Electrical, Electronics, and Avionics

Lasers

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Technology Report
Photonics/Optics

Ceres Holographics, Appotronics Team for Windshield-Wide Laser HUD

Transparent display pioneer Ceres Holographics and laser display company Appotronics announced on Tuesday an agreement to combine their technologies to create transparent...

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Articles
RF & Microwave Electronics

This Laser Clock Could Transform Satellite Navigation Accuracy

A new laser clock from the German Aerospace Center has achieved a record level of accuracy for optical clocks with gas cells: in 30 million years, it would be off by just one second. Read on to learn more about it and what it could mean for satellite navigation accuracy.

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Articles
RF & Microwave Electronics

Space Lasers: Aiming Towards Next Leap in Global Communications

Space lasers are transforming the world. Not the far-off future of science fiction, but the universe of how data and communications flow today — everywhere from deep space missions to countless applications here on earth, including consumer internet services, military operations, and banking transactions. Read on to learn more.

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Technology Report
Photonics/Optics

SkillReal Says Inexpensive Camera and AI Add up to Faster, Better Inspections

A company says that its digital twin alignment system, incorporating a sophisticated AI algorithm and an off-the-shelf camera, has the potential to revolutionize...

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Articles
RF & Microwave Electronics

NASA’s Optical Communications Demo Transmits Data Over 140 Million Miles

This achievement provides a glimpse into how spacecraft could use optical communications in the future, enabling higher-data-rate communications of complex scientific information as well as high-definition imagery and video in support of humanity’s next giant leap: sending humans to Mars.

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Articles
RF & Microwave Electronics

Physicists Develop a New Type of Antenna

This research and demonstration presents a simple technique for a remote Rydberg-atom-based RF sensor, which was verified for distances of up to 30 m between the passive sensing unit and the base station — currently limited by the length of the hallway used in the demonstration.

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Articles
Photonics/Optics

How Laser Communications Innovation is Finally Coming of Age and Driving Innovation in Defense

Though laser technology has advantages over radio, and those advantages are growing as innovation accelerates, what is essential to realize is that they need not be in competition.

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Application Briefs
Weapons Systems

H4 Palletized Laser Weapon

The new palletized laser weapon was the first 10-kilowatt laser built to U.S. military specifications in a stand-alone configuration that can be moved and mounted anywhere it’s needed.

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Briefs
Aerospace

MOVPE Growth of LWIR AlInAs/GaInAs/InP Quantum Cascade Lasers: Impact of Growth and Material Quality on Laser Performance

Quantum cascade lasers are compact coherent optical sources that emit over a wide wavelength range in the mid- to long-infrared as well as into part of the terahertz spectrum.

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Articles
Propulsion

The Sky is No Longer the Limit Celebrating 75 Years of Air Force Technology

Since its inception, the mission of the United States Air Force has been to fly, fight, and win — delivering airpower anytime, anywhere in defense of our nation.

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Briefs
Energy

Triggering Li-ion Battery Cells with Laser Radiation

Inducing TR in a battery cell allows engineers to test and improve the safety performance of overheated batteries that can potentially catch fire or explode.

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Briefs
Photonics/Optics

On the Pulsed Laser Ablation of Metals and Semiconductors

The fundamental goal of this research is to build from a broad set of experimental and theoretical data to a narrower set of scaling relations, heuristics, and trends that provide a roadmap for understanding laser ablation across relevant regimes.

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Briefs
Photonics/Optics

Modeling Optical Time and Frequency Generation and Transfer Systems

The research was closely tied to work that was led by Nathan Newbury at NIST, and the principal goal was to support the development of advanced laser sources.

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Briefs
Weapons Systems

Navy Lasers, Railgun, and Hypervelocity Projectile: Background and Issues for Congress

Two key limitations that Navy surface ships currently have in defending themselves against ASCMs and ASBMs are limited depth of magazine and unfavorable cost exchange ratios.

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Briefs
Design

Coherent, Efficient and Practical Polariton Lasers Using a Designable Cavity

This research demonstrates for the first time a polariton laser with coherence reaching the intrinsic limit of single-mode matter-wave lasers.

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Articles
Sensors/Data Acquisition

Removing Aircraft Paint Using Laser-Equipped Robots

Hexavalent chromium is not a term frequently associated with engineers. Residents of Hinkley, California, however, know all about it. So do workers tasked with the labor-intensive process...

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Application Briefs
Imaging

Hybrid Thermal and Red Dot Sight

The advanced MIL-STD Mepro TIGON sight has arrived.

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Articles
Photonics/Optics

Low Distortion Titanium in Laser Powder Bed Fusion Systems

As the acceptance and application of additive manufacturing technology continues to evolve and grow, alloy selection will prove to be an important part of the development process.

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Briefs
Aerospace

Review of Recent Capability Improvements in Ultrashort Pulse Laser Sources: Closing the Relevancy Gap for Directed Energy Applications

The horizon for directed energy (DE) applications, using ultrashort pulse lasers (USPLs), is quickly approaching.

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Articles
Communications

Communicating Via Long-Distance Lasers

There’s a better way to use light to communicate over long distances: lasers.

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Briefs
Unmanned Systems

Counter-Directed Energy Weapons: Defense of Air Assets

The global proliferation of directed energy weapon technology presents a new threat for the United States.

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Application Briefs
Manufacturing & Prototyping

Laser Cleaner Robot

A robotized system automatically removes primers and other protective coatings from F-35 wing components.

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Articles
Sensors/Data Acquisition

Flash! Lidar’s Next Generation Arrives

Electronics engineers may best know what typically happens in an emerging, rapidly moving technology space. First, innovation: Start-ups bring new solutions amid rounds of funding. Next is the...

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Articles
Sensors/Data Acquisition

Velodyne Preps for Volume Lidar

Prior to 2020 there were allegedly 80 to 100 “lidar companies” in the world, depending on who in Silicon Valley was compiling the list. Such was the over-inflated bubble of autonomous mobility prior to...

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Application Briefs
Manufacturing & Prototyping

Laser Wire Additive Manufacturing System

ADDere printing not only a rocket combustion chamber and nozzle, but seamlessly merged them into one full size rocket thrust chamber assembly.

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Articles
Aerospace

New Diamond Super-Material Enhances Aircraft Survivability

A diamond composite is the ultimate optics and semiconducting super-material.

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Articles
RF & Microwave Electronics

Thermal Management for Directed Energy Weapons

Advanced thermal management is one of the keys to bringing directed energy weapons online and to allow them to operate at peak performance.

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Briefs
Aerospace

Experimental Design of a UCAV-Based High-Energy Laser Weapon

The day of the first deployable UCAV armed with a high-energy laser weapon is not far away.

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Briefs
Photonics/Optics

Bore Elevation and Azimuth Measurement System (Beams)

A newly developed laser apparatus verifies that the pointing accuracy requirement of a weapon’s fire control system is met.

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