San Jose, CA--After an opening welcome from CLEO General Co-Chair Konstantin Vodopyanov at the May 17 Plenary for CLEO/QELS 2010, Laser FocusWorld chief editor and associate publisher Steve Anderson presented the CLEO/Laser Focus World Innovation Award to NTT Advanced Technology Corporation for its laser beam scanner using KTN crystals. Honorable mentions went to Femtolasers, General Photonics, and Toptica Photonics. A video overview of the award-winning and honorable mention technologies will appear soon at www.laserfocusworld.com.
Following the awards presentation, CLEO General Co-Chair Claire Gmachl introduced Gerard Mourou from Ecole Polytechnique, who presented "New Physics at Extreme Intensities of Light." Mourou’s presentation illustrated how ultrashort-pulse, ultrahigh-intensity lasers are being used to probe the tiniest of particles, adding to our understanding of the "micro" universe through ultra-relativistic optics. Lasers, said Mourou, have advanced from the 1 eV, 10exp8 W per square centimeter source in the early 1960s to the now 1 TeV, 10exp25 W per square centimeter source that is the goal of the ELI or Extreme Light Infrastructure project (www.eli-laser.eu). Beyond 10exp29 W per square centimeter power levels, Mourou says lasers enter the nonlinear quantum electrodynamics (QED) region, potentially able to see those particles and antiparticles that exist in a vacuum. Mourou is confident that "ELI may do for nuclear physics what the laser did for atomic physics," noting that the nuclear community is already excited and working on several ELI projects.
And finally, CLEO Applications Chair Tim Carrig introduced Douglas Simons from the Gemini Observatory, who dived into the "macro" capabilities of adaptive optics, illustrating how they are being used to unveil solar systems beyond our own. In his presentation "A New Portal on the Universe--Laser Adaptive Optics", Simons took us back to the tremendous feats of Galileo, who used a telescope to show us that the earth was not the center of our universe. Today, 400 years later, adaptive optics has sharpened the view of space to a sub-1-arc-second realm, enabling us to monitor the weather on Titan (one of Saturn’s moons), show black holes at the center of our galaxy swallowing stars, and to visualize planets rotating around a distant sun in a far-away solar system (HR 8799). Simons reminded us that Galileo "published" his accomplishments (encouraging the audience to do the same), and he praised the photonics community for its contributions to these new astronomical adventures.
It’s good to be reminded how exciting the laser has made our industry, and the role that each of us plays, no matter how small, in keeping that excitement amplified.
--Posted by Gail Overton; [email protected]; www.laserfocusworld.com.