EDITORIAL

www.laser-journal.de LTJ 1 © 2012 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim

The engine of growth for the entire industry “The German optics and photonics industry has now reversed the trend of the financial and economic crisis”, reported the SPECTARIS professional association this summer. In the last year, some 1,000 German companies in the industry sector managed to increase sales by 19 percent, and the association is expecting further growth of almost ten percent in the current year. Strong exports are still chiefly responsible for this growth, impressively prov-ing the competitiveness of German products on the global stage. With full order books, the companies are currently looking to 2012 with optimism.

Laser technology, in particular, with the market segment of laser materials processing, has proven itself to be the engine of growth for the entire industry both nationally and internationally in the current year. The laser is today an indispensable tool in energy- and resource-efficient “green” production. Fiber and disk laser systems with electric-to-optical efficiencies of almost 30 percent are conquering ever new fields of application in production engineering and increasingly replacing conventional machine tools – their use in industrial production today means economy and quality.

Photonics West in San Francisco, the photonics industry’s grand exhibition, will reveal key new innovations in the field of laser technology in January 2012. One area of the fair and the simultaneous scholarly conference will focus on this year is the use of light to solve important future issues in the areas of energy and the environment – GREEN PHOTONICS. The selection of topics here ranges from the establishment of novel laser-based processes in the manufacture of LEDs and PV cells via innovative nanooptics for complete control of light propagation all the way to the possibility of using laser fusion as an energy source of the future.

The potential for further growth in the industry is there – there is no doubt that optics and photonics will be able to deliver key contributions to solving urgent issues in cutting-edge fields. However, one challenge of the near future which can already be seen will be the lack of specialists – and this is something that concerns all of us. Photonik Campus Deutschland, the joint initiative established by the government, associations, business and science, is therefore all the more to be welcomed, and pursues the goal of getting future talents into all training levels. It will help to raise the profile of the industry among graduates. The Fraun-hofer-Gesellschaft and its Light&Surfaces group is a partner to this initiative and is available as a contact for interest parties at its group office.

Yours sincerely,

Prof. Dr. Andreas TünnermannDirector of the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering, Jena, Germanywww.iof.fraunhofer.de

Prof. Dr. Andreas Tünnermann, Director of the Fraunhofer IOF

Meet the Editors

Photonics West 201221–26 January 2012San Francisco, California, USA

Wiley-Blackwell, Booth #428