News at RP Photonics Consulting

In late 2008, the Encyclopedia of Laser Physics and Technology will appear as a print version, published via Wiley-VCH. However, the online version on the RP Photonics website will stay freely available ("open access") for any foreseeable future.
2008-01-15: At SPIE Press, the new Field Guide to Lasers, authored by Dr. Paschotta, is now available. This compact book describes the basic principles of lasers and amplifiers, discusses the numerous important properties of laser crystals, methods of pulse generation and wavelength tuning, and laser noise. Practitioners can also gain valuable insight from remarks on laser safety and obtain new ideas about how to make the laser development process more efficient.
2007-11-26: R. Paschotta published the paper "Power scalability as a precise concept for the evaluation of laser architectures" in the open-access repository arXiv.org, see arXiv:0711.3987v1. For the first time, a solid definition of power scaling and scalability is given.
2006-10-10: Being a bit more than two years old, the Encyclopedia of Laser Physics and Technology has now got as many as 500 technical articles. Number 500 is on slab lasers.
There is a new page addressing common questions and concerns related to the use of technical consulting services. You can see that and how RP Photonics cares about its customers' requirements.
In July 2006, RP Photonics has entered the blogosphere with the new Photonics Spotlight, presenting interesting short articles on photonics and laser technology. It also has an RSS feed. See also the Photonics Quiz.
Since February 2006, manufacturers and distributors of photonics products can do advertising in the Encyclopedia of Laser Physics and Technology, with banners at the side of all encyclopedia articles, or with links on the pages of certain encyclopedia articles.

Other News

For German companies and university-type institutions: the BMBF has recently announced that research in the area "Novel Optics - Neuartige optische Wirkprinzipien" can be supported. RP Photonics offers both the collaboration in projects and help with funding applications.
The discipline of photonics is given increase weight in Brussels. The European Union creates a new unit fully dedicated to photonics, and the 7^th Framework Programme (FP7) has a lot to offer for projects in photonics. See the website of the European Technology Platform Photonics21 for more details.