CLEO-EU2019 Riku Imamura

2019-01-16 2022-09-24 miyahara

Research

CLEO/EUROPE-EQEC 2019 Participation Report

23-27 June 2019, Munich, Germany

Riku Imamura, 1st year master's student

About the meeting

CLEO/EUROPE-EQEC 2019 was held in Munich, Germany, from June 23 to June 27. This biennial conference focuses on optoelectronics and is a sister conference of CLEO, which is held annually in San Jose, California, USA. Perhaps due to the location of the conference, there seemed to be a particularly large number of participants from Europe. My impression of the conference was that there were few well-known invited lectures in the field to which our laboratory belongs, and on some days, similar sessions were held at the same time, so we had to move from one session to another in order to listen to the presentation we were interested in. On the other hand, sessions on processing applications of lasers and other high-profile topics were divided into detailed themes, and in-depth discussions were held. In addition, many companies from Japan and abroad participated in the exhibition, which gave visitors a sense of excitement while touring the entire exhibition.

Announcement

This presentation was an extension of the presentations given at the Japan Society of Applied Physics (March) and ALPS (April). The content of mode-locked lasers using micro-optical resonators and carbon nanotubes attracted more attention than expected, and the presentation was given in front of dozens of audiences even though there were short courses and invited lectures in the same time slot on the evening of the first day. Since the session was not a session on micro optical resonators but on active devices, I was asked questions that I usually do not notice, and although I was perplexed, looking back on the session, I think that I learned a lot. This was my first presentation at an overseas conference, so of course I was nervous, but on the other hand, I was able to find points to reflect on that I can apply to my future presentations. By listening to other presentations, I was able to experience firsthand the speed of research around the world, and it provided me with an opportunity to reflect more than ever on my own attitude toward my own research theme.

3. related research

The most interesting presentation was the session on laser processing entitled "New trends on laser ablation". In particular, this session discussed "Ablation-cooled material removal with ultrafast bursts of pulses" [1] by F. O. Ilday's group, which appeared in Nature in 2016. Conventional laser processing uses pulses with repetition rates of kHz to MHz, but non-thermal processing is possible when processing in burst mode using pulse trains with repetition rates of GHz. The paper [1] was introduced in almost all of the presentations, and it was clear that this ablation cooling technique is attracting a lot of attention. Since the power of each pulse is important in driving a fiber laser in burst mode, presentations were made on improving the efficiency of the power and increasing the output power. There were also reports that burst pulses have higher processing depth and efficiency than single pulses. Of course, all of the presentations were conducted using fiber lasers, and there were no presentations using micro optical resonators. However, the session was informative because specific goals were clarified, although they are not immediately useful in terms of application to ablation processing.

Surveys of the surrounding area

During the conference, I had several opportunities to visit Munich and the surrounding cities. The buildings are well balanced between historical and modern, and we could see beautiful buildings just by walking around the city. Salzburg is a wonderful city with both landscape and history. Salzburg (Austria), located about two hours by train from Munich, is a city consisting of a castle on a hill and its castle town, and is a famous sightseeing spot as the birthplace of many musicians and as a movie location. On the day of the tour, a German father I met at the train station guided me around the city throughout the day, introducing me to the history of the city and some of the best places to visit. On the last day, I visited the Alte Pinakothek with a post-doctoral friend from the Technical University of Munich, where masterpieces that are indispensable in the history of Western art are exhibited. This is my report on the CLEO/EUROPE-EQEC 2019 conference.