About PQE-2007

The Winter Colloquium on the Physics of Quantum Electronics, known as PQE, is an annual physics conference that attracts the world's experts in laser physics, quantum physics, and many other areas. This was the 37th year of the meeting.

A special issue of The Journal of Modern Optics was published as a proceedings for the conference. The following is a reprint of the foreword of that special issue.

The 37th Winter Colloquium on the Physics of Quantum Electronics (PQE) was held at Snowbird, Utah, from 2-6 January, 2007. This is one of the longest running conferences in laser physics, and is held annually at the spectacular venue of Snowbird—one of America's premier downhill ski resorts.

Besides the intense amount of physics at the meeting, the conference is the setting for the annual presentation of the Willis E. Lamb Award for Laser Science and Quantum Optics. The meeting began on Tuesday, 2 January, with a reception in honour of the 2007 winners: Hans Frauenfelder from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Moshe Shapiro from the University of British Colombia and the Weizmann Institute, and Sunney Xie from Harvard University.

The conference sessions ran from Wednesday 3 January through Saturday 6 January, and included 201 invited and plenary talks by international scientists from nearly every field of laser and quantum physics. A poster session on Saturday evening was open to all participants, and represented an opportunity for all to relax and discuss physics in a more informal manner than allowed by the invited presentations.

The broad range of topics included X-ray lasers and optics; intense particle beams and anti-hydrogen experiments; quantum information, measurement, computing, and communication; foundations of physics and quantum entanglement; ultra-cold systems (atoms and excitons) including quantum dynamics, localization and disorder, and Rydberg systems; coherent control (including multicomponent systems); laser physics of random media; near- and far-field microscopy; statistical physics; high field and attosecond physics, and laser ionization; semiconductor lasers, diodes, and optics; CARS and its applications; and femtosecond sensors. There were even sessions on topics as diverse as helium droplet spectroscopy and intellectual property law.

The program included a somber session dedicated as a memorial to the late Lorenzo Narducci and Herbert Walther who passed away within a day or so of each other during the previous year. Professors Narducci and Walther were both 1999 recipients of the Lamb Award, and were no strangers to this conference, having participated for decades. Memorial talks included those by Frank Narducci and Thomas Walther, sons of the late scientists, who are both physicists in their own right and are also regulars at this meeting.

The conference was organized by Marlan Scully of Texas A&M and Princeton Universities, as well as his colleagues George R. Welch and M. Suhail Zubairy of Texas A&M University. This team has been responsible for the last 6 of these annual meetings. The conference website /http://www.pqeconference.com/ has the program from this meeting, as well as those of the last meetings since 2001.

The special issue of the Journal of Modern Optics presents a cross-section of the conference. Here are papers on quantum computing and information, including fundamental issues of quantum physics, papers on coherence effects in atoms and slow group velocity, X-ray optics and lasers, coherent control, ultra-fast physics, precision measurements, and cold atoms. There are theory papers as well as experimental results. We hope that you enjoy this issue, as it provides a good representation of a very intense week of high quality physics.

Frank A. Narducci
Naval Air Systems Command, USA

George R. Welch
Texas A&M University, USA

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