OPINION: THE OPTICAL SOCIETY
One hundred years of innovation
The Optical Society (OSA) is celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2016. Electro Optics spoke to Dr Gregory Quarles, chief scientist at OSA, on 100 years of optics and photonics, and what the next 100 years holds for the industry
What have been the most important discoveries in photonics over the last 100 years?
The invention of the laser is up there as one of the greatest achievements in the field of photonics over the last 100 years. Another big discovery in terms of impacting everyday life is high-speed internet. Fibre optic communication is a tremendous enhancement to life as we know it.
Non-invasive medical imaging techniques have come a long way in 100 years, whether that’s microscopy, endoscopy or other techniques using visible light, x-rays or other forms of radiation. These techniques have led to us living longer and healthier lives, as doctors can diagnose conditions without having to resort to intrusive surgery.
What technologies using photonics will emerge over the next 100 years? In the next 100 years, devices that fall within the broad category of Internet of Things (IoT) are really going to play a role in our lives that we probably can’t even envision fully at this point, all enabled by optics and photonics. There are going to be a lot of
14 ELECTRO OPTICS l FEBRUARY 2016
sociological impacts resulting from IoT connectivity. From a scientific standpoint, IoT is starting to have limited visibility today; it will change drastically in the next 100 years. There will be advances in optical communication and the speed at which large amounts of data can be moved. There’s a lot of work under way deploying greater than 5G Ethernet backbone; there’s a line laid between Paris and Frankfurt experimenting with 100G. In the next 100 years we’ve got to surpass that 100G mark, as well as having larger server farms powered by solar and other renewable resources. Many of the telecommunication groups that will be present at the OFC conference in March in Anaheim, California are really looking at what has to happen from an optics and photonics and an electronics standpoint for networks to be able to handle large amounts of data.
One of the challenges is to integrate photonic components onboard electronic chips. There’s work taking place in the EU as part of Horizon
In the next
100 years we’ve got to surpass that 100G mark
2020, Asia, and in the US through the National Photonics Initiative on building photonics-based integrated circuits to get faster computer chips and overcome some of the bottlenecks currently present in electronic ICs. The Aim Photonics initiative, a public-private partnership in the US, looks to give industry, government and academia access to photonic integrated circuit manufacturing infrastructure. The OSA is exploring this technology through some of its incubator meetings and conferences, and a lot of researchers are publishing potential component-based solutions to move towards an all photonics-based application. Another emerging field that will become more prominent in
the next 50 to 100 years is going to be user-enabled biomedical diagnostics. Wearable technology is now available that can monitor heart rate and other physiological characteristics. In the future, there are going to be opportunities to use biosensors built into wearable devices in telemedicine applications. We’re seeing a lot of basic research published in
➤ @electrooptics |
www.electrooptics.com
alphaspirit/
Shutterstock.com
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56