Optica, founded as the Optical Society of America, is a professional society of individuals and companies with an interest in optics and photonics. It publishes journals, organizes conferences and exhibitions, and carries out charitable activities.
Theodor Wolfgang Hänsch is a German physicist. He received one-fourth of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physics for "contributions to the development of laser-based precision spectroscopy, including the optical frequency comb technique", sharing the prize with John L. Hall and Roy J. Glauber.
Philip St. John Russell, FRS, is Emeritus Director of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light in Erlangen, Germany. His area of research covers "photonics and new materials", in particular the examination of new optical materials, especially of photonic crystal fibres, and more generally the field of nano- and micro-structured photonic materials.
Ferenc Krausz is a Hungarian physicist working in attosecond science. He is a director at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics and a professor of experimental physics at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in Germany. His research team has generated and measured the first attosecond light pulse and used it for capturing electrons' motion inside atoms, marking the birth of attophysics. In 2023, jointly with Pierre Agostini and Anne L'Huillier, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics.
Juan Ignacio Cirac Sasturain, known professionally as Ignacio Cirac, is a Spanish physicist. He is one of the pioneers of the field of quantum computing and quantum information theory. He is the recipient of the 2006 Prince of Asturias Award in technical and scientific research.
The Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light (MPL) performs basic research in optical metrology, optical communication, new optical materials, plasmonics and nanophotonics and optical applications in biology and medicine. It is part of the Max Planck Society and was founded on January 1, 2009 in Erlangen near Nuremberg. The institute is based on the Max Planck Research Group "Optics, Information and Photonics", which was founded in 2004 at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, as a precursor. The institute currently comprises four divisions.
The Max-Planck-Institute of Quantum Optics is a part of the Max Planck Society which operates 87 research facilities in Germany.
Robert William Boyd is an American physicist noted for his work in optical physics and especially in nonlinear optics. He is currently the Canada Excellence Research Chair Laureate in Quantum Nonlinear Optics based at the University of Ottawa, professor of physics cross-appointed to the school of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Ottawa, and professor of optics and professor of physics at the University of Rochester.
Mikhail Lukin ; born 10 October 1971) is a Russian theoretical and experimental physicist and a professor at Harvard University. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2018.
Yuri S. Kivshar, Australian Scientist of Ukrainian origin, distinguished professor, head of Nonlinear Physics Centre of The Australian National University (ANU) and research director of The International Research Centre for Nanophotonics and Metamaterials, Australian Federation Fellow.
Jelena Vučković is a Serbian-born American professor and a courtesy faculty member in the Department of Applied Physics at Stanford University. She served as Fortinet Founders Chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University from August 2021 through June 2023. Vučković leads the Nanoscale and Quantum Photonics (NQP) Lab, and is a faculty member of the Ginzton Lab, PULSE Institute, SIMES Institute, and Bio-X at Stanford. She was the inaugural director of the Q-FARM initiative. She is a Member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a Fellow of The Optical Society, the American Physical Society and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
Christine Silberhorn is a German physicist specialising in quantum optics and a full professor at the Paderborn University. In 2011, Silberhorn was awarded the Leibniz Prize and was the youngest recipient of the 2.5 million Euro prize at that time.
Laura Na Liu is a Chinese physicist focused on researching nano-optics of three-dimensional meta materials as it applies to biology and chemistry. After receiving her undergraduate and master's degree in China, she has had many global opportunities for education and research including Germany and the United States of America. Today, she is a professor at University of Stuttgart in Germany. She has received several awards for her contributions in the field of optics.
Susanne F. Yelin is a German physicist specializing in theoretical quantum optics and known for her work in quantum coherence and superradiance. She is a professor of physics at the University of Connecticut, a professor of physics in residence at Harvard University, and vice director of the Max Planck/Harvard Research Center for Quantum Optics.
Harald Schwefel is a German-born physicist currently based in New Zealand. He is an associate professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Otago and a principal investigator in the Dodd-Walls Centre. His research focuses on the interaction of light and matter in dielectric materials, and his speciality is whispering gallery mode resonators (WGMRs), small disks of dielectric which confine and store laser light to facilitate nonlinear interactions. He uses these to generate optical frequency combs and to coherently convert between microwave and optical photons.
Nathalie Picqué is a French physicist working at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in the field Frequency Combs, where she studies ultra-high resolution spectroscopy using ultrashort pulses of light combined with Fourier-transform spectroscopy to reveal the fine chemistry of samples, in particular in the mid-infrared, demonstrating resolving power in excess of 1,000,000,000,000.
Alexander Luis Gaeta is an American physicist and the David M. Rickey Professor of Applied Physics at Columbia University. He is known for his work on quantum and nonlinear photonics. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, Optica, and of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
Maria V. Chekhova is a Russian-German physicist known for her research on quantum optics and in particular on the quantum entanglement of pairs of photons. She is a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light in Erlangen, Germany, where she heads an independent research group on quantum radiation, and a professor at the University of Erlangen–Nuremberg, in the chair of experimental physics (optics).
Dirk Robert Englund is an Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is known for his research in quantum photonics and optical computing.
Natalia Korolkova is a British Russian physicist and Professor at the University of St Andrews. She works in theoretical physics and quantum information science, and the development of novel routes to scale up quantum computing.
