About PQE
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. The meeting is held annually in early January in Snowbird, UT, and will celebrate its 55th year in 2025.
Photographs
The Stephen Jacobs Collection at the American Institute of Physics (AIP) website has many excellent historical photographs taken at PQE (Link).
The American Institute of Physics (AIP) has been a sponsor of PQE for many years.
History
The inventions of the maser and laser in the late 1950s and 1960s brought a flood of new developments in the area that came to be known as Quantum Electronics. By the late 1960s, there was still much to be learned but very few formal courses. In the summers of 1966 and 1967, David Edwards of Colorado State University organized summer meetings under “Physics of Quantum Electronics.” Here, Steve Jacobs of the University of Arizona and Marlan Scully, then at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, met and formulated the idea for continuing the PQE meetings.
Marlan Scully and Steve Jacobs went on to organize a series of 2-week summer schools, which evolved into advanced workshops and technical progress reports. With the blessing of Dave Edwards, they continued to use the name Physics of Quantum Electronics. Much of this history was provided by Steve Jacobs.
Below is a list of all the meetings and workshops under the masthead of PQE.
• PQE Winter Colloquia: The Winter Colloquia on the Physics of Quantum Electronics (PQE) have continued annually for over 40 years.
• Other meetings: Below is a list of all the other meetings, including recent summer workshops and those in the early days of PQE.
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Original PQE summer meetings
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Two-week Summer Tutorials
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PQE Special Workshops
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PQE Summer Workshops
• PQE publications
Winter Colloquia on the Physics of Quantum Electronics
Historically, there have been many meetings under the masthead of PQE. However, the Winter Colloquium has the largest number of attendees, and although there are occasional summer meetings, only the Winter Colloquium continues each and every year.
The Winter Colloquium is now held each year at the Snowbird ski resort near Salt Lake City, Utah, in the United States. However, the original meetings were at other places. The table below shows the locations of the meetings.
Year | Location | Sponsor |
|---|---|---|
1971 | Sun Valley, ID | Air Force |
1972 | Steamboat Springs, CO | Air Force |
1973 | Snowbird, UT | Air Force |
1974 | Snowmass, CO | Air Force |
1975 | Snowmass, CO | Air Force |
1976 | Steamboat Springs, CO | Air Force |
1976 | Steamboat Springs, CO | ERDA/NRA (Laser Isotope Separation) |
1977 |
Park City, UT | ERDA/NRA (Laser Isotope Separation) |
1977 | Park City, UT | for ERDA Laser Fusion Div (High Power Lasers) |
1978 to Present | Snowbird, UT | No Sponsor (supported by registration fees) |
Financing the first few meetings went through several stages. In the early years, private industry, government, and universities could justify the two-week summer school registration fees. Eventually, formal courses supplanted the need for special summer schools, and PQE commenced instead to run topical meetings and workshops funded by government contracts.
The first such contract was to obtain consulting for the Air Force Weapons Lab (AFWL) in New Mexico. AFWL found that their consultants much-preferred skiing locations to Kirtland Air Force Base, and the Winter Colloquium on the Physics of Quantum Electronics was born. These meetings have been held in the winter near down-hill ski areas since 1971
Originally funding was arranged through an existing research contract with the University of Arizona's Optical Sciences Center (OSC.) After the 5-year AFWL contract ended, several other government contracts supported the winter meeting. Since 1978, the meetings have been supported only by registration fees paid by the attendees.
Steve Jacobs ended his involvement around 1995, but Marlan Scully has continued his role as a scientific organizer from the beginning. In 1992, George Welch joined the faculty of Texas A&M University, met Marlan for the first time, and started attending the Winter Colloquium regularly. In 2000, George began to help with the organization of the meeting. He served as the point-man for contacting the speakers and session organizers, arranging the sessions and technical program, and coordinating the local logistics at the meeting until 2015. Since then the organizational work for PQE has been done by Virgil Sanders and Olga Kocharovskaya.
There is an interesting anecdote concerning the early Winter Colloquia. After the initial 5-year AFWL contract ended, several other government contracts supported the winter meeting, each with a special consulting motivation. Such contracts ended when the appearance of impropriety brought this “ski resort boondoggle” to the attention of Senator Proxmire’s committee. After close examination, the “Golden Fleece Award” was not made to PQE, which ended the prospect for government funding. This almost ended the winter meetings, but it was agreed that the combination of high-level technical exchange, contract hunting, and fun was worthwhile and might be supportable through individual registration fees. This system has proven successful and has continued from 1977 to the present.
The organizers of PQE sincerely believe the technical content of this conference is second to none and that the amount of work done during the meetings — typically 280 talks in five days, meeting for nearly 9 hours per day — dispels any conceivable notion that this meeting is merely a ski trip. Proxmire, eat your heart out.
Other PQE meetings
In addition to the Winter Colloquia, there have been many other meetings:
Original PQE Meetings
The first two PQE summer meetings were organized by Dave Edwards of Colorado state university.
PQE Two-Week Summer Tutorial
After the first two summer meetings organized by David Edwards, Marlan Scully and Steve Jacobs continued organizing these meetings.
Year | Location / Topic |
|---|---|
1968 | Flagstaff, Arizona |
1969 | Flagstaff, Arizona
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1970 | Prescott, Arizona |
1973 | Crystal Mountain, Washington |
1974 | Santa Fe, New Mexico |
1977 | Telluride, Colorado / FEL Workshop for ONR
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1979 | Telluride, Colorado / FEL Workshop for ONR
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1981 | Telluride, Colorado / FEL Workshop for ONR
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PQE Special Workshops
Year | Location | Topic |
|---|---|---|
1972 | Key Largo, Florida | Unknown |
1973 | Unknown | 3 day symposium on New Laser Concepts
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1976 | Las Cruces, New Mexico | Five-day tutorial on Modern Optics for White Sands Missile Range
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1981 | Keystone, Colorado | Topical meeting on Tunable Lasers for ARO
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1983 | Orcas Island, Washington | FEL Generators of Coherent Radiation
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1984 | Snowbird, Utah | Physics of Optical Ring Gyros
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PQE Summer Workshops
After the first decade or so of PQE special meetings, only the Winter Colloquium continued, and there were no more summer activites. In the 1990s, Summer Workshops again commenced under the guidance of Marlan Scully. These meetings were in much the same style of the Winter Colloquia, but were generally much smaller, more focussed, and less formal.
Year | Location | Topic |
|---|---|---|
1996 | Crested Butte, CO | Coherence effects, and lasing without inversion
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1997 | Crested Butte, CO | Coherence effects, and lasing without inversion
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1998 | Snow King Resort, Jackson Hole, WY | Coherence effects, and lasing without inversion
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1999 | Taos, NM | Coherence effects, and lasing without inversion
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2000 | Jackson Hole Resort, Teton Village, WY | Festive Workshops on Quantum Optics
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2001 | Snow King resort, Jackson Hole, WY | Workshop on Laser Physics and Quantum Optics: RAMSEY FEST
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2003 | Grand Targhee, WY | Workshop on Quantum Optics, and concluding activities for Research for Undergraduates (RUG) program
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2005 | Casper College, Casper, WY | Quantum Optics Summer Workshop
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2007 | Casper College, Casper, WY | TAMU/Princeton Summer School on Quantum Optics and Molecular Physics
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2009 | Snow King resort, Jackson Hole, WY | TAMU/Princeton Institute for Quantum Science and Engineering Summer School
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PQE Publications
PQE published technical reports, proceedings, and books until 1984, but none were published after that until 2001. Since 2001, the Journal of Modern Optics has dedicated a special issue to papers originating from this conference.
JMO has been very supportive in this, and we greatly appreciate their efforts. Taylor and Francis, the publisher of JMO, has worked very hard to cut time to publication. We encourage optical scientists to consider JMO for publication of their high quality results.
Year | Publication | Editors |
|---|---|---|
1968 | Physics of Quantum Electronics, Vol. 1, OSC Technical Report #31 | S. F. Jacobs and J. Mandelbaum
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1969 | Physics of Quantum Electronics, Vol. 2, OSC Technical Report #45 | S. F. Jacobs and J. Mandelbaum
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1970 | Physics of Quantum Electronics, Vol. 3, OSC Technical Report #66 | S. F. Jacobs
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1973 | The Physics of Quantum Electronics, Vol. 1, “High Energy Lasers and Their Applications” | S. F. Jacobs, M. O. Scully, M. Sargent III
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1974 | The Physics of Quantum Electronics, Vol. 2, “Laser Applications to Optics and Spectroscopy” | S. F. Jacobs, M. Sargent III, J. F. Scott, and M. O. Scully
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1975 | The Physics of Quantum Electronics, Vol. 3, “Laser Induced Fusion and X-Ray Laser Studies” | S. F. Jacobs, M. O. Scully, M. Sargent III, C. D. Cantrell III
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1976 | The Physics of Quantum Electronics, Vol. 4, “Laser Photochemistry, Tunable Lasers, and Other Topics” | S. F. Jacobs, M. Sargent III, M. O. Scully, C. T. Walker
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1977 | The Physics of Quantum Electronics, Vol. 5, “Novel Sources of Coherent Radiation” | S. F. Jacobs, M. Sargent III, M. O. Scully
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1978 | The Physics of Quantum Electronics, Vol. 6, “Adaptive Optics and Short Wavelength Sources” | S. F. Jacobs, M. Sargent III, M. O. Scully
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1979 | The Physics of Quantum Electronics, Vol. 7, “Free-Electron Generators of Coherent Radiation” | S. F. Jacobs, H. S. Pilloff, M. Sargent III, and R. Spitzer
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1980 | The Physics of Quantum Electronics, Vol. 8, “Free-Electron Generators of Coherent Radiation” | S. F. Jacobs, G. T. Moore, H. S. Pilloff, M. Sargent III, M. O. Scully, and R. Spitzer
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1981 | The Physics of Quantum Electronics, Vol. 9, “Free-Electron Generators of Coherent Radiation” | S. F. Jacobs, G. T. Moore, H. S. Pilloff, M. Sargent III, M. O. Scully, and R. Spitzer
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1983 | The Physics of Quantum Electronics, “Free-Electron Generators of Coherent Radiation,” Proceedings of SPIE, Volume 483, 440, (1984) | C. A. Brau, S. F. Jacobs, and M. O. Scully
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1984 | The Physics of Quantum Electronics, “Physics of Optical Ring Gyros,” Proceedings of SPIE, Volume 487 | Stephen F. Jacobs, Murray Sargent III, Marlan O. Scully, James Simpson, Virgil Sanders, Joseph E. Killpatrick
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2001 | 31st Winter Colloquium on the Physics of Quantum Electronics,
J. Modern Optics, Volume 49, Issues 3 and 4, 2002 | Robert W. Boyd and Marlan O. Scully
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2002 | 32nd Winter Colloquium on the Physics of Quantum Electronics,
J. Modern Optics, Volume 49, Issues 14 and 15, 2002 | Robert W. Boyd and Marlan O. Scully
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2003 | 33rd Winter Colloquium on the Physics of Quantum Electronics,
J. Modern Optics, Volume 50, Issues 15-17, 2003 | Robert W. Boyd and Marlan O. Scully
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2004 | 34th Winter Colloquium on the Physics of Quantum Electronics,
J. Modern Optics, Volume 51, Issues 16-18, 2004 | Robert W. Boyd and Marlan O. Scully
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2005 | 35th Winter Colloquium on the Physics of Quantum Electronics,
J. Modern Optics, Volume 52, Issue 16, 2005 | Robert W. Boyd and Marlan O. Scully
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2006 | 36th Winter Colloquium on the Physics of Quantum Electronics,
J. Modern Optics, Volume 53, Issues 16 and 17, 2006 | Robert W. Boyd, Frank A. Narducci, and George R. Welch
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2007 | 37th Winter Colloquium on the Physics of Quantum Electronics,
J. Modern Optics, Volume 54, Issues 16 and 17, 2007 | Frank A. Narducci and George R. Welch
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2008 | 38th Winter Colloquium on the Physics of Quantum Electronics,
J. Modern Optics, Volume 55, Issues 19 and 20, 2008 | Frank A. Narducci and George R. Welch |
2009 | 39th Winter Colloquium on the Physics of Quantum Electronics,
J. Modern Optics, Volume 56, Issues 18 and 19, 2009 | George R. Welch and Frank A. Narducci
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2010 | 40th Winter Colloquium on the Physics of Quantum Electronics,
J. Modern Optics, Volume 57, Issue 19, 2010 | Frank A. Narducci and Marlan O. Scully |
2011 | 41st Winter Colloquium on the Physics of Quantum Electronics,
J. Modern Optics, Volume 58, Issue 21, 2011 | Frank A. Narducci and George R. Welch
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2012 | 42nd Winter Colloquium on the Physics of Quantum Electronics,
J. Modern Optics, Volume 60, Issue 1, 2013 | Frank A. Narducci and George R. Welch |
2013 | 43rd Winter Colloquium on the Physics of Quantum Electronics,
J. Modern Optics, Volume 61, Issue 1, 2013 | George R. Welch and Frank A. Nadrucci |
2015 | 45th Winter Colloquium on the Physics of Quantum Electronics,
J. Modern Optics, Volume 63, Issue 1, 2016 | Frank A. Narducci and George R. Welch |
2016 | 46th Winter Colloquium on the Physics of Quantum Electronics,
J. Modern Optics, Volume 65, Issue 9, 2017 | George R. Welch and Frank A. Nadrucci |
2017 | 47th Winter Colloquium on the Physics of Quantum Electronics,
J. Modern Optics, Volume 66, Issue 11, 2018 | George R. Welch and Frank A. Narducci |
2018 | 48th Winter Colloquium on the Physics of Quantum Electronics,
In press. | George R. Welch and Frank A. Narducci |
2019 | 49th Winter Colloquium on the Physics of Quantum Electronics,
Papers being accepted. | George R. Welch and Frank A. Narducci |