Time passes ultra fast, and the last two years since the previous Ultrafast Phenomena ’08 meeting went by very quickly. Still in the memory is a nice location by the lake, unique Italian food experiences and excellent state-of-the-art-2008 scientific presentations and breakthroughs. What can I expect this year from this well-established and superbly organized conference with a long history of bringing world’s best experts in ultrafast science of light-matter interactions?
Like many others I am like a butterfly strongly attracted to the light that this meeting brings. Biased by my own research interests and expertise in multidimensional spectroscopy and control of biological and artificial molecular systems using ultrashort laser pulses and in ultrafast nanooptics I am looking forward to updates on new discoveries in these fields. The recent progress in ultrafast instrumentation provided extensions in application of multidimensional vibrational and electronic coherent nonlinear optical spectroscopy to new frequency windows, new schemes with stronger signals and new laser pulse sequences. This allowed observations of new ultrafast phenomena in various fields of science. I am looking forward to the sessions on photosynthesis, water dynamics and carotenoid studies. In ultrafast nanooptics and nanoplasmonic sessions there should be new interesting contributions on ultrafast phenomena on the nanoscale where light is coupled to surface electron sea of metals in plasmonic nanostructures such as resonant optical nanoantennas. A combination of a high ultrafast temporal with ultrasmall spatial resolution has a potential of enabling new technologies for quantum information, nanophotonics and nanomedical applications.
I am especially looking forward to meeting old friends and colleagues from previous meetings as well as current and previous coworkers. One of them is Miaochan Zhi who started writing this year’s UP blog and inspired me to write a few lines as well. She has been a great coworker who shared her extensive knowledge, experience and enthusiasm in an ultrashort period of time of a few weeks of our work together. One particular quality which she has is her persistence guided by strong belief in success of her many projects even by spending only an ultrashort period of time in the lab. This is not because she is lazy but because she is busy raising a couple of kids, maybe future bright scientists, a boy and a girl of the ages of 1 and 3, respectively. Her husband, Tom, who is a machine shop supervisor at TAMU physics department, gives her a hand whenever he can but she still has a very tight schedule, having to work literally “ultrafast”. And not without great results! This year she is going to present her astonishing work on a generation of Raman sidebands from a synthesized single-crystal diamond which may potentially lead to formation of shortest optical pulses ever made in room temperature solids. Right after getting results Miaochan does not take a rest staying at home with her family for a while and catching some sleep but decides to attend the UP ‘10 meeting and bring all her family members with. Even the youngest ones! For Max and Tiya it will be the first UP meeting in their lives and who knows maybe they will like it so much that they will decide to follow their Mom’s steps who is a best example of a human being in an entangled state of a loving parent and wife and a “crazy” scientist.
Dmitri V. Voronine
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