Photonics

Raytheon Wins DARPA PICASSO Contract for All-Optical Processing

Arlington, Va. – November 03, 2026 -- Raytheon, an RTX business (NYSE: RTX), has won a phase one contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop an all-optical processing system for the agency's Photonic Integrated Circuit Architectures for Scalable System Objectives (PICASSO) program. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Raytheon's Advanced Technology team will design photonic circuits that process signals with light, not electricity

Under the contract, the team will design and demonstrate photonic circuit technology that handles signal processing entirely in the optical domain. Raytheon says this lets operators detect threats sooner, respond faster and keep better situational awareness in contested environments.

IEEE Study: Optical Cavities Can Steer Laser Dewetting of Gold Films

IEEE Study: Optical Cavities Can Steer Laser Dewetting of Gold Films

PISCATAWAY – November 02, 2026 -- Researchers report that the optical structure beneath a 10 nm gold film changes how laser-induced dewetting unfolds, offering a new lever for controlling nanostructure formation in metallic thin films, according to a study in IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics.

Two of four substrates produced previously unreported dewetting features

The team fabricated four samples with identical chemical compositions but different optical structures, varying the thickness of the underlying silica and gold layers. Two samples showed the expected solid-state dewetting behavior. The other two exhibited broad nano- and micron-scale particle size distributions and complex spatial patterns not reported before.