Band 6, Heft 1

It seems very likely that for first time four companies will exceed the revenue of $1 billion in 2016. This comes along with substantial changes in the market for lasers and laser systems. The article analyzes some of the changes and looks at the individual success strategies of the major players in these markets.

High-power light-emitting diodes have successfully found their way into projection applications. Owing to their long lifetime, small size, and easy electrical drive, they are getting more and more attractive for use in various kinds of projectors. The challenge to achieve higher brightness levels lies in the étendue limitation, which is determined mainly by the size of the microdisplay inside the projection system. In this paper, a new approach is presented to increase the output flux of LED-based projectors by enhancing the luminance of converted green LEDs.

In this paper, we introduce a novel homogeneity criterion based on a just noticeable difference (JND) estimation model. An extensive study is presented to validate the proposed criterion exhibiting an unprecedented agreement between data and methodology. Current criteria are reviewed and compared to the proposed criterion.

This paper describes a method for designing an ultraviolet (UV) projection lens for microlithography. Our approach for meeting this objective is to use a starting design automatically obtained by the DSEARCH feature in the SYNOPSYS™ lens design program. We describe the steps for getting a desired starting point for the projection lens and discuss optimization problems unique to this system, where the two parts of the projection lens are designed independently.

Sensor resolution of 3D time-of-flight (ToF) outdoor-capable cameras is strongly limited because of its large pixel dimensions. Computational imaging permits enhancement of the optical system’s resolving power without changing physical sensor properties. Super-resolution (SR) algorithms superimpose several sub-pixel-shifted low-resolution (LR) images to overcome the system’s limited spatial sampling rate. In this paper, we propose a novel opto-mechanical system to implement sub-pixel shifts by moving an optical lens. This method is more flexible in terms of implementing SR techniques than current sensor-shift approaches. In addition, we describe a SR observation model that has been optimized for the use of LR 3D ToF cameras. A state-of-the-art iteratively reweighted minimization algorithm executes the SR process. It is proven that our method achieves nearly the same resolution increase as if the pixel area would be halved physically. Resolution enhancement is measured objectively for amplitude images of a static object scene.

We implemented an interferometric configuration capable of following a phase variation in time. By using a pixelated polarization camera, the system is able to retrieve the phase information instantaneously avoiding the usage of moving components and the necessity of an extra replication method attached at the output of the interferometer. Taking into account the temporal stability obtained from the system, a spatial-temporal phase demodulation algorithm can be implemented on frequency domain for the dynamic phase measurement. Spatial resolution is analyzed experimentally using a USAF pattern, and dynamic phase measurements were done on air and water medium variations due to a jet flame and a living fish as a biological sample, respectively.