Raydiance Inc., headquartered in

Petaluma, California Petaluma (Miwok languages, Miwok: ''Péta Lúuma'') is a city in Sonoma County, California, Sonoma County, California, located in the North Bay (San Francisco Bay Area), North Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. Its population was 59,776 a ...

, was the maker of the world's first software-controlled

ultrashort pulse In optics, an ultrashort pulse, also known as an ultrafast event, is an electromagnetic pulse whose time duration is of the order of a picosecond (10−12 second) or less. Such pulses have a broadband optical spectrum, and can be created by ...

(USP) laser. The company was established in 2003 by Jeff Bullington and Peter Delfyett in Orlando, Florida as Ablation Industries, Inc. In 2004, Ablation Industries changed its corporate name to Raydiance, Inc. and recruited

Barry Schuler Barry Martin Schuler (born September 7, 1953) is an American Internet entrepreneur and former chairman and CEO of America Online Inc. He is best known for leading the AOL team that simplified the online service provider's user interface, making it ...

, former CEO of

America Online AOL (stylized as Aol., formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City. It is a brand marketed by the current incarnation of Yahoo! Inc. ...

(AOL), as its new CEO and chairman of the board. Raydiance, Inc. commercialized a fiber-based USP technology first developed in the laboratories at the University of Central Florida's College of Optics. This effort was funded by the

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Originally known as the Adv ...

. Raydiance introduced its first product, a desktop-sized picosecond pulse laser, in 2007. Ultrashort pulse lasers, which generate pulses in the

picosecond A picosecond (abbreviated as ps) is a unit of time in the International System of Units (SI) equal to 10−12 or (one trillionth) of a second. That is one trillionth, or one millionth of one millionth of a second, or 0.000 000 000 ...

femtosecond A femtosecond is a unit of time in the International System of Units (SI) equal to 10 or of a second; that is, one quadrillionth, or one millionth of one billionth, of a second. For context, a femtosecond is to a second as a second is to about 31. ...

range, are being used for applications in the life sciences, micromachining, imaging and diagnostics, and defense sectors. The company ceased operations in July 2015. The assets of Raydiance Inc were acquired by Coherent Inc in August 2015.

References

{{reflist Companies based in Sonoma County, California Laser companies Petaluma, California