About PQE-2009

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 39th year of the meeting.

For further reading, many participants contributed to a special issue of The Journal of Modern Optics (Volume 56, No. 18, 2009) dedicated to this meeting. The following is a reprint of the foreword of that special issue.

The 39th Winter Colloquium on the Physics of Quantum Electronics was held in Snowbird, Utah from 4 to 8 January 2009. Since the first Winter Colloquium in 1971, these meetings have taken place every year, continuing the tradition of mixing cutting edge science with great natural beauty. This meeting, as all previous since the 8th Winter Colloquium, enjoyed the incomparable mountains of the Wasatch National Forest.

Since 1999, the Winter Colloquium has celebrated the awarding of the Willis E. Lamb Award for Laser Science and Quantum Optics. This is an award presented annually to a member of the community who has made a significant impact to the field. The conference started with a reception Sunday evening in honor of the 2009 recipients: Robert Boyd of the University of Rochester, for pioneering work in the nonlinear interaction of laser light with matter, quantum imaging, and slow light; Robert Byer of Stanford University, for pioneering studies of nonlinear optical effects including parametric amplification; and Norbert Kroó of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, for pioneering studies of surface plasmons and other elementary excitations. More information can be found at www.lambaward.org.

A total of 222 participants attended 31 plenary talks, 167 invited talks, and 37 poster presentations. A very wide variety of topics was covered featuring cold atoms and condensates, in excitons and bose and fermi gasses, and solid state physics; attosecond physics, high-harmonic generation and high energy and frequency lasers; quantum measurement, information and imaging; medical and bio-physics; quantum optics and coherence effects; semiconductor laser physics; chemical physics and Raman spectroscopy; gravity and relativity, quantum nucleonics, and number theory applied to quantum mechanics. A copy of the program, as well as all those since 2001 can be found on the conference website www.pqeconference.com.

The conference was organized by Marlan Scully of Texas A&M and Princeton Universities, and George R. Welch of Texas A&M University.

This special issue contains a sample of the papers given at this conference. They present theoretical and experimental advances in many of the topical areas covered by the conference and are a representation of the high quality physics presented at the Winter Colloquium on the Physics of Quantum Electronics.

George R. Welch
Texas A&M University, USA

Frank A. Narducci
Naval Air Systems Command, USA

PQE Main Page.