About PQE-2001

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 31st 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.

This special issue of the Journal of Modern Optics consists of articles based on selected research presentations at the conference on the Physics of Quantum Electronics held in Snowbird Utah, 8-11 January, 2001.

The Physics of Quantum Electronics is a series of workshops that were initiated by Marlan Scully and Stephen Jacobs in 1968. Three- or four-day winter meetings (the present format) have been held annually since 1971, and have been held in Snowbird since 1978. Some of the earlier meetings were documented through published proceedings, but there have been no published proceedings since 1984.

Many participants in recent meetings have felt that it would be highly desirable to return to the publication of a proceedings volume. Presentations at the Physics of Quantum Electronics tend to be of extremely high quality and from leaders in their research fields. The informal setting of the Snowbird location tends to encourage discussion among the participants, leading to rapid advancement of the respective research fields.

This special issue consists of 30 research papers spanning many of the current research areas of quantum electronics, including electromagnetically induced transparency and other quantum coherence effects, laser physics and applications, quantum optics, Wigner distributions, coherent control of reactions, nano-optics, and atomic cooling.

Robert W. Boyd
University of Rochester, USA

Marlan O. Scully
Texas A&M University, USA

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