[第12期] 系所近況報導 –- CLEO/Pacific Rim 2003 Highlights
Min-Chen Ho, Jyun-Hong Lin, Ren-Jer Shih, and Chih-Chung Yang
FOREWORD
The Pacific Rim Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO/PR, 環太平洋地區雷射與光電研討會) is part of the CLEO Conference series, which has been running annually since 1981 in North America. The rapid expansion of these front-edge science/technology activities to a global scale necessitated a start of the new Conference Series in the Pacific Rim and European regions. CLEO/PR 2003, the fifth conference in the CLEO/PR series, was organized by the Graduate Institute of Electro-Optical Engineering, National Taiwan University (台灣大學光電工程學研究所) and the Optical Engineering Society, Taiwan (中華民國光學工程學會). Here we are pleased to present the conference highlights to all the NTUEE alumni.
The Fifth Pacific Rim Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO/PR 2003) has experienced a long organization time and has been postponed from July to December due the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic. The conference finally took place at the Grand Hotel, Taipei, Taiwan. The December 15 ~ 19th event was a big success with a total of 858 registered attendees and 758 technical contributions. The four-day program provided extensive, in-depth coverage of the latest and most significant developments in all aspects of optoelectronic and photonic material, devices, and systems. Along with the technical program, 12 exhibitors highlighted their products at the meeting, and a special Industrial Forum offered a general overview of Taiwan旧 optoelectronic industry.
The meeting was launched on Tuesday morning with a welcome from the Conference Organizer, Dr. Chih-Chung Yang, Professor and Director of the Graduate Institute of Electro-Optical Engineering, National Taiwan University and four guest speakers –Dr. Che-Ho Wei (魏哲和), Minister of the National Science Council, Taiwan; Dr. Yuan-Tseh Lee (李遠哲), Nobel Laureate Chemistry, and President of the Academia Sinica, Taiwan; Dr. Ken-ichi Ueda, Professor, University of Electro-Communications and Chair of CLEO/PR Steering Committee; and Dr. Wei-Jao Chen (陳維昭), President of the National Taiwan University, Taiwan.
The plenary speeches followed the ceremony. Three outstanding speakers were invited – Dr. Tingye Li, Dr. Dieter H. Bimberg, and Dr. Philip Russell.
Dr. Tingye Li, retiring in December 1998 after a 41-year research career at Bell Labs and AT&T labs, gave a speech of Physics, economics, and innovation: building the next-generation optical network.?The issues discussed in his talk include silicon IC旧, computers, Internet, optical fibers, mobile communi-cations, and photonic crystals. He said that innovation for the next-generation optical network requires not only the fundamental knowledge of physical principles of components and systems, but also the understanding of economic trade-offs of alternative systems and architectures. However, for people in the academia, it does not hurt to look into topics that he called Phantomics?– photonics for phantom applications. For example, optical TDM, coherent systems, optical packet switching, and optical CDMA are techniques he thinks in this category. He pointed out that as a major technological innovation, lightwave communications has led to revolutionary changes in telecommunications, ranging from the network infrastructure and operation, to the management and economics of supplying bandwidth. At the end of his talk, he mentioned that photonic crystal is a new field of interest and tunabilities of devices should be taken into account in the future design of various fields.
Dr. Dieter Bimberg, Professor and the Executive Director of the Solid-State Physics Institute at the Technical University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany, gave the second speech entitled 疎uantum dots for lasers, amplifiers and computers.?The human quest for artificial atoms began in 1975 with Dingle and Henry旧 work, and experimental work sprang up all over the world in 1984. The period from 1994 to the present day is 贈 decade of self-organized growth of quantum dots and emergence of quantum dot photonics.?The quantum-dot-based edge and surface-emitting lasers are superior to traditional lasers in many aspects, including ultralow transparency currents, zero beam filamentation, high temperature stability, high coupling efficiency, and so on. The high-power quantum dot lasers have found applications in the automobile industry as eye-safe, fog-proof and long-range night-vision devices. Amplifiers based on quantum dots feature reduced chirp, large saturated gain, and 4-7 times faster response than their quantum-well-based counterparts. The potential is evident for such a novel class of SOAs to gain great importance in LANs and MANs. The dephasing time of quantum dots is found to be as long as 1 ns, making such devices suitable for quantum computation and cryptography. Since optoelectronic devices made of quantum dots facilitate novel photonic networks with superior performance at dramatically reduced cost, Dr. Bimberg remarked, it with dots!?
The third speech, given by Prof. Philip Russell of University of Bath, is the photonic crystal fiber revolution.?In this talk, Prof. Russell gave a vivid and dazzling presentation of photonic crystal fibers (PCF). He started by the germinal idea back in the early 90旧. He explained that the photonic bandgap, the underlying idea behind the PCF, is an extension of the Bragg refraction. The light is prohibited from propagating (in certain directions and/or at certain wavelengths) by the periodical structure like a criminal is imprisoned in a jail. There are numerous possible PCF structures. The light in a solid-core PCF is guided by the modified total internal reflection. The fact that light can escape from the clear, barrier-free pathways of glass between the holes makes the effective refractive index of cladding a function of wavelength and the fiber can be single-moded over a wide wavelength range. The light in a hollow-core PCF is guided by the photonic bandgap. It has the potential for extremely low loss because the light travels predominantly in the hollow core. There are various applications of PCFs. For example, PCFs with high nonlinearity and well-controlled dispersion can be used to generate supercontinuum with very broad spectrum. Hollow-core PCFs can be used in gas-based nonlinear optics such as the ultralow threshold stimulated Raman scattering in molecular gases. Other applications include atom and particle guidance, fiber tapering and post-treatment. Prof. Russell has brought with him the reprints of two of his articles, Science 299 (358-362) 2003 and Nature 424 (847-851) 2003, for people who are interested in this field.
The rapid development of Taiwan旧 opto-electronic industry in recent years has been remarkable. The industry sectors of optical storage, display, imaging and optoelectronic components in Taiwan are among the top manufacturers in the world. To reflect this rapid growth, CLEO/PR 2003 also featured a special Industrial Forum in addition to the regular technical sessions. The forum was sponsored and organized by the Optical Engineering Society, Taiwan (中華民國光學工程學會) and the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), Taiwan (工業技術研究院). It gave a general overview of Taiwan旧 optoelectronic industry with focus on the emerging technology using solid-state light sources for general illumination and lighting applications. In particular, the market potential, technological trends and future development direction of solid-state light sources were assessed by leading experts in the fields, including Dr. Yung S. Liu (also the Forum Chair), Fellow and VP of ITRI, Taiwan, and General Director of the Opto-Electronics & Systems Labs, ITRI, Taiwan, Dr. M. George Craford, Chief Technology Officer of Lumileds Lighting, a joint venture of Agilent Technologies and Philips Lighting, Dr. Ian Ferguson, Professor of Georgia Institute of Technology, USA, Dr. Volker Haerle, Head of GaInN R&D at Siemens/OSRAM, Germany, Dr. Michael Heuken, Vice President of Corporate Research & Development, Aixtron AG, Germany, and Dr. Jagdish H. D. Rebello, Senior Industry Analyst of iSuppli Corporation.
The CLEO/PR 2003 technical program offers a great number of technical papers in a large variety. Among the 758 technical contributions, the 107 invited papers spanned on a wide range of hot topics, and the 10 tutorials provided basic understanding in important areas. Among the 650 contributed papers, 406 were presented in 10 parallel sessions, and the remaining 235 were arranged in two poster sessions.
The CLEO/PR welcomes paper submissions from all over the world. Except for countries around the Pacific Rim, CLEO/PR 2003 accepted paper contributions from other parts of the world, including Armenia, Belorussia, India, the Netherlands, Pakistan, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, and Yugoslavia. These contributions enrich the geographical diversity of CLEO/PR.
Other than the technical programs, CLEO/PR 2003 also hosted two events to welcome attendees from all over the world. Sponsored by the Taipei City government, the Conference Reception was held at the Grand Ballroom of the Grand Hotel. Taipei City Deputy Mayor, Chin-Der Ou (歐晉德), representing both the Taipei City Government and the Taipei City Mayor, Ying-Jeou Ma (馬英九), gave a keynote speech. In his speech, Dr. Ou pointed out how the development of optoelectronics affects Taipei City and also introduced both the technical and cultural aspects of Taipei City to the conference attendees. The Conference Reception was a great success. The attendees enjoyed not only the gourmet food, but also the dulcet Taiwanese folk music performed by the Grass Mountain Traditional Folk Music Orchestra (草山樂坊) and the spectacular night scene of Taipei from the 12th floor of the Grand Hotel.
CLEO/PR 2003 also hosted a Conference Banquet. Prof. Charles Kao was invited to give a keynote speech in the banquet. In his speech, Prof. Kao mentioned that we have an important mission in life, which is to save energy, and the use of electrons and photons can do it. If we use optics to transfer information, the use of energy is tight?because light does not heat up the fiber. Fibers can carry up to billions of bits of information over very long distance, and the technology really makes the community grow. He also mentioned that the nonlinear interactions between two optical beams, which make the transfer of information from one beam to the other possible, allow us to build all optical transmission rings. The fact that we don’t have to convert the optical signal to the electrical signal will increase the transmission bandwidth enormously. At the end, Prof. Kao said that just as the highways are laid for people to travel, the optical transmission systems are built for people to transfer information. People should be able to use the system to make fortune with only little tax to sustain the development.
After the keynote speech, Dr. Ken-ichi Ueda, Dr. Hiromasa Ito and Dr. Yung S. Liu also welcomed the guests. The guests all enjoyed the delicious food and the performance by the Chinese Art Dancing Ensemble (中華藝術舞蹈團).
The Sponsors, Committees, and Volunteers
CLEO/PR 2003 would not be successful without the sponsorship of many organizations, including National Science Council (國科會), Ministry of Education (教育部), Taipei City Government (台北市政府), National Taiwan University (國立台灣大學), National Sun-Yat-Sen University (國立中山大學), and National Chiao-Tung University (國立交通大學), Industrial Technology Research Institute (工業技術研究院), and others. The success of CLEO/PR 2003 should also be attributed to the efforts of the Conference Committees and the local volunteers.
何旻真，電機系1995年畢業，現任台大電機系及光電所助理教授。
林俊宏，現為光電所碩士班二年級學生。
施仁哲，現為光電所碩士班一年級學生。
楊志忠，電機系1976年畢業，現任台大電機系教授暨光電研究所所長。