Long Beach Hosts CLEO/QELS

The Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO) and the Quantum Electronics Laser Science (QELS) Conference will run concurrently at the convention center in Long Beach, California, from Sunday, 19 May, through Friday, 24 May. The joint meeting will be a rich blend of basic and appliced science. At the meeting, members of the optoelectronics community will have an opportunity to discuss the latest topics in laser science, quantum electronics, and optoelectronics.

More than 1200 papers will be presented in 10 parallel sessions during the six-day conferences, including, on the CLEO side, 51 invited and 713 contributed papers, 188 of which will be presented in the poster sessions. On the QELS side, 30 invited and 312 contributed papers are planned, with 99 being presented in the poster sessions. Joint and special topic symposia are also scheduled throughout the conference.

In addition to the technical sessions, 14 tutorials will be offered dealing with new materials for solid-state lasers, holography in information systems, array waveguide gratings, nuclear physics using light sources, the merging of the wireless and fiberoptics worlds, techniques and applications in ultrafast x-ray science, applications and technology of amplets, organic optoelectronics, nonlinear optics applications in optical communications, private and public key quantum cryptography, quantum dot laser diodes, quantum computation using linear optics, fluorescence spectroscopy and imaging for biomedical diagnostics, and micro- and nanomachined optics.

“From Swords to Plowshares: The Double Impact of DOD Quantum Electronics Research,” a special joint symposium, will be held on Monday afternoon. Speakers will discuss the effect that research sponsored by the US Department of Defense has had on the field of quantum electronics.

A four-part special joint symposium entitled “New Frontiers in Physics with Femtosecond Lasers” will take place on Tuesday. The sessions are dedicated to the memory of Aleksandr Prokhorov and Nikolai Basov, Nobel Prize winners and early pioneers in the field of high-power lasers and their applications. Prokhorov died earlier this year and Basov died last summer.

CLEO/QELS attendees can choose from 55 short courses ranging from introductory to advanced levels. New for this year are courses in optical switching, photonic crystals, and successful photonics startup, among others. Some of the courses include hands-on experience. All of the short courses will be held at the Hyatt Regency Long Beach.

Poster sessions will be held in the exhibit hall at the Long Beach Convention Center Tuesday through Thursday from 1:00 to 2:30 PM.

The plenary and awards session is scheduled for 8:00 AM on Wednesday in the second-floor ballroom of the Long Beach Convention Center. The session will begin with an Optical Society of America (OSA) presentation of the 2002 Charles Hard Townes Award to Charles V. Shank, who directs the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He is being recognized for his “development of ultrashort lasers from the near-infrared to x rays and their application to condensed-matter problems in chemistry, physics, and biology.” The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineer’s Laser and Electro-Optics Society (IEEE/LEOS) will present its Quantum Electronics Award at the session, but the winner had not been announced by press time.

At the plenary session to follow, Philip Russell, a professor of physics at the University of Bath in the UK, will give a talk entitled “Photonic Crystal Fibers: A Holey Renaissance”; Steven Korotky, the director for advanced optical networking and technology at Lucent Technologies will speak on “Optical Communication Transport and Networking: Trends, Technology, Challenges, and Opportunities”; and Wolfgang Ketterle, Nobel Prize winner and John D. MacArthur Professor of Physics at MIT, will discuss “Bose–Einstein Condensates—Superfluid Gases.”

Also scheduled for Wednesday, the social reception will be held from 7:00 to 8:30 PM in the second-floor ballroom at the Long Beach Convention Center.

During the conference, 95 Nobel laureates will be honored with a display recognizing their contributions to the “science of light.” This tribute marks the centennial of the Nobel Prizes.

On the application side, CLEO/QELS will once again hold the popular Laser and Electro-Optics Applications Program, or LEAP sessions as they are more commonly known. These sessions, which look at a range of issues from the perspectives of business and applications, will take place Monday through Thursday.

The equipment exhibition will feature more than 350 companies showcasing state-of-the-art products and services that are vital to the optical community. The exhibition will be open on Tuesday from 10:30 AM to 5:30 PM, Wednesday from 9:30 AM to 5:00 PM, and Thursday from 9:30 AM to 4:00 PM. A special exhibits-only period has been set aside on Wednesday from 9:30 AM until noon.

Job hunters and employers alike can learn more about opportunities in optics and photonics at the conference employment services center, sponsored by OSA. The center will be open from 10:30 AM to 5:00 PM on Tuesday, 9:30 AM to 5:00 PM on Wednesday, and 9:30 AM to 4:00 PM on Thursday.

CLEO/QELS is cosponsored by OSA, IEEE/LEOS, and the American Physical Society’s division of laser science.