Wednesday at Photonics West

Hamamatsu Corporationrd day of Photonics West, the show was in full swing, with a variety of technical sessions and a well-attended plenary session. Alan Kay, VP of research and development at the Walt Disney Co. and co-founder of Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, presented a fascinating discussion of the ways he sees computers influencing our lives in the near future, versus the limited use we've made of such capabilities to date. The next decade should see us taking full advantage of computer networking to develop online business communities, to use networking capabilities to communicate, to organize politically, to enhance daily life.

The evening poster sessions attracted a crowd, and not just for the corn chips and cash bars sprinkled about the lobby area of the convention center. Three-dimensional imaging is attracting a great deal of attention for medical applications, with researchers exploring three-dimensional microtomography of blood cells (#3261-33), optical tomography with confocal laser scanning microscopes (#3261-35), and optical tomography in scattering media (#3262-48).

Traffic on the show floor was down a bit Wednesday compared to Tuesday, according to a number of exhibitors, though it didn't seem appreciably slower to my eye. The industry as a whole seems to be in a growth trend, as evidence by a number of expansions that I caught wind of. Germany laser optic and accessary manufacturer Laser Components Inc. (Olching, Germany) has opened a US sales office (Santa Rosa, CA) to service orders in this country. Energy and power meter manufacturer Moletron Inc. (Portland, OR) has doubled the size of its existing facility, expanding to 20,000 sq. ft. of production and office space. The eV Products division of II-VI Inc. (Saxonburg, PA) has just been moved to a 35,000 sq. ft. space at the company's main facility. Meanwhile, fiberoptic components manufacturer Oz Optics (Carp, Ontario, Canada) has added 18,000 sq. ft. of production space to its facility, for a total of almost 30,000 sq. ft.

Discharge lighting manufacturer ILC Technology (Sunnyvale, CA) has announced the signing of a definitive merger agreement with technical holding company BEC Group Inc (Rye, NY). BEC will acquire ILC in an all-stock transaction: ILC shareholders will receive 4.36 shares of BEC Group common stock; this will devolve to 2.18 shares after a one-for-two reverse stock split takes effect. BEC Group will be renamed Lumen Technologies after the merger, and will be the holding company for three operating subsidiaries: ORC Technologies, ILC Technology, and Voltare Technologies. ILC chief operating officer Richard Capra will assume the responsibilities of chief executive officer of Lumen Technologies to oversee the transition. proposed
Meanwhile, Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. (Boulder, CO) and COM DEV International (Cambridge, Ontario, Canada) have announced the formation of a new company focused on the development of laser-based optical intersatellite link terminals for next-generation communications satellites. The new company will be called Laser Communications International, and will be located in Boulder. To date, the two companies have invested $9 million in the venture.

The march of products continued, with <%=company%> introducing a back-thinned charge-coupled device (CCD) detector with 90 percent quantum efficiency in the visible spectral region, and 50 to 80 percent in the ultraviolet; the company is targeting spectroscopy applications, as well as the semiconductor and medical markets.

Lambda-Physik unveiled its diode-pumped solid state neodymium-doped yttrium aluminum garnet (Nd:YAG) laser that produces up to fourth harmonic output (266 nm) and operates at 5 kHz. The system has applications in micromachining, or can be used to pump the company's now-commercially-available cerium-doped lithium calcium aluminum fluoride (Ce:LiCAF) laser.

Opto-Power (Tucson, AZ) was demonstrating a diode-based system designed for industrial materials processing. The microprocessor-controlled diode system produced well in excess of 50 W, cutting through 5-mil-thick stainless steel in an enclosed unit on the show floor.

Oz Optics Ltd. introduced an all-fiber polarization controller that convert the polarization state of a signal from a singlemode fiber into any desired output polarization. The device operates similar to the Babinet-Soleil compensator used in bulk optics-pressure applied to the fiber by an adjustable clamp causes the fiber to act as an adjustable fractional wave plate. Rotation of the clamp rotates the axis of the effective wave plate, providing polarization control.

Look for tomorrow's show report, with more details on what is happening in San Jose.