Get Tuned Up for the FiO/LS 2013 Plenary
by by Frank Kuo
Plenary sessions have been and will continuously to be the jewels of the FiO/LS conference. Each talk is extremely educational, inspirational, and highly praised.
In addition to grabbing a precious seat or a corner of the room to stand because it’s usually packed, there are several things you need to do in order to get most out of the talks: you need to prepare yourself beforehand. In other words, tune your antenna to the right optics frequency.
Personally I am looking forward to attending the presentation of Nobel Laureate Dr. David J. Wineland. Listening to him talk about entanglement will be fascinating. There are plenty of resources to learn about the topics before you meet him face to face.
Nobelprize.org is a great place to start with. You get to hear
his presentation, learning from his
power point slides, and get a feeling for his speaking style. If you have been working in these fields, these resources will definitely provide an excellent refresher and make you even more hooked on chasing Schrödinger's cat.
Another exciting development in recent years is the table top X-ray lasers. This will be discussed and shared by Dr. Margaret Murnane. Generating table top X-ray lasers are in close resonance to attosecond science and high harmonic generation (HHG) using the nonlinear optical phenomena. If you attended CLEO this year, you might recall the presentation given by
Dr. Paul Corkum. The talk by Dr. Murnane will definitely expand your understanding in the direction of this scientific endeavor.
To immerse yourself into this field, it is great to pay a visit to
Drs. K&M's website. A good summary of the table top X-ray laser and its related topic can be
downloaded directly. For recent theoretical development, you can print out another
fresh paper published this year. Equipped with the knowledge of these two papers, some introductory information from the website, and/or the enlightenment by Dr. Corkum, you will be more than ready to enjoy the one-hour journey with Dr. Murnane.
Before ending this short post, I suddenly realize that all the plenary talks are interconnected in certain sense. For example, the super-continuum generation that will be discussed by Dr. Robert Alfano is closely related to HHG and X-ray generation. An informative book written by Dr. Alfano will keep you awake a nights for the next few months, for sure. On the other hand, the silicon photonics discussed by Dr. John Bowers will broaden and unleash our traditional understanding of the lasers.
His website again has many open-source papers for you to do some self-learning. By integrating silicon based photonics into the development of the new lasers, we may one day create a hand-held X-ray laser (or shall I call it a lethal weapon)!?
Only time will tell. For a quick overview of all the plenary speakers, visit the FiO/LS
website.
Posted: 12 Sep 2013 by by Frank Kuo