Lasers, Light Sources and Sensors

The recent evolution of the optical technology global scenario, such as the progress in optical modeling and numerical techniques, have allowed extraordinary advances, mainly over the past decade, in the field of Lasers, Light Sources and Sensors. The development of novel optical sources has paved the way for promising experimental and theoretical results, with direct applications in the field of material processing, industrial applications, biological material imaging, medical therapy, etc. This favorable technological background originated from the design/development of novel materials, components, devices, and systems based on different solutions in bulk, fiber, and integrated optics. As an example, several host materials have been synthesized and activated for the fabrication of novel optical sources, in both conventional and novel wavelength ranges such as medium infrared and terahertz. Rare-earth ions such as neodymium, praseodymium, holmium, ytterbium, thulium, and erbium have been included for doping/codoping different host materials such as glass oxides, germanate, fluorides, fluoroindate, chalcogenide, tellurite, glass ceramics, crystalline, organics, etc. or in molecular complexes. Moreover, low-cost, available on the market broadband/tunable optical sources such as quantum cascade lasers and microstructured/multicore fibers have enabled novel applications in the field of high power, high beam quality/high brilliance light sources, and high-performance amplifiers. The development of resonant optical microresonators (such as microrings, microdisks, microspheres, microbubbles) promises miniaturized optical sources and novel sensing systems, exploiting microstructured optical fibers, ad hoc fluorescent probes, luminescent labels, and optical detectors to perform medical diagnosis, environment and earth atmosphere monitoring, and optical remote sensing.

The aim of the Section "Lasers, Light Sources and Sensors" is to promote publications of the most promising experimental and theoretical results from the worldwide research community including but not limited to topics pertaining to rare-earth-doped-fiber lasers, continuous wave and pulsed lasers, laser amplifiers, ultrafast pulse lasers, nonlinear optics for optical pulse forming, continuous-wave generation, laser micro/nanofabrication, optical fiber and integrated optical sensors, laser production methodologies and applications, laser processing, laser ablation, fiber sensors, optical sensing, optical fiber grating sensing, microfluidic circuits for sensing, novel materials and technologies for optical sources, organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), and so on.