Optica is a professional society of individuals and companies with an interest in optics and photonics. It publishes journals, organizes conferences and exhibitions, and carries out charitable activities. It currently has about 488,000 customers in 183 countries, including nearly 300 companies.
Optics Letters is a biweekly peer-reviewed scientific journal published by Optica. It was established in July 1977. The editor-in-chief is Miguel Alonso. The journal covers all topics pertaining to optics and photonics. Publishing formats are short and rapid communications, with articles being limited to four journal pages.
Applied Optics is a peer-reviewed scientific journal published by Optica three times a month. It was established in 1962 with John N. Howard as founding editor-in-chief and Patricia Wakeling as Managing Editor. Wakeling worked on the journal for over three decades. The editor-in-chief is Gisele Bennett. The journal covers all aspects of optics, photonics, imaging, and sensing. According to the Journal Citation Reports, the journal has a 2021 impact factor of 1.905.
Sir Peter Leonard Knight is a British physicist, professor of quantum optics and senior research investigator at Imperial College London, and principal of the Kavli Royal Society International Centre. He is a leading academic in the field of quantum optics and is the recipient of several major awards including the Royal Medal from the Royal Society and the Thomas Young Medal and Prize from the Institute of Physics. He is a former president of the Institute of Physics and Optica, the first non North American-based person to take the position.
Chinese Optics Letters is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal published by Optica. Established in 2003, it covers optics research originating in the People's Republic of China as well as coverage from groups outside the country.
Joseph Henry Eberly is a physicist who holds the positions of Andrew Carnegie Professor of Physics and Astronomy and Professor of Optics at the University of Rochester.
Michal Lipson is an American physicist known for her work on silicon photonics. A member of the National Academy of Sciences since 2019, Lipson was named a 2010 MacArthur Fellow for contributions to silicon photonics especially towards enabling GHz silicon active devices. Until 2014, she was the Given Foundation Professor of Engineering at Cornell University in the school of electrical and computer engineering and a member of the Kavli Institute for Nanoscience at Cornell. She is now the Eugene Higgins Professor of Electrical Engineering at Columbia University. In 2009 she co-founded the company PicoLuz, which develops and commercializes silicon nanophotonics technologies. In 2019, she co-founded Voyant Photonics, which develops next generation lidar technology based on silicon photonics. In 2020 Lipson was elected the 2021 vice president of Optica, and serves as the Optica president in 2023.
Jean M. Bennett (1930–2008) was the first woman president of The Optical Society in 1986.
The Journal of the Optical Society of America is a peer-reviewed scientific journal of optics, published by Optica. It was established in 1917 and in 1984 was split into two parts, A and B.
James Clair Wyant was a professor at the College of Optical Sciences at the University of Arizona where he was Director (1999–2005) and Dean (2005–2012). He received a B.S. in physics from Case Western Reserve University and M.S. and Ph.D. in optics from the Institute of Optics at the University of Rochester.
Biomedical Optics Express is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal published by Optica. The journal's scope encompasses fundamental research and technology development of optics applied to biomedical studies and clinical applications. The founding and first editor-in-chief is Joseph A. Izatt. The current editor-in-chief is Ruikang (Ricky) Wang at the University of Washington, USA.
Optica is an optical design program used for the design and analysis of both imaging and illumination systems. It works by ray tracing the propagation of rays through an optical system. It performs polarization ray-tracing, non-sequential ray-tracing, energy calculations, and optimization of optical systems in three-dimensional space. It also performs symbolic modeling of optical systems, diffraction, interference, wave-front, and Gaussian beam propagation calculations. In addition to conducting simulations of optical designs, Optica is used by scientists to create illustrations of the simulated results in publications. Some examples of Optica being used in simulations and illustrations include holography, x-ray optics, spectrometers, Cerenkov radiation, microwave optics, nonlinear optics, scattering, camera design, extreme ultraviolet lithography simulations, telescope optics, laser design, ultrashort pulse lasers, eye models, solar concentrators and Ring Imaging CHerenkov (RICH) particle detectors.
Optica is a monthly peer-reviewed open access scientific journal published by Optica. It covers the entire spectrum of theoretical and applied optics and photonics. It was established in July 2014. The founding editor-in-chief was Alexander Gaeta.
Anurag Sharma is an Indian physicist and a professor at the department of physics of the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. He is known for his pioneering researches on optoelectronics and optical communications and is an elected fellow of all the three major Indian science academies viz. Indian Academy of Sciences, Indian National Science Academy and National Academy of Sciences, India as well as Indian National Academy of Engineering. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards for his contributions to Engineering Sciences in 1998.
Advances in Optics and Photonics is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal published by Optica. It covers review articles and multimedia tutorials on significant advances in optics and photonics. Its editor-in-chief is Guifang Li.
The Journal of Near Infrared Spectroscopy is a bimonthly peer-reviewed scientific journal published by SAGE Publishing in partnership with Optica. It was established in 1993 and covers near-infrared spectroscopy and its applications, with subtopics including chemometrics, chemical imaging, fiber optics, instrumentation and diffuse reflection. Its editor-in-chief is Roger Meder.
Gabriel Popescu was an American optical engineer, who was the William L. Everitt Distinguished Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He was best known for his work on biomedical optics and quantitative phase-contrast microscopy.
Joseph Rosen is the Benjamin H. Swig Professor in Optoelectronics at the School of Electrical & Computer Engineering of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel.
