www.laser-journal.de LTJ 1

EDITORIAL

© 2009 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim

The Laser Technik Journal is five years old. Founded during a period of economic growth in 2004, as a new German scientific magazine about industrial laser tech-nology and its application, the Laser Technik Journal quickly established itself within the community. Right from the beginning, the so-called “LTJ”, as its friends call it, benefited sustainably from the Wiley-VCH scientific experience and its prox-imity to the community. Over the last few years its editorial team developed the LTJ into a regular journal with articles in German and English. Today, the LTJ appears six times a year, with three English and three German issues publishing 100 % invited articles. Most of these articles are contributed by authors from the laser community and I would like to use this occasion to express my gratitude for their valuable support.

In the past five years, LTJ had a number of successful and valuable partnerships with various events. Since 2008 we can be particularly proud of an exclusive partnership with the AKL’08, one of the most important congresses in laser materials processing, held by the Fraunhofer Institute Laser Technology ILT. The preparations for AKL’10 have already begun.

This year the most important highlight is definitely the world’s largest photonics event. The Laser World of Photonics will open its doors in June. At the exhibition (June 15–18, 2009), visitors will have the chance to see the latest photonics innovations developed to create even more added value for the customers during a period of global crisis. And the delegates may also choose from one of the many conferences, seminars and workshops that take place as part of the World of Photonics Congress from June 14–18, 2009.

This issue of LTJ is dedicated completely to the Laser trade fair. For this issue I have ac-quired top-class authors from the forefront of current laser R&D. They provided review articles describing their specific laser technology (CO2, short pulse, diode, fiber, disk and UV excimer laser systems) as well as its many applications (pages 20–54). By continuing with this tradition, we want to provide our readers with a valuable guide through the jungle of diffe-rent laser systems. For those of you who plan investments in the near future, I strongly advise you to read our market review on laser materials processing by Arnold Mayer or to visit his Laser Marketplace on June 17, 9:00 am – 2:30 pm at the ICM Munich (registration required). High-profile speakers will provide useful information on and insights into the laser materials processing market and technologies. To complete this issue we also include an article by David Havrilla at Trumpf on what every user should know about laser welding (page 55).

For those of you whose travel budget has been reduced and will therefore not be able to attend, please feel free to visit our new blog dedicated to the Laser fair at http://blog.pro-physik.de. The editorial team as well as guest editors from industry and research will report directly from the fair. Stay tuned. With this new feature we want our readers to benefit even more from our core competences – we have a lot of plans for the future to continuously improve and develop the LTJ.

I wish you all a successful time at the Laser fair and hope you enjoy reading this new issue of Laser Technik Journal. I look forward to seeing you in Munich.

Yours,

Francisco Velasco

fvelasco@wiley.comhttp://blog.pro-physik.de

LTJ Enters Its 5th Year

Francisco Velasco Editor

Laser Technik Journal

Meet the Editor

Laser World of PHOTONIC 15–18 June 2009Wiley-VCHHall C2, Booth #146