Recognizing and rewarding the most innovative products,services, and companies in the optics and photonics industry

Congratulations to Francis Halzen, a physics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physics for his “decisive contributions to...

Congratulations to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann, and Georg Nagel for their 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in recognition of “their discoveries concerning light-...

00:15 A new handheld mid-IR imaging system could aid surgeons in assessing tissue in real time. 01:34 The World Quantum Cannes Festival 2026 02:16 The Applied Photonics Awards recently recognized four early-career researchers. 03:08 A three-layer photonic device is offering a new approach to optical data storage, steering it toward more user-friendly displays and encryption.

Codesign of material properties and electromagnetic responses opens the door to higher-efficiency nanophotonic devices within smaller footprints.

After heating an optical fiber for nearly an hour, researchers completely changed its dispersion within a small section and ended up with a supercontinuum that covers a wide range...

Complete internal thermal state and full-aperture wavefront errors of a large optic can be accurately reconstructed using front-surface thermal imaging.

YouTube video by Laser Focus World

Optimize optical system performance with the right motion technologies. Learn how to select galvo scanners, DC motors, and piezo motors to improve speed, precision, and reliability...

This episode features Jennifer Kehlet Barton, a professor and Thomas R. Brown Distinguished Chair of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Arizona. There, her research focuses on the development...

When researchers in Germany froze liquid-core optical fibers to see what would happen, they discovered a larger-than-expected in-fiber Brillouin gain.

00:14 A new holographic printer that uses a nanoscale nanopatterned mask is poised to revolutionize 3D printing. 01:28 In the deep-tech sector, Mixx Technologies has acquired Sophic Silicon Technologies, while Solinide Photonics has received a new round of seed funding. 02:30 Photonic time crystals are being hailed a potential gamechanger for applications like ultrafast optical computing and new telecom systems.

In an advance for photonics and ultrafast science, researchers generate 18-attosecond isolated light pulses via a high-power Yb-laser platform.

This presentation explores how metasurfaces and metalenses are transforming optical systems by replacing bulky lenses with ultrathin, multifunctional surfaces, enabling new capabilities...

In this episode: Light-based underwater robotics shows promise for identifying untapped natural resources, the latest business news in quantum, and scientists discover an energy...

Automated imaging devices GANscan and BlurryScope show how acquisition and reconstruction can be codesigned—as long as validation boundaries remain explicit.

Artificial intelligence (AI) doesn’t replace the traditional metrics of augmented-reality (AR) optical performance, but it does change how optical engineers prioritize and balance...

Astronomers discover an extremely bright ‘Little Red Dot’ within the earliest galaxies of the Universe—dating back a few hundred million years after the Big Bang—and it appears...

In a breakthrough, researchers in France and Germany demonstrate a photonic time crystal—with optical properties that change over time—and it has the potential to dramatically...

Celebrate innovation in optics, photonics, and quantum by entering the Laser Focus World Innovators Awards.

Laser subsystems are a constraint in scaling quantum technologies, but advances in visible distributed feedback (DFB) lasers provide an alternative that offers intrinsic single...

Nvidia works with companies building quantum computers, including ones with photonics-based quantum processing unit (QPU) approaches, and provides a quantum platform they can ...

NASA selected Exail’s flight-proven lithium-niobate phase modulators for its Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) space mission, which highlights how industrialized electro...

Celebrate innovation in optics, photonics, and quantum by entering the Laser Focus World Innovators Awards.

By silencing noise at its source, waveguide-integrated quantum dots now deliver transform-limited single photons directly within the original telecom band—making the premier quantum...

The Army had previously asked the defense industry to look into the feasibility of producing and fielding 24 of the laser weapons.