About Featured Expert: Lumentum
Lumentum are global industry experts in optical communications, photonic components, commercial lasers and 3D sensing technologies. The company designs, develops and manufactures optical and photonic products for cloud networking, telecommunications, advanced manufacturing, life-science instrumentation and sensing applications. Its expertise extends from semiconductor materials and laser-diode fabrication through photonic integrated circuits, optical packaging and complete subsystems.
That breadth is important because the same underlying capabilities appear across very different end uses. Laser sources, detectors, photonic chips, packaging and volume manufacturing all influence how an optical product performs, whether it is moving data across a network, generating structured light for sensing or delivering controlled energy into a manufacturing process.
Within optical communications, Lumentum develops the lasers, photodiodes, photonic integrated circuits, transceivers and wavelength-management technologies used across intra-data-center, data-center interconnect, metro, long-haul and access networks. Its coherent products combine indium-phosphide and silicon-photonics technologies within compact module architectures, including 400G and 800G systems for data-center, metro and long-haul transmission.
The company’s VCSEL work reflects the same connection between device design and high-volume manufacturing. Lumentum has supplied VCSEL arrays for consumer, automotive and industrial sensing applications, including facial recognition, proximity sensing, in-cabin monitoring, robotics and lidar. Multi-junction devices extend that work into applications requiring greater optical output and efficiency within compact electronic systems.
Lumentum is also exploring how that VCSEL manufacturing base can support optical scale-up within AI infrastructure. At OFC 2026, the company demonstrated a 1060-nanometer VCSEL-based optical engine developed around technology previously scaled for 3D sensing. The demonstration remains part of an emerging interconnect architecture, but it shows how established device and packaging expertise can be redirected toward a new bandwidth challenge.
The company’s laser capabilities also extend into advanced manufacturing and scientific instrumentation. Pulsed, ultrafast and high-power systems are used in semiconductor and display processing, battery manufacturing, printed circuit board production, precision micromachining, cutting and welding. Related continuous-wave, solid-state, gas and ultrafast sources support flow cytometry, DNA sequencing, Raman microscopy, multiphoton imaging, optical trapping and other analytical and life-science applications.
Across these areas, Lumentum’s strength lies in the way device fabrication, optical performance, packaging, thermal behavior and repeatable production are addressed together. Technologies developed for one market can therefore inform another, particularly where a product must move from laboratory performance into reliable, higher-volume manufacture.
Typical applications for Lumentum technologies include cloud and telecommunications networks, AI infrastructure, data-center interconnects, industrial laser processing, semiconductor manufacturing, consumer electronics, automotive sensing, lidar, robotics, biomedical instrumentation and analytical systems.
Lumentum became an independent company in 2015 following its separation from JDS Uniphase. Headquartered in San Jose, California, the company supports customers through research, engineering, manufacturing, sales and service operations worldwide. To learn more about Lumentum and its optical and photonic technologies, please click here.
(Editor’s Note: All trademarks mentioned in this article, including company names, product names, and logos, are the property of their respective owners. Use of these trademarks is for informational purposes only and does not imply any endorsement.)
Molly Bakewell Chamberlin is the Founder, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Components Source Network, a 100% woman- and disability-owned B2B publishing and expert marketplace platform serving the global high-tech manufacturing and engineering community. She is the architect, author and developer of the Network’s 11 specialized e-news sites and 11 peer-vetted expert e-marketplaces, including Photonics Industry Monthly. With more than 25 years of experience in strategic technical marketing, public relations and business development, she is also the Founder and President of Embassy Global, LLC, which has supported more than 200 high-tech industry brands worldwide since 2008. Molly also serves pro bono as Second Vice Chair of the Government Team for the WBENC Forum and is a long-standing advocate for small business, supplier diversity, sustainability and women in STEM. Connect with Molly on LinkedIn.
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