hardware and the progress in spatial light modulator (SLM) technology have brought 3D displays for high-resolution video scenery...
    • Opt. Express 19(16) 15205-15211 (2011) View: HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Francesco Morichetti

    • Silicon-based monolithic optical frequency comb source
    • Optical frequency combs made of a large number of precisely spaced and sharp spectral lines distributed over a broad spectral range are becoming more and more attractive tools in many different fields. Optical clocks...
    • Opt. Express 19(15) 14233-14239 (2011) View: HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Shalin Mehta

    • Automated imaging, identification, and counting of similar cells from digital hologram reconstructions
    • Imaging based assays (especially in X-ray and optical regimes) have significant potential of providing automated and accurate assessment of biological samples for clinical diagnosis. In both regimes, new approaches are...
    • Appl. Opt. 50(20) 3589-3597 (2011) View: HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Brynmor Davis

    • Evaluation of cuspoid and umbilic diffraction catastrophes of codimension four
    • As any lens maker can attest, it requires precise and deliberate design to produce the multiray intersection associated with a geometrical focal point. Further, the focus is not stable with respect to perturbations of...
    • J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 28(5) 887-896 (2011) View: HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Glenn R. Sellar

    • Schwarzschild spectrometer
    • In this work, the authors add a new design form, with a novel combination of properties, to those available to designers of imaging spectrometers. The Schwarzschild design employed here corrects astigmatism, a property...
    • Appl. Opt. 50(16) 2418-2424 (2011) View: HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Taek Yong Hwang

    • Self-organized 2D periodic arrays of nanostructures in silicon by nanosecond laser irradiation
    • Since its development, the laser has become one of the most powerful and promising tools for surface processing of materials. Particularly, laser-induced surface structures such as ripples, surface waves, and...
    • Appl. Opt. 50(16) 2349-2355 (2011) View: HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Adam Mock

    • Slow-light and evanescent modes at interfaces in photonic crystal waveguides: optimal extraction from experimental near-field measurements
    • Slowing light down has been an active research goal in the past decade as it leads to the ability to enhance light–matter interactions and can be useful for optical information storage and processing in communication...
    • J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 28(4) 955-963 (2011) View: HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Francesco Morichetti

    • Ultrafast laser inscription of an integrated photonic lantern
    • Future developments will make it clearer, but today we have a good preview of integrated optics as a 3D world...


      In many applicative fields, fiber-optic devices are bound to be replaced by their integrated...

    • Opt. Express 19(6) 5698-5705 (2011) View: HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Paul Mirkarimi

    • Influence of the substrate finish and thin film roughness on the optical performance of Mo/Si multilayers
    • As the authors note, the optical performance of Mo/Si multilayer films is a topic of significant interest to emerging technologies, such as extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography, where large amounts of EUV light are...
    • Appl. Opt. 50(9) C148-C153 (2011) View: HTML | PDF

Optics in Biology and Medicine

  • Spotlight Summary by Richard Bowman

    • Modeling of optical traps for aerosols
    • To appreciate the importance of aerosols, one need only look at the sky. These systems of micrometer-sized liquid droplets in air are a major part of the atmosphere—important in processes from acid rain to global...
    • J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 28(12) 2856-2864 (2011) View: HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Richard Bowman

    • Waveguide trapping of hollow glass spheres
    • Hollow microspheres are interesting objects to work with, as they are essentially bubbles of air that are encased in a thin glass shell. The possibility of using them as microcontainers for minute quantities of...
    • Opt. Lett. 36(17) 3347-3349 (2011) View: HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Summer Gibbs-Strauss

    • Toward whole-body optical imaging of rats using single-photon counting fluorescence tomography
    • Fluorescence imaging is a widely used technology both in preclinical and clinical applications. The most routinely utilized fluorescence imaging systems use reflectance-based imaging technology, in which both the...
    • Opt. Lett. 36(19) 3723-3725 (2011) View: HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Summer Gibbs-Strauss

    • In vivo fluorescence lifetime optical projection tomography
    • Research into disease mechanisms and cell signaling is increasing as tools that enable detection and visualization of these cellular and subcellular processes are developed. The utility of fluorescence reporter...
    • Biomed. Opt. Express 2(5) 1340-1350 (2011) View: HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Laurie Wilcox

    • Depth rendition of three-dimensional displays
    • The combined advances in 3D display and camera technology have fueled a dramatic surge of interest in stereoscopic 3D. This movement is not restricted to stereoscopic 3D films but includes markets such as 3D gaming and...
    • J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 28(6) 1185-1190 (2011) View: HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Robert J. Zawadzki

    • Reflective afocal broadband adaptive optics scanning ophthalmoscope
    • In this paper, Dubra and Sulai present an adaptive optics (AO) scanning ophthalmoscope design that implements nonplanar folding of the telescopes to reduce pupil and image plane astigmatism. This relatively simple...
    • Biomed. Opt. Express 2(6) 1757-1768 (2011) View: HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Jason Porter

    • Characterization of single-file flow through human retinal parafoveal capillaries using an adaptive optics scanning laser ophthalmoscope
    • To date, it has been challenging to image and quantify the distribution and single-file flow characteristics of red and white blood cells traversing retinal capillaries in vivo in normal and diseased human eyes. While...
    • Biomed. Opt. Express 2(4) 781-793 (2011) View: HTML | PDF

Optoelectronics

  • Spotlight Summary by Periklis Petropoulos

    • Nonlinear fiber optics: its history and recent progress [Invited]
    • The optical fiber is an amazing tool. Its versatile nature has made it suitable for use in several application fields. In its basic form the fiber can be viewed as an almost transparent, extremely broadband waveguide at...
    • J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 28(12) A1-A10 (2011) View: HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Gianluca Rotaris

    • Microporous phase-separated films of polymer blends for enhanced outcoupling of light from OLEDs
    • In recent years, the lighting industry has been undergoing a true historical revolution with the accelerated phasing out of the incandescent bulbs and the widespread adoption of inorganic light-emitting diodes (LEDs)....
    • Opt. Express 19(S6) A1272-A1280 (2011) View: HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Brad Deutsch

    • Design of nanostructured plasmonic back contacts for thin-film silicon solar cells
    • "You can have it cheap, or you can have it work." That could be the motto of the solar cell industry right now. Inside every solar cell is a small amount of semiconductor material whose job it is to convert light...
    • Opt. Express 19(S6) A1219-A1230 (2011) View: HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Robert J. Zawadzki

    • Lasing from Escherichia coli bacteria genetically programmed to express green fluorescent protein
    • A new class of bio-lasers using self-healing biological material as the active medium has been introduced with the demonstration of lasing from colonies of GFP-expressing Escherichia coli (E. coli)...
    • Opt. Lett. 36(16) 3299-3301 (2011) View: HTML | PDF

  • Spotlight Summary by Piero Castoldi

    • Fast Exact ILP Decompositions for Ring RWA
    • Routing and wavelength assignment (RWA) has been studied for a long time and under different perspectives, with NP-hard problem and various techniques proposed to overcome this issue. Over the years, a number of...
    • J. Opt. Commun. Netw. 3(7) 577-586 (2011) View: HTML | PDF

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Recent Comments

  1. Diffuse optical spectroscopy of lactating and non-lactating human mammary physiology [1]
  2. Demonstrating Arago–Fresnel laws with Bessel beams from vectorial axicons [1]
  3. Tandem dual-functioning multiple-quantum-well diodes for a self-powered light source [1]