Coronavirus and Photonics

The 2019-2020 coronavirus pandemic is an ongoing global pandemic of COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) caused by a newly discovered virus known as SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2). The outbreak was originally identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019 and rapidly spread out to more than 200 countries and territories, for which WHO declared it a pandemic on March 11, 2020. To date (April 10, 2020), more than 1.6 million cases of COVID-19 have been reported, resulting in more than 100,000 deaths worldwide. While people are making efforts in various sectors to "flatten the curve" at present, photonics plays an important role in coronavirus detection as well as clinical diagnosis and therapy of COVID-19 and its complications via optical sensing, spectroscopy, and imaging. For example, infrared thermography can produce a thermal map of the human skin in real time and find potentially infected persons at airports and on the street, while nanophotonic biosensors based on surface-enhanced Raman scattering can sensitively identify viruses in airborne aerosols. Moreover, photonics is an essential part of PCR testing (for diagnosis of the coronavirus) and flow cytometry (for evaluating treatment effectiveness) via fluorescence detection. This Special Topic provides a valuable forum where researchers will be able to share their novel findings, techniques, and applications regarding SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19, and other coronaviruses (MERS-CoV, SARS-CoV, OC43, 229E, etc.) in the hope of beating the coronavirus pandemic soon.

Guest Editors: Andrea Armani, Stephen Evans, Hao He, Chulhong Kim, Wei Min, and Roberto Osellame with APL Photonics Deputy Editor Keisuke Goda and Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Eggleton