Enabling high-performance optical fabrication with sub-aperture finishing and stitching interferometry

Commercially available sub-aperture polishing and measurement technologies have changed the landscape of precision optics manufacturing. Such developments have enabled the production of higher precision and more complex optics with increasingly difficult figure requirements. Magnetorheological Finishing (MRF®) is a production-proven, deterministic sub-aperture finishing method that overcomes many limitations of traditional polishing. Sub-aperture Stitching Interferometers (SSI®) extend the effective aperture, dynamic range, and accuracy of phase measuring interferometers by combining novel software and hardware. QED has pioneered these finishing and metrology techniques over the past decade. Some of the latest developments on how MRF and stitching interferometry may be combined to enable cost effective manufacturing of a wide range of precision optical surfaces will be presented. Some interesting aspects of growing a business from a university spin-off to a wholly owned subsidiary of a publicly traded company will also be covered.

What happens in New England stays in New England. Sometimes.

This after dinner talk will consist of a much abbreviated set of colloquial vignettes and true optical systems engineering and managerial take-always, based on embellished fact. Names & situations may have been intentionally changed to make a point, to avoid liable, and to protect the not-so-innocent. From the Navy through the Three Little Pigs, some details have, until now, generally remained secret, as they were rather embarrassing. Others, like many of the lessons Steve Benton taught us, just plain deserve restatement. We’ll highlight some of these universal lessons-learned, in ways intended to help us all.

Modern Atomic Engineering: Building Better Optoelectronics from the Atoms Up

Joint Meeting with Boston Chapter, LEOS

The 20th century has seen a variety of major discoveries in science and technology, especially in the area of compound semiconductors, quantum devices, and nanotechnology.  Nanoscale optoelectronics is a key area within nanotechnology, where modern design and fabrication tools allow us to realize compact devices with better efficiency and functionality than ever before.  Our optoelectronic systems, like Natural systems, are inherently nanoscale at their heart, yet whereas nature has to use ions and Classical physics , we can use electrons and Quantum physics. Electrons in semiconductors can be 5 orders of magnitude lighter and 8 orders of magnitude faster than ions, and, because of this, we can when we need to, detect electrons and photons on time scales of 1 nanosecond and less.

This talk will focus on recent advances in the atomic engineering of III-V semiconductor optoelectronic materials for a variety of applications important to everyday activities.  These applications span many areas, including industrial quality control, public health and safety, and telecommunications.  While our eyes only access a narrow part of the electromagnetic spectrum, some important applications require us to emit and/or detect at frequencies of light outside the visible.  In some cases we need to see a single photon clearly, and in other cases we need high power lasers that emit over 1021 photons per second.

In my talk, I will discuss problems and solutions relative to demonstrating devices spanning from ultraviolet (UV) to THz frequencies.  UV devices (emitters and detectors) will be discussed first, followed by infrared lasers and cameras.  In all cases, early attempts to develop these devices were limited by fundamental physical limitations such as material purity and size.  Many of these limitations were overcome by moving towards lower dimensional “quantum well” and even smaller “quantum dot” architectures.  It will be shown how intricate and subtle modern atomic engineering can be, and how, with quantum engineering, we can improve device performance tremendously.

After having covered modern optoelectronics, I will also talk about some of the technological tools and tricks that go into making the best possible devices and obtaining world record performances.  This includes paying meticulous attention to material growth, material characterization, device fabrication, and system demonstration.

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Elastic Light Scattering Spectroscopy For The Detection Of Pre-Cancer

Optical spectroscopy mediated by fiber-optic probes can be used to perform noninvasive, or minimally-invasive, real-time assessment of tissue pathology in-situ.  The method of elastic-scattering spectroscopy (ESS) is sensitive to the sub-cellular architectural changes, such as nuclear grade and nuclear to cytoplasm ratio, mitochondrial size and density, etc., which correlate with features used by pathologists when performing histological assessment.  The ESS method senses those morphology changes without actually imaging the microscopic structure.  Clinical demonstrations of ESS have been conducted in a variety of organ sites, with promising, and larger-scale clinical studies are now ongoing.  We have recently developed an analytical model that extracts, from the ESS spectra, the underlying physical correlates of the tissue relating to disease.