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