2006 Plenary

Defense Applications for Emerging Opto-Electronic Technologies, Robert F. Leheny, Deputy Director, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
Fiber Lasers: The Next Generation, David N. Payne, Univ. of Southampton, UK
The Mars Laser Communications Demonstration Project, Don Boroson, MIT Lincoln Lab, USA
Quantum Phenomena in Optical Communications Systems: Is the Quantum Internet Next? Richart E. Slusher, Lucent Technologies Inc., USA

CLEO Plenary Speaker - Monday Plenary Session
Fiber Lasers: The Next Generation, David Payne, Univ. of Southampton, UK

While at kW levels fiber lasers have already had a substantial impact on markets for laser marking, cutting and welding, this is just the beginning. Prospects for beam combination, visible sources, MW pulsed and other revolutionary configurations are exciting.

Payne Professor David N. Payne, CBE, FRS, FREng is the Director of the Optoelectronics Research Centre at the University of Southampton, one of the world's best-known photonics research laboratories. He led the team that invented the fibre laser and amplifier and over the past 30 years has made many other key advances in optical fibre communications. He is also Director and Founder of SPI Lasers plc.

In recognition of his work, Professor Payne is a frequent invited speaker at major international conferences, particularly in the USA and Japan . He has won the 1991 John Tyndall Award (USA) for his outstanding contribution to the design, measurement and fabrication of optical fibres, sensors and fibre devices, the 1991 Rank Prize for his contribution to the advancement of optoelectronics and the Japanese Computers and Communications Prize.

In 1998, Professor Payne was awarded the prestigious Benjamin Franklin Medal (USA), making him one of the only individuals to have won the top European, American and Japanese prizes for optical telecommunications. In 2001 Professor Payne was awarded the Basic Research Award by the Eduard Rhein Foundation, and in 2002 the Mountbatten Medal of the IEE. For his unique contributions to both science and engineering, in 2004 he was awarded the Kelvin medal by the combined UK Societies.

Prof Payne is an original member of the world's most highly cited, influential researchers, as determined by ISI in the USA . He is a Fellow of the Royal Society, the Royal Academy of Engineering, the IEE and the Optical Society of America.

CLEO Plenary Speaker - Wednesday Plenary Session
The Mars Laser Communications Demonstration Project, Don Boroson, MIT Lincoln Lab, USA

From 2003 to 2005, NASA ran a project which was to have demonstrated the world's first interplanetary laser communications system. With a space terminal, built by MIT Lincoln Laboratory, to have flown on the 2009 Mars Telecom Orbiter, and two Earth-based terminals, built by Lincoln and by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the system was to have demonstrated up to 50 Mbps. In this presentation, we will discuss how, despite the cancellation of the project in the face of NASA's recent strategic redirection, the project's legacy will likely influence many future lasercom systems.

Boroson Don M. Boroson was born in Brooklyn , NY in 1951. He earned B.S.E. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Princeton University . Since receiving his degree, he has worked at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory in Lexington , Massachusetts , where he is presently a senior staff member in the Optical Communications Technology Group. At Lincoln , Dr Boroson has worked in a diverse set of areas in communications including signal processor and receiver architecture design, beamforming algorithm design and analysis, modulation and coding design, satellite system engineering, large system integration and test, and space-ground network design. He has published widely, and was co-author of "A System Architecture for the MILSTAR Teleport", an early attempt to create a simple global military space-ground network, which won Best Paper at MILCOM 96. Since the mid-1980's, Dr Boroson has led several projects designing, building, and comprehensively testing high data rate laser communications systems for space applications. This laboratory experience led to his acting as Lincoln 's Lead Engineer for the GeoLITE mission, the world's first successful demonstration of high-rate, space-based lasercom. Recently, Dr Boroson was selected to be the Lead System Engineer on NASA's Mars Laser Communications Demonstration, a joint project with Lincoln, JPL, and NASA, which was to have been the first demonstration of interplanetary laser communications.

QELS Plenary Speaker - Wednesday Plenary Session
Quantum Phenomena in Optical Communications Systems: Is the Quantum Internet Next? Richart E. Slusher, Lucent Technologies Inc., USA

Quantum phenomena are critical in determining the channel capacities of today's optical communications systems. Future quantum optical repeaters are described that will enable quantum teleportation, distributed quantum computing and high security quantum channels over a global quantum internet.

Slusher Richart E. Slusher is director of the Quantum Information and Optics Research Department at Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies, in Murray Hill, New Jersey. Slusher received his Ph.D. degree in physics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1965. His present research interests include nonlinear photonic crystals, quantum optics, and quantum computing using ion traps. He has contributed to a broad range of optical physics research including light scattering in semiconductors, solid and liquid helium and plasmas, self-induced transparency and photon echoes, laser annealing, new nonlinear materials, microdisk lasers, nonlinear optics and lasing in organic materials and solitons in fiber Bragg gratings. He and his collaborators were the first to observe squeezed light in 1985, a new quantum state of light with uncertainties in one field component below the standard quantum limit. He received the 1989 Einstein Award for Laser Science from the Laser '89 Conference and the 1995 Arthur Schawlow Prize in laser spectroscopy from the American Physical Society.