Dr. Magruder will share details about her team’s work developing ATL24, a space laser technology to map mysterious coastal areas known as the nearshore—the space between the shoreline and deeper waters. Bathymetric LiDAR uses spaceborne laser scanning to measure underwater terrain, because its green wavelength photon-counting LiDAR signal can penetrate the water column to provide both the water surface height and seafloor depth (up to ~50 meters) from 300 miles away. ATL stands for Advanced Topographic Laser Altimeter (ATLAS) system, which is the only instrument aboard the Ice, Cloud, and Land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2). This satellite is part of NASA’s Earth Observing System for measuring ice sheet elevation and sea ice thickness, as well as land topography, vegetation characteristics, and clouds. After ICESat-2 launched, researchers developed algorithms, tools, and workflows to extract bathymetric data, but much of the source code, tools, and datasets wasn’t made public. To address this, the team began work in 2022 on ICESat-2 bathymetric data product known as ATL24. Their work has a range of applications for coastal and marine science management, nearshore habitat research, as well as marine navigation and engineering.

Laser power or energy output directly affects a system’s ability to perform reliable and correctly. Consequently, accurately measuring a laser’s output is fundamental to ensuring that it performs reliably and correctly — from when the laser is first manufactured to its integration into a system, and to its final application.

In this session, we discuss when and why absolute calibration accuracy matters (and when it doesn’t). Mark Slutzki shares best practices for maximizing the accuracy of readings, and he provides an overview of how to understand a power meter’s accuracy specifications and where the numbers come from.

AR/VR optical systems have been in development for decades and still present new challenges to product design teams. Whether it is the quest for lighter weight, wider field of view, lower power consumption, or higher transmission with better resolution, there is a vast engineering trade space requiring exploration in the design of these types of systems. With so many competing design demands, the importance of accurate simulation of performance cannot be overstated. The evolution of technology has magnified the need for better and more realistic modeling to predict design performance. In this presentation, we show how engineers can accelerate the development of realistic models for simulation and prediction of real-world device behavior. Finally, we show an example of using those tools to optimize product performance in an AR display device.

Fused fiber couplers remain the workhorse of optical signal splitting, combining, and monitoring - critical functions across telecommunications, industrial, medical, and defense applications. At G&H, we’ve refined this technology for decades, achieving low loss, high power handling, and wavelength flexibility. But the real story lies in how fused couplers provide the building blocks for today’s complex fiber optic modules. By leveraging our vertical integration - from specialty fiber and precision couplers through to amplifier modules and laser subsystems - we enable compact, rugged solutions tailored to customer requirements. This talk will explore the performance characteristics of advanced fused couplers, show how they transition into modular architectures, and share case studies where integration has reduced footprint, improved reliability, and accelerated time-to-market for OEMs.

High-precision laser processing is essential for manufacturing critical components in diverse applications ranging from medical device and electronics production to semiconductor fabrication. Cost-effective, high-quality production requires equipment with exceptional precision and dynamics. Even when using advanced controls and precision components, optimizing motion systems for laser beam guidance remains a challenge. Fully optimizing precision machines normally requires a large time investment and detailed knowledge of underlying control principles and algorithms. 

This presentation introduces optimization tools and strategies that enable machine builders to maximize hardware performance, resulting in increased throughput without compromised quality or yield. These automated strategies facilitate comprehensive system optimization (encompassing mechanical hardware, electrical components and controller parameters) without requiring in-depth knowledge of underlying technologies or significant time investment. We will discuss optimization examples for step-and-settle and high-frequency circle motion used in laser drilling applications, plus examples for contour motion used in cutting. 

By optimizing motion hardware for specific laser processing objectives, users may achieve significant improvement in part cycle time while maintaining output quality. These benefits apply to any laser processing application requiring precise motion from both linear and rotary servo stages, as well as galvanometer-based laser scan heads.

Metasurfaces provide an almost unlimited toolbox to design the wavefront of light in search of new phenomena and applications.   Using Matrix Fourier optics we have designed the spatial distribution of Jones matrices to achieve polarization sensitive imaging, a new type of holography with control of polarization in the far-field and Mueller matrix imaging.  Polarization metaoptics has led to an error-free biometric authentication system for smartphones. I will also present recent developments in large area metalenses for astrophysics as well as high efficiency broadband metalenses. I will conclude with our recent work on bilayer free-standing metasurfaces and the new functionalities that they enable.