News Releases

February 2007

Parametric optical sources for infrared – review of JSO events

Onera organized two day events in February 2006 devoted to infrared laser sources with tunable wavelengths – two days devoted to infrared laser sources with tunable wavelength. A dynamic research theme with promising fundamental and application perspectives.

Onera organized* two days of science events (JSO) on parametric optical sources for infrared on last February 5 and 6. Considering the massive attendance, the lectures were given in the large Pierre Alleret amphitheater made available to us by the EDF center in Clamart. Twenty-two posters were presented by most of the French groups active in the field of parametric sources.

Parametric sources have the advantage over lasers of being very tunable in wavelength, which opens applications in fields such as gas detection or countermeasures for protecting aircraft.

Several world leaders in this theme were present at these events, such as (to name only the foreigners) Professor Marty Fejer of Stanford University, Professor Hiromasa Ito of Tohoku University and of Riken Sendai (Japan), Professor Majid Ebrahimzadeh from the University of Barcelona and Dr Peter Schunemann of BAE (USA).

These events confirmed the dynamism of this research theme, both at the level of basic research (with several hundred papers written per year in reviews like Nature, Science, Physical Review Letters, Optics Letters and Applied Physics Letters) and on the application level. Among the important points brought out during this conference, we will note:

• the coming of age of semiconductor materials with periodic orientation
• improvement in growth techniques of complex materials such as chalcogenides, especially for power sources
• development of terahertz sources
• development of twin photon sources for quantum cryptography
• fundamental research in the field of semiconductor hetero-structures
• miniaturization of optical parametric oscillators that allow their use in the field for applications like detecting pollutants or toxic gases.

 

* These events received financial support from the companies Quantel, Safran/Sagem Défense et Sécurité, Thales, Onera and the DGA. They were sponsored by the Académie des Sciences and the SFO (Société Française d'Optique).

Last Update: 12 March 2007 - © ONERA 2009 - Terms of use