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Andreas Thoss
THOSS Media GmbH

Andreas ThossContributing Editor Andreas Thoss, Ph.D., is a laser physicist, founder of THOSS Media, and a contributing editor to Photonics Spectra. He has been writing and editing technical texts, with a focus on the field of photonics, for two decades.

Articles
By Andreas Thoss

October 2025
Photonics in Transition: Strategic Insights from the Global Photonics Economic Forum
With most of northern Europe already gray and wet, early October still felt like summer on Spain’s Costa del Sol. That warmth seemed to match the mood at the Global Photonics Economic Forum...
October 2025
Europe Must Play to Its Strengths
Europe’s photonics sector is at a crossroads. It continues to lead globally in high-performance optics, precision engineering, and industrial photonics — but faces stiff competition from...
July 2025
In Uncertain Times, LASER World of PHOTONICS Brings Good News from the Community
There’s no doubt that the world is in turmoil. High tariffs are threatening global trade, missiles are flying through the air, and climate change is no longer a looming threat — it is our...
July 2025
A Laser Spark Plug Saves Fuel and Reduces Emissions
Many of us will recall the science fiction comics of the 1970s, when lasers were imagined for everything from free-space communications to rocket propulsion. Some of these ideas have become reality...
June 2025
Expert Insights: Laser Fusion Bears Promising Opportunities for Photonics
With the demand of global electricity expected to double by 2045, fusion energy is gaining strategic importance as a sustainable, carbon-free power source. Among the various approaches, laser-driven...
June 2025
Leibinger Awards 2025: A Celebration of Laser Science and Time Itself
On June 20, just days before the LASER World of PHOTONICS show opens its doors in Munich, the global laser community will gather once again in Ditzingen, Germany, for one of the most prestigious...
May 2025
PCSELs May Redefine Diode Lasers in Industry and Lidar
The concept of diode lasers was born early in the age of laser technology and has come a long way. From a fragile, liquid nitrogen-cooled laboratory device, it has evolved into an integrated, highly...
March 2025
Laser Communication Terminals Spark a Silent Revolution
In September 2024, the New York Times published a report on a spectacular flight by a SpaceX capsule carrying two private astronauts. The crew performed the first-ever commercial spacewalk, among a...
February 2025
Photonics’ “Semiconductorization” Stands Out Among Trends at Photonics West 2025
It was surprising how far-removed Washington and political discussions appeared to be from this meeting of photonics experts from all around the world. Indeed, those who lost their travel grants on...
January 2025
A Small Photon Source Promises to Enhance Quantum Communication
In recent years, quantum computers have made headlines, while quantum communication solutions have made it to markets. Simple solutions, such as quantum random number generators, have been...
January 2025
Microprocessing Is Ready for More
Courtesy of Amplitude Laser. Laser microprocessing has been on the rise for decades. While technological roadblocks have influenced this progression, a close look at these roadblocks reveals that...
January 2025
About Lasers and a Dinosaur
If you look at the photonics landscape, you will see some well-known hotspots: There is of course Jena (my hometown) in Germany; Rochester, N.Y., and Tucson, Ariz., in the U.S.; and Eindhoven in the...
December 2024
Photonics 2025: Trends, Challenges, and Innovations
The year 2025 is only just now upon us, but it is already facing many concerns: Politics will change (America) or face instability (Europe), and the threat of various conflicts will alter supply...
October 2024
About Lasers and a Dinosaur
Lithuania is a small country, roughly twice the size of the State of Maryland, and with a population of 2.9 million. Its status as a photonics hotbed, especially in ultrashort pulsed laser...
August 2024
Lasers Accelerate the Application of Secondary Sources, Among Others
For many years, secondary sources were just a vision held by scientists. Eventually, their progress was driven by the goal to build a particle accelerator, such as the Large Hadron Collider in a...
August 2024
How to Build a Photonic Quantum Computer
Expectations for quantum computers are high: They are supposed to outperform digital computers and pave the way for solutions that go far beyond the capabilities that artificial intelligence already...
May 2024
Fine and Fast Metal Printing Meets Industrial Challenges in 3D
Two laser-based methods have taken precedence in additive manufacturing during the past several decades. In the first, the laser builds a larger 3D structure out of 2D contours in a powder bed. In...
May 2024
The Winds of Change Are Blowing Through the Photonics Industry
Every even year, the industrial laser community meets in the medieval city of Aachen, Germany, for the International Laser Technology Congress AKL. The three-day event convened 525 participants and...
April 2024
Intech 2024: AI Arrives on the Shop Floor
INTECH, the annual in-house trade show of laser pioneer TRUMPF, is always an impressive event. This year, TRUMPF was prepared to welcome 3000 guests — many of them customers — to its...
April 2024
Photonics West 2024: Notable Trends and an Excursion
On February 1, the biggest North American photonics convention concluded. It was busier than ever, at over 24,000 registered attendees. Guests once again enjoyed a great reunion for the...
February 2024
Photonics West 2024: Notable Trends and an Excursion
On February 1, the biggest North American photonics convention concluded. It was busier than ever, with over 24,000 registered attendees. Guests once again enjoyed a great reunion for the...
February 2024
Taking Quantum Encryption into Orbit
Entanglement quantum key distribution (QKD) is a fundamental principle for securing future communication networks. For this type of QKD, entangled photons are generated and sent to two separate...
February 2024
Photonics Reshapes the Future of Computing
Moore’s law has been challenged many times during the past sixty years, but semiconductor engineers always found new tricks to continue doubling the density of transistors on a chip. In the...
January 2024
Trends to Watch in Photonics in 2024
The world did not become a better place in 2023. But some parts of the photonics industry made remarkable progress. And that will endure. The world of photonics is changing. In some places at a...
January 2024
New Ideas Reshape Beam Shaping
When Theodore (Ted) Maiman described the laser as a solution seeking a problem, beam shaping was not a big deal. A lens or two were enough to project the beam profile onto a screen. The main...
December 2023
Quantum Is Growing But Remains a Niche Market
October is beautiful in Munich. Hotel room prices relax after the end of Oktoberfest and local parks display autumn colors while the weather is still pleasant. Such was the setting when EPIC held its...
October 2023
Berthold Leibinger Awards Honor Laser Research at the Limits
In 2000, Berthold Leibinger, the man who brought laser technology into Germany’s TRUMPF Group, established the Innovation Award — expressed in native German as the...
October 2023
How AI Is Advancing the Manufacture of Photonic Systems
Many trends in the manufacture of photonic systems are well known: miniaturize and integrate components, scale-up batch sizes, and, increasingly, expand automated and sustainable manufacturing. At...
September 2023
Ultrashort-Pulsed Lasers Ramp Up the Power
If lasers helped to redefine many manufacturing operations, then ultrashort-pulsed (USP) lasers promise to revolutionize them. They can process almost any material, and they can do so with a...
September 2023
Laser Market Update
The International Laser Marketplace Seminar, traditionally held as part of the LASER World of Photonics event in Munich, has provided a reliable source for market and trend information in the field...
August 2023
What Is the Quantum Internet?
The internet is an inescapable part of modern life, and the hardware that enables it is almost as ubiquitous. Fiber cables transmit terabytes of data around the world every second and, although the...
July 2023
The Path to Secondary Sources
The laser is a versatile tool for many applications partly due to its capacity to generate harmonic wavelengths in which, for example, two red photons combine to generate a blue photon. But with the...
June 2023
After 50 years, LASER World of PHOTONICS shines on
It was quite a brave decision to start a trade fair for a technology that, at the time, was seen as “a solution seeking a problem.” But in 1973, expectations were high that the emerging...
April 2023
EPIC Grows its Network as Globalization Supply Chains Shift
“Globalization was about profits,” said Timothy Paul Kennedy, vice president of Global Sales at Edmund Optics during the Annual Grand Meeting of the European Photonics Industry Consortium...
April 2023
Nuclear Fusion Drives Laser Development
It is a rare event when a successful experiment in basic research makes it to the evening news. In December 2022, the U.S. secretary of energy announced a breakthrough in laser-based nuclear fusion....
February 2023
A New Alexandrite Laser Drives More Sustainable Atmospheric Science
As anyone who has ever worked with an alexandrite laser can attest, its lasing medium demands respect. “It has about every problem a laser engineer can imagine,” said Josef Höffner,...
January 2023
Quantum Technology: The Next Little Thing in Photonics
The 2022 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to three scientists, each with a record in quantum research. They were rewarded for discoveries they had made three decades ago, discoveries that paved the...
December 2022
Eight Predictions for the Photonics Industry in 2023
For the last few years, I have taken time in December to reflect on what happened in the last year and what it means for the one to come. I would reflect on the major events within the laser industry...
October 2022
New Sensors and AI Optimize Laser Welding
Welding is an ancient technology. Five thousand years ago, Egyptians used it to join copper water pipes together. Over the centuries it evolved into an essential technology to fuse various types of...

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