CONFERENCE PREVIEW: CLEO/Europe – IQEC 2000 set for success
With more than 1500 high-quality papers submitted, the fourth CLEO/Europe – IQEC conference looks set for success. Previous events in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1998 and in Hamburg, Germany, in 1996 both attracted about 2400 visitors. It seems likely that the 2000 event, to be held in Nice, France (Sept. 10-15), will do at least as well.
CLEO/Europe – IQEC represents the fusion of two conferences: the European Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics, covering the physics, engineering, and applications of lasers and optoelectronic devices, and the International Quantum Electronics Conference, which looks at more-fundamental research in nonlinear optics, spectroscopy, lasers, and quantum optics. The main sponsors are the European Physical Society, IEEE/Lasers and Electro-Optics Society, and Optical Society of America.
The technical programs for CLEO and IQEC include invited and selected papers from research groups around the world, covering the breadth of fundamental and applied optoelectronics. Denis Hall (Heriot-Watt University; Edinburgh, Scotland), one of the two conference general chairs, remarked, "Selecting papers was a very difficult exercise. Even running nine parallel sessions on three days and eight parallel sessions on the other days, we were still not able to accommodate about 30% of the papers submitted. This reflects the excellent health and vitality of European optics research across all areas, as well as the increasing importance of optics and photonics to the economy."
Keynote papers for the plenary sessions will be given by Serge Haroche (Ecole Normale Superieure; Paris, France), exploring entanglement and decoherence with atoms and photons in a box, and Reinhart Poprawe (Fraunhofer Institut fur Lasertechnik; Aachen, Germany), who will outline advances in photonics technologies used in industrial applications.
R. Hayward and colleagues (Optoelectronics Research Centre, University of Southampton; England) are using CLEO Europe to announce new performance levels from a double-clad thulium-doped silica fiber. The new laser has been shown to give up to 14 W of single-mode output from 36.5 W of input power at 787 nm. It also can operate with wavelength tunability and has been operated between 1.85 and 2.07 µm at multiwatt power levels. Another new system that will be presented is a grating-coupled external-cavity quantum-dot laser with a tuning range of 150 nm, developed by H. Li and coworkers from the LF Lester Center for High Technology Materials at the University of New Mexico.
An Italian group, headed by R. Cubeddu (Politecnico di Milano), will present the results from its work on time-resolved measurement on DNA microarrays using an intensified CCD camera with picosecond resolution. DNA-microarray technology provides a relatively new way of investigating genetic material using arrays of DNA fragments and fluorescent-marker probe molecules. The device Cubeddu has developed allows a map of the fluorescence from a microarray to be measured in just one shot. Time-gated measurement of the fluorescence map allows discrimination between different fluorescent markers if these have different lifetimes.
New developments in phase conjugation and photorefractive devices are the focus of a major session at CLEO. A group led by R. Menzel (Institute of Physics; University of Potsdam, Germany) will present a paper describing how novel, low-threshold phase-conjugating mirrors based on Brillouin scattering are improving the beam quality of quasi-CW solid-state lasers.
In their paper, A. Scott and A. Davies of the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (Malvern, England) describe a new scalable laser architecture to control a high-power laser output beam by steering a low-power input beam. This development has particular relevance in high-power laser applications such as machining, in which there is a need to ensure good beam quality and precision pointing capability.
A selection of other papers describes wave-mixing and dynamic holography in optical amplifiers and novel materials. Notable among these is the paper covering IR recording in photorefractive crystals via two-step processes by E. Krätzig (Fachbereich Physik, Universität Osnabrück; Germany). New photorefractive materials for the infrared region are described that may find important applications in improving the beam quality of semiconductor lasers.
An important session at IQEC will review advances in the use of lasers to obtain fundamental spectroscopic data, will discuss how laser spectroscopy is being used to manipulate the internal structure of absorbing species, and will cover the development of specific laser sources. A group led by C. Chardonnet (Laboratoire de Physique des Lasers at Université de Paris Nord) is presenting a paper on parity violation in chiral molecules, which deals with the search for the small differences between the right- and lefthanded versions of chiral molecules such as are often found in biological systems.
The important role played by different forms of chiral molecules in natural biological systems has been theoretically ascribed to a small energy difference between the left- and righthanded molecules. Chardonnet and coworkers have investigated energy differences in chirality down to levels never reached before and demonstrated that such differences, if they exist, are in percentages smaller than 4 x 10-13. The group led by R. Wynands (Institute for Applied Physics, University of Bonn; Germany) will report on the development of a picotesla magnetometer based on coherently prepared alkali vapors.
The coherent generation of x-rays and gamma rays has always proved very elusive. A paper by O. Kocharovskaya and coworkers (Texas A&M University; College Station, TX) demonstrates that the laser preparation of coherent atomic superpositions could be useful in developing new schemes for generation of coherent radiation. And an Israeli group, O. Alon and colleagues (Israel Institute of Technology; Haifa), examines the use of carbon nanotubes for high harmonic generation of x-rays.
Technical-focus sessions
A successful innovation at the 1998 CLEO/Europe—technical-focus sessions—will be repeated at this year's conference. Designed to concentrate on the interplay between industry and academia, these take the form of extended tutorials, featuring introductory material, authoritative technical reviews, contributed papers, workshops, and panel discussions. The three Tech-Focus sessions in 2000 will concentrate on different optical application areas.
Session I, Optical Technologies for Inter-Satellite Laser Link (O-ISL), will cover current and future trends in both technical and economic aspects of O-ISL, available technologies, and the optical component requirements. Session II will look at optronics defense systems, including current techniques and examples of existing equipment under development. Speakers also will discuss the key driving parameters when designing systems. Session III will look at optical-fiber sensors, the situation after 20 years of R&D, and trends for the future.
Apart from the conference program, the venue is likely to make the 2000 event attractive to visitors (see photo). Nice, set on the Côte d'Azur, has many benefits, and the conference will be held in the Nice Acropolis, an integrated exhibition and conference center much appreciated by visitors to ECOC '99. Exhibition organizer Laurence Devereux (Mobilex; England), commented, "The venue is a big plus, and this conference and exhibition provide Europe's only international forum for lasers and optoelectronics in 2000. The event is seen by many exhibitors as a way to grow cross-border European business in light of the increasing ability of customers to source products internationally."
More details on the conference can be found on the CLEO/Europe Web site: www.cleoeurope.com.
Bridget Marx | Contributing Editor, UK
Bridget Marx was Contributing Editor, UK for Laser Focus World.