Optics and Photonics: Essential Technologies for our Nation

Report published: 2012

Key recommendation: The US government, and private industry in combination with academia, need to invent technologies for the next factor-of-100 cost-effective capacity increase in long-haul, metropolitan, and local-area optical networks.

The optics and photonics community needs to educate funding agencies, and information and entertainment providers, to the looming roadblock that will interfere with meeting the growing needs for network capacity and flexibility. There is a need to champion collaborative efforts, including consortia of companies, to find new technology - transmisison, amplification, and off/on and switching - to carry and route at least another factor-of-100 capacity in information over the next 10 years.

This key recommendation leads directly to the first grand challenge question: how can the U.S. optics and photonics community invent technologies for the next factor-of-100 cost-effective capacity increases in optical networks?

Full report: Optics and Photonics: Essential Technologies for our Nation

Summary report: Innovations in Optics and Photonics: Enabling Technology for our Future