Confirmed invited speakers/instructors:
- Dick J. Broer, Eindhoven University of Technology and Philips Research Laboratories, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
- Marcus Cicerone, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, Maryland, USA
- Gregory Crawford, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, and University of Notre Dame, Indiana, USA
- Kishan Dholakia, University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, Scotland, UK
- Eric Dufresne, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA
- Istvan Janossy, Institute for Solid State Physics and Optics, Budapest, Hungary
- Sajeev John, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
- Igor Musevic, J. Stefan Institute and University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia
- Oleg Lavrentovich, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, USA
- Sin-Doo Lee, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea
- Thomas Mason, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, USA
- Robert McLeod, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, Colorado, USA
- Yuen-Ron Shen, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, California, USA
- Slobodan Zumer, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Scientific Program
Advances in the liquid crystal research enabled the explosive growth of information technologies. Nowadays, the high-quality displays, non-mechanical beam steering devices, and switching elements in optical telecommunication networks can hardly be imagined without liquid crystals. Unique sensitivity of liquid crystals to light and especially to laser beams allows one to control their structure and opens numerous possibilities for technological applications. Liquid crystals composed of or doped with nano-sized particles are of interest for emerging new applications such as the tunable and frequency selective negative index media. The anticipated new technological developments are closely related to a number of interesting emerging problems in basic science of liquid crystals that attract a great deal of current interest.
The workshop will enable researchers working at the forefronts of materials science and optics to discuss the emerging uses of light for control of ordered soft materials as well as the advances in the use of liquid crystals to control light. Being at the nexus of materials science, soft condensed matter physics, chemistry, optics, and photonics, the workshop theme is inherently interdisciplinary.
The LC2CAM Boulder International Workshop will take the form of a summit, bringing together prominent scientists as well as students and postdoctoral fellows. The meeting will explore current state and emerging new frontiers at the interface of materials science and optics and photonics, whereas the Outreach Forum will allow the researchers to share their experience and advances in conducting outreach and disseminating scientific knowledge. Workshop organization will adhere to the Fraunfelder rules; we will assure that there will be enough time for discussion, and the speakers will be specifically asked to emphasize the open/emerging questions and unsolved problems. The focus will be on recent advances at the interface between soft condensed matter physics and optics that promise to open up conceptually novel directions of research. Presentation type will be determined by the program committee as oral presentations, or as posters, based on the information supplied in the one-page abstract. The participants will register and submit abstracts via the conference web page. The Workshop topics include:
- Laser trapping and manipulation in liquid crystals
- Tunable and frequency-selective negative-index media
- Light-induced phase transitions
- Nonlinear optics of liquid crystals
- Light-controlled surface anchoring phenomena
- Confocal, multiphoton fluorescence, and CARS microscopy of liquid crystals
- Holographic polymer dispersed liquid crystals
- Light-controlled liquid crystalline polymers and elastomers
- Optics of colloidal and nanostructured systems
- Sensors and wavefront control devices
Detailed Scientific Program will be posted before July 20, 2008. Please visit this web page later.
