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The aerospace and wind-energy industries, which use composite materials to build aircraft and turbine blades, are beginning to use fibre-optic sensors to monitor the health of these massive structures.
Optical-fibre sensors have become an indispensable tool in the oil and gas industry, helping engineers to not only locate wells, but also get the most out of them.
Demonstration of an imaging system that can capture high-resolution 3D fluorescent images of biological speciments without the need for any moving parts.
The idea of using quantum optics to protect the transmission of sensitive data is becoming a commercial reality and starting to be deployed. Duncan Graham-Rowe takes a look at recent progress in quantum cryptography.
The demonstration of a laboratory-scale, fully coherent extreme-UV laser opens up a whole plethora of applications in ultrashort-wavelength imaging, microscopy and the probing of matter.
Non-reciprocal optical phenomena — effects that depend on the direction of light propagation — are rare. Researchers have now observed non-reciprocal material modification when moving a beam of ultrashort light pulses through a lithium niobate crystal.