Category Archives: Components

An interview with Kathleen Maiman

Twelve years after the 40th anniversary of the laser, we are celebrating its 50th. That’s only possible because the 40th anniversary was a Bell Labs’ invention based on the date of the now famous Physical Review paper describing the theory of “Infrared and optical masers”.
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Rewriting the history of the laser

Winston Churchill famously said that history is written by the victors. In the case of the laser it might be more accurate to say that history was written by those with the best public relations team.
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ECOC 2009: Technology, money, people

Here’s a copy of my leader article in the ECOC magazine: And so to Vienna for the 35th year of ECOC, which is billed — quite rightly in my view — as the leading optical networking event in Europe. Personal highlights from last year included the post-deadline paper from Alcatel-Lucent and Draka, which reported 40 [...]
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From the show floor: CIP

This article originally appeared on the fibresystems.org blog. If there’s one company I look forward to talking to, it’s the UK’s Centre for Integrated Photonics (CIP), because they always seem to have something interesting going on. At ECOC last September, CIP wowed attendees with its demonstration of a 32-channel multi-wavelength laser. The component contained two 16-channel [...]
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Intel's silicon detector is a runaway success

Intel is claiming another first for silicon photonics, with an avalanche photodiode that outperforms equivalent devices.
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100G backers divided on best approach

The industry is not united behind DP-QPSK as the modulation format of choice for 100 Gbit/s transport.
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Vendors unite to develop next generation Ethernet

This article originally appeared in the July/August 2008 issue of FibreSystems Europe magazine. The standardization of higher data rates is vital if Ethernet is to continue as a ubiquitous end-to-end protocol. Pauline Rigby finds out how standards are progressing. Ethernet has traditionally evolved in multiples of 10, from the first successful commercial version of Ethernet at 10 [...]
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Cool electronics: just add water

This article originally appeared on fibresystem.org. We’ve all been taught that electronics and water don’t mix, but researchers at IBM’s Zurich Research Laboratory say that doesn’t have to be the case. In fact, they are proposing that tiny rivers of water be used to cool three-dimensional stacks of silicon chips in future generations of server processors [...]
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