Luminescent concentrators are parallelepipeds of luminescent material polished on all sides. The light is confined inside the structure and reaches the edges of the parallelepiped with high power density. The use of LEDs as the pump source provides robustness and cost effectiveness for these new sources that combine power and brightness. The presentation will explain the basic principles of LED pumped luminescent concentrators and describe two types of applications : laser pumping and illumination for imaging.

While acoustic emissions are a method for e. g. the monitoring of bridges or for the assessment of the integrity of tanks, we wanted to investigate them for a further field of application. We tested AEs for the monitoring and assessment of a high-quality finishing process for optical components, the polishing of lenses. This process is - even though - it is of incalculable importance for nearly every optical component still a process which is commonly considered as some kind of black magic. With our research, we want to deliver an insight in this process with interacting mechanical and chemical processes. We want to present a method for the in-situ evaluation of a polishing process.

We use hyperspectral imaging to identify the plastic types constituting mixtures of microplastics directly in water. For the current study we used known microplastics made by milling original pristine plastic sheets and mixed them in water. Using database information and spectral information measured on those pristine plastic we created a decision table enabling the identification. This technique is used under these conditions paving a way towards on-field and in-line measurements.

We report on a stabilized single-frequency Brillouin fiber laser operating at 1.06 µm by means of a passive highly nonlinear fiber ring cavity combined with a phase-locking loop scheme. We show significant linewidth narrowing (below 1-kHz) as well as frequency noise reduction compared to that of the initial pump in our mode-hop free Brillouin fiber laser.

Current 2D windshield head-up displays can lead to driver distractions due to a shift of gaze from the road towards a small area of the windshield. Customizable mixed reality real-time head-up displays can increase safety in transportation due to the holographic road obstacles being aligned with the road scene. Based on accelerated parallel processing algorithms, a 4K spatial light modulator, virtual Gabor lenses and a He-Ne laser, 3D holographic road signs appear within 1.15 seconds in the driver’s gaze on the road.