ELI: Open for Business

After a decade of design, construction and commissioning, the European sites housing some of the world’s most powerful ultrafast lasers are making the transition to user facilities driving new science.

by Stewart Wills

Engineering with Bound States in the Continuum

Identified nearly a century ago by early workers in quantum mechanics, bound states can dramatically reduce radiation from optical resonators, opening up new application prospects in nanophotonics.

by Kirill Koshelev, Andrey Bogdanov and Yuri Kivshar

The Most Important Paper You’ve Never Read

A half-century ago, a seminal but largely forgotten study identified the “coherent artifact” in measurements of ultrashort laser pulses.

by Rick Trebino

Newsroom

Research and Industry News

Toward one-way quantum computing / Stopwatch flexes with skin / 3D-printing fiber / Laughing-gas THz laser / AI tames X-ray beam instability / Innovation hub in Europe / White-light perception varies with age / Book reviews

Infographic

Toward Exawatt Power

With up to 10 petawatts of peak laser power, the EU's three ELI facilities include the most powerful lasers to date (see this month's cover story ELI: Open for Business). A planned fourth ELI pillar and a few other high-intesity laser projects could boost peak power even further, reaching the exawatt scale.

Career Focus

Science's Language Challenges

Three Spanish-speaking physicists describe some career challenges in a scientific world dominated by English—and how institutions can help level the playing field.

Conversations

High Brightness in ELI’s Shadow

Co-chairs of the High-brightness Sources and Light-driven Interactions Congress discuss the broad and diverse range of invited talks coming to Prague.

OIDA Market Report

Where Optics and Photonics Are Made

OSA’s senior industry adviser maps out the current landscape of optics manufacturing, and offers insights into how production locations may shift.

Then and Now

Holography's Unexpected Origins

Born of a desire to improve the resolution of electron microscopy, holography quickly grew into an exciting field in optics in its own right with the invention of the laser.

President's Message

A Tradition of Welcome

Looking Back

30, 20, and 10 Years Ago in OPN

Video workstations; spectroscopic OCT; Raman fiber laser

OSA Update

News from the Society

New roles for Whaley and MacFarlane / Honors for Baets and Pagonis / OSA CEO makes case for science funding / EC Biophotonics Standardization meeting / ACP 2019 / Industrial Affiliates Days / OSA Fellow stories / Thank you, editors and volunteers