2007 Special Symposia

Panel on Solid-State Laser Power Scaling through Beam Combination
QELS Symposium on Degenerate Fermi Gases
CLEO/QELS Joint Symposium on Self-Phase Modulation in Its 40th Year
CLEO Symposium on Ultrafast Laser Processing and Applications
Joint CLEO/PhAST Symposium on Biophotonics and Applications
CLEO/QELS Joint Symposium on Nanophotonics

Panel on Solid-State Laser Power Scaling through Beam Combination

Organizer: Timothy J. Carrig; Lockheed Martin Coherent Technologies, USA

The scalability of individual solid-state lasers is limited by a number of factors that can include thermal effects in the gain media, the size of available crystals, and the ability to efficiently pump large gain media, mode control, nonlinear processes and system complexity. Coherent and incoherent methods of combining the beams from multiple lower-power lasers have been proposed as means to mitigate these issues while enabling the power-scaling of lasers to the multi-kW level. Toward this goal, several techniques have been proposed and demonstrated including wavelength combination, polarization combination, temporal multiplexing, Talbot re-imaging and the co-phasing of coherent arrays. However, these techniques are not without their own issues which can include the coherence of the resultant beam, beam spatial quality, optical efficiency of the combiner, the ability to focus the combined beams, and the number of beams that can be reliably and practically combined. This panel will explore these issues, review recent work, debate the pros and cons of several technologies and provide perspectives on future work.

Moderator: Mark Neice; HEL-JTO, USA
Panelists: Anthony Siegman; Stanford Univ., USA
T. Y. Fan; MIT Lincoln Lab, USA
Robert Rice; Northrop Grumman, USA
Iain McKinnie; Lockheed Martin Coherent Technologies, USA
Arnaud Brignon; Thales Res. & Technology, France

QELS Symposium on Degenerate Fermi Gases

Invited Presentations Only

Organizers: Philip Gould; Univ. of Connecticut, USA
Paul Lett; NIST, USA

The study of degenerate Fermi gases is currently a rapidly-evolving topic in the area of cold atom physics. Clouds of Fermionic atoms and Fermi-Bose gas mixtures cooled to a degenerate energy state are providing a wealth of new physics to explore. The so-called BEC-BCS transition (the transition between a Bose-Einstein condensate of strongly-paired fermions that form molecules and weakly-paired fermions that form Cooper pairs) can be explored. Phenomena such as Fermi superfluidity, the creation of vorticies in a degenerate Fermi gas, the measurement of pairing gaps in coupled Fermions, and a degenerate Fermi gas released into an optical lattice have also recently been investigated. The analogy of these systems to condensed matter systems could provide insights into problems in that field as well.

Collective Excitation Modes in the BEC-BCS Crossover, Rudi Grimm; Univ. of Innsbruck, Austria
Phases of a Paired Fermi Gas with Unequal Spin Populations, Randall Hulet; Rice Univ., USA
Superfluid Ultracold Fermi Gases, Wolfgang Ketterle; MIT, USA

CLEO/QELS Joint Symposium on Self-Phase Modulation in Its 40th Year

Organizers: Robert Fisher, R. A. Fisher Associates, USA
Jacob Khurgin; Johns Hopkins Univ., USA

Now celebrating its 40th anniversary, self-phase modulation is making contributions to many disciplines, including ultrashort pulse generation; specific waveform generation; generation of pulses with specific absolute phase; custom pulse shape engineering; telecommunication effects, such as four-wave mixing, temporal solitons and their effects, wavelength conversion, cross-phase modulation, etc; supercontinuum generation and pulse trains of supercontinuum-broadened pulses for tomographic and related investigations; and for the very highest yet attained spectroscopic resolution. This Symposium seeks contributions in all aspects of Self-Phase Modulation and Cross-Phase Modulation, whether produced by a direct nonlinear effect or by a cascade nonlinear effect.

Self-Phase Modulation: The Formative Years, T. K. Gustafson; Univ. of California at Berkeley, USA
Self-Phase Modulation in Optical Fiber Communications: Good or Bad?, Govind P. Agrawal; Inst. of Optics, Univ. of Rochester, USA
From Supercontinuum Generation to Carrier Shocks: Extreme Nonlinear Propagation in Photonic Crystal Fiber, John Dudley; Univ. de Franche-Comté, France
Better and Bigger: The Critical Role of Self-Phase Modulation in Ultraprecise Optical Frequency Combs, Scott Diddams; NIST, USA

Joint CLEO/PhAST Symposium on Ultrafast Laser Processing and Applications

CLEO Chair: Don Harter, IMRA America Inc., USA, PhAST Chair: Bo Gu, GSI Group., USA

The PhAST and CLEO committees have jointly organized a forum to highlight all aspects of the field of ultrafast laser processing . The CLEO part of this symposium will focus on the scientific advances in this field while the PhAST part of this symposium will focus on recent advances in industrial applications that have been or are close to commercial implementation. The CLEO Symposium on Ultrafast Laser Processing and Applications will be located in the CLEO portion of the conference and is open to CLEO attendees only. The Joint CLEO/ PhAST Symposium on Ultrafast Laser Processing and Applications is open to both CLEO and PhAST attendees and will be located in the PhAST rooms.

CLEO Topics:

laser ablation
laser induced material modification (waveguide writing)
multiphoton-polymerization
laser nanomachining
laser material interaction
laser-mediated addition of material
laser microwelding
laser/tissue interactions and ablation

PhAST Topics:

applications in the microelectronics, display, and solar industries
laser micromachining in the automotive and aerospace industries
lasers in MEMS and sensor manufacturing
laser processing of telecom and data storage components
applications in biology, medicine, and bio- or medical- device manufacturing
emerging micromachining technologies and applications (transparent media modification, sub-wavelength structures generation, ultra-precise metal or semiconductor ablation)
new and cost effective ultrafast lasers and systems

CLEO Speakers:

Micro and Nanostereolithography for Production of Lab-on-a-Chip Devices, Shoji Maruo; Yokohama Natl. Univ., Japan
Subcellular Surgery and Nanosurgery, Eric Mazur; Harvard Univ., USA
Microfluidic Bead Array Device Using Laser-Machined Surface Microstructures on Silica Glass, Tadatake Sato; Natl. Inst. of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Japan
Femtosecond Laser Nanomachining Applications in Fused Silica, Rod Taylor; Natl. Res. Council of Canada, Canada

PhAST Speakers

Double Pulse Laser Machining, Andrew Forsman; General Atomics, USA
Industrial Applications of Laser Direct-Write Processing: A Review, Andrew Holmes; Imperial College, UK
3-D Photofabrication by Femtosecond Laser Pulses and Its Applications in Photonics and Biomedicine, Aleksandr Ovsianikov; Laser Zentrum Hannover e.V., Germany
Overview and Recent Topics in Industrial Laser Applications in Japan, Kunihiko Washio; Paradigm Laser Res. Ltd., Japan
A View from a Leading Chinese Laser System Manufacturer, Rangda Wu; Wuhan Chutian Laser (Group) Corp., China

Tutorial: Ultrafast Micro and Nanomachining, Gerard Mourou; Ecole Polytechnique de Paris, France

Joint CLEO/PhAST Symposium on Biophotonics and Applications

Organizers: Adam Wax, Duke Univ., USA
Tom Baer, Stanford Univ., USA
James Fujimoto, MIT, USA

Biophotonics, the application of optics, photonics and laser technologies in medicine and the life sciences, represents one of the most rapidly growing areas of scientific research and commercial development. The scope of activities within biophotonics is extremely broad, ranging from diagnostic imaging for cancer screening and single molecule detection for genomics and proteomics, to laser photodynamic therapy and image guided robotic surgery. This joint CLEO/PhAST symposium will be held in the exhibit hall and will provide an overview of recent advances in instrumentation and product development for the biomedical and clinical marketplace.

Advances in Fourier Domain Optical Coherence Tomography, Eric Buckland; Bioptigen, USA
Multi-Functional Video-Rate Optical Coherence Tomography Microscopy, James Jiang; Thorlabs, USA
In vivo Imaging Using Harmonic Generation Microscopy, Sun Chi-Kuang; Natl Taiwan Univ., Taiwan
Laser Capture Microdissection in Prostate Cancer, Angelo De Marzo; Johns Hopkins Univ., USA
Time-Domain Optical Imaging: Toward Clinical Applications, Mario Khayat; ART Advance Res. Technologies, Canada
Intraoperative Near-Infrared Fluorescence Imaging, Sivash Yazdanfar; GE Global Res., USA
Teraherz Imaging, David Zimdars; Picometrix, USA
Upcoming Commercial Applications of Biomedical Optical Spectroscopy: Applications to Heart Disease and Gynecology, Andres Zuluaga; Remicalm LLC, USA

CLEO/QELS Joint Symposium on Nanophotonics

Organizers:
Michal Lipson, Cornell Univ., USA
Vladimir Shalaev, Purdue Univ., USA

Novel concepts of ultrasmall microphotonic devices show the great potential for revolutionizing communications technologies. Confining and guiding light with high confinement leads to gigantic field enhancement that enables active and passive devices with unprecedented performance for a variety of applications. Fuelled by the rapid advancement of computational, fabrication and characterization techniques, two approaches for ultra-strong confinement have recently emerged: one is based on metallic sub-wavelength structures sustaining lower-dimensional, sub-diffraction light waves (surface plasmon polaritons); and the other on building up resonance photonic states in these microphotonic materials. Both result in a dramatic enhancement of light-matter interaction, which can be utilized in a number of optoelectronic devices. This symposium is aimed at bringing together material scientists, physicists, and optical engineers to discuss current material, theoretical and technological challenges in the field.

TBA, Anvar Zakhidov; Univ. of Texas at Dallas, USA
Nanostructured Optics and Optoelectronics for Dense Optical Interconnects, David Miller; Stanford Univ., USA
Micro- and Nano-Photonics for Chip-Scale Solid-State and Atomic Cavity QED, Oskar Painter; Caltech, USA
Near-Field Characterization of Plasmon Polariton Propagation Along Periodically Nano-Structured Metal Thin Films, Jean-Claude Weeber; Univ. of Bourgogne, France

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