The high-brightness light emitting diode (HB-LED) industry is experiencing rapid growth, with 2010 revenues expected to exceed 2009 revenues by more than 40%.

Recently, dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM)-based communications systems using digital signal-processing (DSP)-assisted coherent detection have been made commercially available.

For more than a decade, microwave photonic systems have been considered to replace their all-electronic counterparts in several applications including phased-array radar, low-noise radio-frequency (RF) oscillators, analog-to-digital converters (ADCs), and arbitrary waveform generators.

Data-communications transmitters based on parallel optics have been used for high-density backplane applications for many years.

Most researchers and engineers would not associate descriptions like compact, maintenance-free, and power-efficient with the lasers typically found in a scientific laboratory.

A simple technique for assembling lead sulfide (PbS) nanoparticles into micron-sized thin crystalline sheets could lead to exceptionally low-cost photodetectors.

X-ray free-electron lasers (FELs) promise improved x-ray imaging and nonlinear matter interaction and time-resolved studies; however, their short, intense, small-wavelength pulses are difficult to measure.

Engineers at Micos USA (Irvine, CA) have developed a multiphase piezo motion technology that significantly reduces the conventional "stick-slip" operation of nanopositioning applications.

An electrically controllable metamaterial developed by a group at Nanjing University (China) can be switched to independently reflect or absorb light for either or both TE and TM polarizations; the effect is valid for incidence angles ranging from 0° to 50°.

The most advanced conventional time-domain reflectometry (TDR) techniques using electrical pulses can isolate electrical-circuit faults (open or short) with 50 GHz bandwidth and 250 μm resolution, though resolutions achieved are often significantly poorer.

A three-year European Union (EU) project called Femtoprint, backed by the "Nanosciences, nanotechnologies, materials and new production technologies" theme of the EU Seventh Framework Programme (FP7), was inaugurated in May 2010 with $3.2 million dollars (€$2.5 million).

A group at the US Army Research Laboratory (ARL; Adelphi, MD) has come up with a practical way of efficiently cooling both sides of an optically pumped thin disk-laser gain element, which may lead to better heat removal and beam quality for high-power disk lasers.

This is the first demonstration of a solid-state, electrically driven device consisting of a quantum dot embedded in a semiconductor LED structure that emits entangled photon pairs (from either AC or DC electrical injection) with a purity more than sufficient to meet the needs of future, scalable quantum-information applications.

The waveguides and gratings are fabricated from silicon dioxide (SiO2, with a refractive index of 1.444) on a base of silicon (with an index of 3.476).