TRUMPF will showcase its TruMicro series of ultrafast lasers and applications at Wesemibay 2026 from October 14 to 16, highlighting ultraviolet femtosecond lasers, energy output control, and a scalable platform. The series has been certified for volume production by several leading display and semiconductor manufacturers.
Researchers used superconducting circuits to fuse smaller photonic graph states into larger entangled states, offering a new approach to the large-scale entanglement resources needed for quantum computing.
JEDEC has released the JESD264 standard, setting new certification and reliability requirements for the emerging silicon photonics market. It is the first reliability standard for silicon photonics in AI networks.
Why we recommend it: The article explains that silicon photonic devices now have a dedicated reliability certification standard for the first time, helping understand the threshold for silicon photonics entering large-scale AI network deployment
Wavelength Optoelectronics announced on the evening of October 8 that it had received an indictment from the Third Branch of the Shanghai People's Procuratorate. After concluding its investigation, the Anti-Smuggling Bureau of Shanghai Customs transferred the case for prosecution, alleging that the company and four defendants, including Huang Shengdi, smuggled goods banned from import and export by the state. The amount involved is CNY 20.1085 million.
SCHOTT announced that CEO Torsten Derr will step down on October 31 for family reasons, with Stefan Brandl taking over on November 1. The article notes that the handover comes as SCHOTT faces performance pressure and a strategic transformation window.
LightPath Technologies has appointed Scott Payette as corporate vice president and general manager of its subsidiary G5 Infrared. Payette brings more than 30 years of experience in photonics and optical systems.
A Laser Focus World article explains that radial velocity spectroscopy is an important method for finding exoplanets, and that advanced echelle gratings can deliver high-precision spectroscopic measurements to support exoplanet detection.
A VR Tuoluo article notes that the Qwen AI Glasses N1 Pro, unveiled on September 22, adds high-precision eye tracking for visual question answering, object recognition and iris payment. The Wigain Flow full-color AI glasses from Qiuguo, planned for release later, also place an iris camera in the nose pads for identity verification. Eye data is emerging as a new data source for AI glasses to understand users.
PHIX Photonics Assembly, a photonic integrated circuit design, assembly and packaging service provider, has opened a cleanroom and office in Bozeman, Montana, bringing engineering support and production capabilities to the area.
The article argues that the core bottleneck keeping AR glasses from the mass market is not chips or software, but the micro-optical engine inside the temples. The micro-optical engine is the image-generation core of AR glasses, and its price remains high even after mass production, with most mass-produced models still selling for several thousand yuan or even more than 10,000 yuan.
At Meta Connect 2026, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta AI glasses will add hearing enhancement, certified by U.S. authorities, to compensate for mild to moderate hearing loss. Users who already own Ray-Ban Meta Audio or Gen 3 must pay a one-time fee of $149.99 to activate it.
Lumentum CEO Michael Hurlston said in an interview in Tokyo that about 70% of demand for some products will remain unmet next year, while other products still face a 30% demand gap through 2028. The company's 2029 capacity is almost fully booked, and it is ramping production at full speed.
Why we recommend it: The article provides specific demand gap percentages, directly reflecting the tightness of laser chips upstream in AI optical communications
Ziwei Yang and colleagues at the ARC Centre for Transformative Meta-Optical Systems at the Australian National University demonstrated a method of controlling nonlinear optical metasurface functionality with light, changing the traditional situation in which nonlinear metasurface functions are fixed after fabrication.
Why we recommend it: The article explains the approach of dynamically switching metasurface functions with light, offering reference value for reconfigurable meta-optics
The article analyzes the computing requirements of vision-only and LiDAR-fusion approaches in autonomous driving, arguing that computing demand is not simply determined by the number of sensors, but by how the perception system processes data and by its algorithm architecture.
After shooting Victoria Harbour fireworks with the iPhone 18 Pro Max, Leikeji concluded that Apple adjusted its imaging approach on the 18 Pro series launched on September 10, making the camera capabilities worth attention.
Nature Photonics published a paper online on October 9 in which researchers blended multiple self-assembled molecules to form high-entropy molecular contacts, improving hole transport and achieving efficient, stable perovskite solar cells.
Nature Photonics published a paper online on October 9 in which researchers modulated population transfer in helium atoms from the ground state to the metastable state by controlling the phase of interfering stimulated Raman pathways in the extreme ultraviolet (XUV) region.
Researchers have proposed the SF-PULSE lensless imaging method, which can monitor living cells over long periods without staining, and successfully imaged and reconstructed glioblastoma cells.
Why we recommend it: The article demonstrates an imaging approach that replaces lenses with computational reconstruction, offering reference value for low-cost microscopy
Lightwave reports a market forecast that the Ethernet optical transceiver market will grow 120% in 2026, driven by AI data center construction.
Lightwave broadband buildout roundup: Greenlight Networks is advancing fiber expansion in New Jersey, while Comcast, GoNetspeed, Optimum, Shentel, Spectrum and TDS Telecom are also expanding their networks.
The industrialization project for ultra-precision high-performance optical thin films by Huzhou Zhongteng Huasheng Optoelectronics has completed renovation in Shuanglin Town and entered trial production. At full capacity it can produce 1 million optical thin films per year, with projected annual sales revenue exceeding 40 million yuan.
Wuhan Yuanxi Photonics has completed an angel funding round worth tens of millions of yuan, with investors including CASSTAR and Hongshan Capital. Founded in late 2025, the company will focus on metasurface optical chip R&D and product introduction, targeting the two major markets of intelligent 3D sensing and data center optical interconnects.
According to reports, O-Film is the core optical supplier for the Huawei Pura 90 Pro and Pro Max, exclusively supplying the main camera and 200-megapixel periscope telephoto modules for both models. The Pro Max's external telephoto system is also supplied by O-Film, which has invested in dedicated equipment and restarted process validation for the project.
Ghost imaging replaces pixelated sensors with correlation measurements between structured illumination and a single-pixel detector. Researchers combined an optical frequency comb with deep learning to achieve faster ghost imaging with higher fidelity.
Why we recommend it: The article shows the combination of frequency comb illumination and AI reconstruction, a typical case of optics and AI working together in computational imaging
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) of the US Department of Transportation announced a modernization of what it calls outdated vehicle lighting standards.
An article by Haitun Jun continues the breakdown of Lumentum: EML secures the core profit base of pluggable optical transceivers, while high-power discrete lasers, UHP CW, bet on next-generation CPO/NPO architectures. With supply and demand severely mismatched for high-end laser chips, leading manufacturers with in-house capacity simultaneously benefit from price increases, long-term orders and rising gross margins.
A Laser Focus World article analyzes the surge in industry interest in MicroLED co-packaged optics (CPO) solutions, reflecting their multiple advantages, although technical challenges remain to be resolved.
Why we recommend it: The article reviews the advantages and challenges of MicroLED shifting from displays to optical interconnects, helping assess the maturity of this CPO route
LightCounting's latest report says growth in the Ethernet optical module market was originally expected to slow in 2026, but data from the first nine months defied expectations: cloud provider capital expenditures accelerated sharply from late January to early February and remained strong over the following six months. The full-year Ethernet optical module market is now forecast to grow 120%.
Why we recommend it: The original article explains that the forecast revision was driven by cloud provider capital expenditures, helping to gauge the scale of AI-driven optical module demand
A paper in Light: Science & Applications uses spatiotemporally resolved terahertz emission nanoscopy to observe ultrafast charge and spin currents in spintronic devices, offering detailed insight for next-generation technologies such as high-efficiency solar cells.
A paper in Light: Science & Applications proposes photonic thermal management for overhead transmission cables using high-thermal-conductivity radiative cooling materials, lowering cable temperatures to boost grid operating capacity.
A paper in Optica reports a wide-field coherent multidimensional spectroscopy microscope (2DESM) that uses ultrashort laser pulses to map the spatial distribution and temporal dynamics of electron interactions in thin materials.
The Lightwave podcast reviews the highlights of SCTE TechExpo26.
Laser Focus World launches a podcast series rounding up photonics news.
A paper in Science reports that researchers entangled a levitated glass nanosphere with an optical field in an optical trap, achieving the effect at room temperature and providing a new platform for macroscopic quantum mechanics research.
Why we recommend it: The original article reports entanglement of a macroscopic object with light at room temperature, relevant to optomechanics and quantum sensing
The spaceborne High-precision Main Greenhouse gas Imaging instrument (HMI) aboard the Pujiang-4 satellite began imaging on September 27 and downlinked its first data. The developer team led by Xiong Wei at the Anhui Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics (AIOFM) performed a preliminary assessment and found that the payload's functions and performance met design requirements. HMI uses an information modulation technique combining spatial imaging and spectral interferometry, acquiring hyperspectral data in a 520 km orbit with a 30 km swath, spatial resolution better than 400 m, and spectral resolution better than 0.125 nm. From the first data, the team preliminarily estimated the methane emission rate of the Bogatyr open-pit mine in Kazakhstan at about 27.52±1.70 tons per hour.
Why we recommend it: The original article gives HMI's swath, spatial resolution and spectral resolution, and uses first data to estimate methane emissions from a mining area, showing the on-orbit performance of the combined spatial imaging and spectral interferometry approach
Laser Focus World reports that the 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded for research revealing how and why homochirality arose.
Phys.org reports that the pink cricket ball was introduced for day-night matches more than a decade ago and approved for trials by the International Cricket Council this June; research shows its visibility under different lighting conditions is not always ideal.
photonicSENS received the VISION Award at VISION 2026 in Stuttgart for its plenoptic camera, which captures a full 2D image and metric depth information simultaneously.
ENGO has launched the engo Titanium AR smart glasses for road runners and cyclists, weighing 28.9 g and featuring adjustable 3D-printed titanium temples.
Infleqtion, in collaboration with Honeywell Aerospace and the University of California, Santa Barbara, has developed an integrated optical cavity that could help shrink quantum sensors to handheld size.