CLEO/QELS is presented by:
2007 Plenary Session
QELS Plenary Speaker
Metamaterials and Negative Refraction; Sir John Pendry, Blackett Lab, Imperial College London, UK. The possibility of materials with a negative refraction index was first raised seriously by Veselago (1968) who showed that ε < 0, μ < 0 was a sufficient condition for this to happen. Further progress was stalled by the absence of any known material with this property and it was only with the advent of metamaterials with ε < 0 and μ < 0 that this possibility could be realised. Smith, et al, in 2000 were the first to combine these properties in a single structure and demonstrate negative refraction. In the same year the then controversial concept of a perfect lens was proposed and has now been experimentally verified. Subsequent progress has been rapid and our ability to make negatively refracting metamaterials function at RF frequencies is well developed. Applications in this region of the spectrum will be described, as well as progress on negative refraction at optical frequencies.
Sir John Pendry is a condensed matter theorist. He has worked at the Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College London, since 1981. He began his career in the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, followed by six years at the Daresbury Laboratory where he headed the theoretical group. He has worked extensively on electronic and structural properties of surfaces developing the theory of low energy diffraction and of electronic surface states. Pendry is also interested in transport in disordered systems where he produced a complete theory of the statistics of transport in one dimensional systems. In 1992 he turned his attention to photonic materials and developed some of the first computer codes capable of handling these novel materials. This interest led to his present research on metamaterials which concerns the remarkable electromagnetic properties of materials where the normal response to electromagnetic fields is reversed leading to negative values for the refractive index.
CLEO Plenary Speakers "Plastic" Electronics and Opto-Electronics; Alan Heeger, Univ. of California at Santa Barbara, USA. Semiconducting polymers are important as active materials in electronic and optical devices. I will focus on progress in two areas:
Alan Heeger received his B.S. in physics and mathematics from the Univ. of Nebraska and his Ph.D. in physics from the Univ. of California at Berkeley. He has been a professor at the Univ. of Pennsylvania where he served as the Director of the Laboratory for Research on the Structure of Matter and, subsequently, as Vice Provost for Research. Currently, he holds the Presidential Chair at the Univ. of California at Santa Barbara where he serves as Professor of physics and Professor of materials. Widely known for his pioneering research in and the co-founding of the field of semiconducting and metallic polymers, Heeger is also the recipient of numerous awards, including the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2000, the Oliver E. Buckley Prize for Condensed Matter Physics, and the Balzan Prize for the Science of New Materials. He founded UNIAX Corporation in 1990, and serves on the Board of Directors of Konarka Technologies Inc. and RitDisplay (Taiwan). He is a Venture Partner in NGen Partners, a materials-based venture capital firm in Santa Barbara and Chairman of Diode Solutions Inc. in Santa Barbara, a new start-up that is focusing on opportunities for printing "plastic electronics". He is Vice-Chairman of CytomX a newly founded venture to exploit micro fluidics in cell sorting and related areas. Heeger is a member of the National Academy of Science (USA), and the National Academy of Engineering (USA). He has more than 700 publications in scientific journals and holds approximately 50 patents.
Spinning Atoms with Light; William D. Phillips, NIST, USA. Coherent light fields (laser beams) can transfer orbital angular momentum to coherent atom fields (Bose-Einstein condensates). This adds mechanical rotation to linear momentum and spin angular momentum to the toolkit for manipulating atoms with light.
William D. Phillips received a B.S. in physics from Juniata College in 1970 and a Ph.D. from MIT in 1976. After two years as a Chaim Weizmann postdoctoral fellow at MIT, he joined the staff of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (then the National Bureau of Standards) in 1978. He leads the Laser Cooling and Trapping Group in the Atomic Physics Division of NIST's Physics Laboratory. The group is part of the Joint Quantum Institute, a cooperative research venture of NIST and the University of Maryland, begun in 2006. It has developed many of the techniques for cooling, trapping and manipulating atoms that are in general use in the cold-atomic-gas community. The group’s research interests include: laser cooling and trapping; Bose-Einstein condensation; optical tweezers; atom optics; collisions of cold atoms; quantum information processing; cold atoms in optical lattices; and the study of cold-atom analogs to condensed matter systems. In 1997 Phillips shared the Nobel Prize in Physics "for development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light."
PhAST Plenary Speaker
The Photonics Industry: Enabling Technology or Mature Market?; John Ambroseo, President and CEO of Coherent, Inc.
The Photonics market will soon celebrate the golden anniversary of the invention of the laser. During the last fifty years, there have been tremendous successes. Lasers have helped create the high-speed backbone of the Internet, enabled Moore’s Law, restored eyesight, and satisfied our vanity through aesthetic procedures, just to name a few. Despite these remarkable feats, industry growth more closely resembles that of farm equipment. The question, of course, is why? John Ambroseo, President and Chief Executive Officer of Coherent Inc. will share his insight into how the Photonics industry can evolve, to go beyond the superficial dazzle of the technology, beyond the repetition of techniques, to ultimately become a growth industry.
John Ambroseo is the president and chief executive officer of Coherent, Inc. Mr. Ambroseo joined Coherent in August 1988. Since June 2001, he served in the role of executive vice president and chief operating officer until becoming president and chief executive officer in October 2002. During his 14-year tenure at Coherent, he held various positions in domestic and international operations, marketing, and sales. Mr. Ambroseo has also led several acquisitions for Coherent including those for Microlase, DEOS, Crystal Associates, Molectron, Positive Light, and Lambda Physik AG.
He is the past president of LEOMA (Laser Electro-Optics Manufacturers Association) and is a trustee with the Purchase College Foundation. Mr. Ambroseo received his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Pennsylvania and his Bachelor’s degree from the State University of New York College at Purchase.
