March 2015 Issue
Feature Articles
Scaling Optical Fiber Networks: Challenges and Solutions
Increases in consumer demand and machine-to-machine network traffic are creating big challenges for letting optical communications continue to scale cost-effectively. Meeting those demands will require new forms of optical parallelism.
by Peter J. WinzerROADMs: Reconfigurable Optics for Agile Networks
Flexible, dynamic wavelength routing has already helped drive vast gains in optical network capacity—and the capabilities of wavelength routing’s core element, the ROADM, continue to evolve.
by Mark D. Feuer and Sheryl L. WoodwardLIGO: Finally Poised to Catch Elusive Gravitational Waves?
After a seven-year upgrade project incorporating cutting-edge lasers and optics, the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory could start directly detecting gravitational waves as early as next year.
by Thomas F. Carruthers and David H. ReitzeDepartments and Columns
Scatterings
Headliners, policy news, industry updates and book reviews.
OFC 2015: Global Network Innovators
The Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exposition will take place this month in Los Angeles, California (USA). Optics & Photonics News spoke with plenary speakers Neal S. Bergano, Pradeep Sindhu and Kevin Slavin about the future of optical fiber communications.
Advances in All-Optical Circuits
New photonic temporal integrators could push past some of the processing-speed limitations of electronic approaches.
Making Optics Standards Global
An ISO technical committee moves to put the “international” into standards for the optics industry.
Sacred Sun
Optical phenomena created by ice crystals and sunlight have inspired visions used by many, from prophets to flag designers to UFO skeptics.
Charles Hard Townes
OSA lost a stellar member when Charles Hard Townes passed away. His most notable achievements were inventing and demonstrating the maser and then outlining the principles for an optical maser—the laser, a technology that has revolutionized the world.
![An artist’s rendering of a pulse of circularly polarized light hitting a 2D semiconductor. [Illustration by S. Alvey / University of Michigan]](https://opnmedia.blob.core.windows.net/$web/opn/media/images/articles/2025/0125/departments/202501-cover-web.jpg?ext=.jpg)
