23rd Congress of the International Commission for Optics (ICO 23)

Abstract

The 23rd Congress of the International Commission for Optics (ICO) was held in Santiago de Compostela (Spain) 26–29 August 2014, organized by the Universities of Vigo and Santiago de Compostela. Approximately 450 people attended the conference, sharing their knowledge in the cheerful, warm atmosphere of this lovely city. The conference was extremely successful in contributing to the mission of the ICO: to contribute worldwide, on an international basis, to the progress and diffusion of scientific and technological knowledge on optics and photonics. Optics and photonics have reached a critical level of importance for the development of our societies and are present in a great many aspects of our technological progress, from communication systems supporting the Internet to the most modern techniques in medicine. Consistent with the conference slogan Enlightening the Future, the meeting stressed the importance of optical science as a key to technological progress in the coming years. UNESCO's designation of 2015 as the International Year of Light and Light-Based Technologies (www.light2015.org) acknowledges the importance of raising global awareness of how light and light-based technologies are present in a large fraction of today's advances and how they can address challenges in important areas such as energy, education, agriculture, and health.The four-day conference highlighted eleven plenary talks by outstanding scientists working in important areas of optics and photonics. A. Aspect, T. Kippenberg (2013 ICO Prize awardee) and K. Razewski (2013 ICO Galileo Galilei Award) spoke on quantum optics; P. Russell and Yu. Kivshar lectured on topics related to optical processing devices as optical fibers and metamaterials for light shaping; N. X. Fang (2011 ICO Prize), U. Woggon, and A. Alú (2013 IUPAP Young Scientists Prize) discussed applications of optics to nanoscience; and K. Dholakia and J. Widjaja (2008 Galileo Galilei Award) presented in their plenaries applications of light to the tracking and manipulation of particles. Each day, in addition to plenary talks, nine or ten parallel sessions were held covering advances in both theory and applications of optics and photonics, ranging from quantum optics to technological applications. A total of 190 talks were given. Poster sessions allowed an additional 150 presentations. Congress participants came from every one of the five continents.Included in the conference were three ceremonies for the granting of awards to plenary speakers noted above. Prizes awarded were the ICO Prize, the ICO Galileo Galilei Award, and the IUPAP young scientist Prize in Optics. Two additional prizes were awarded by OSA and SPIE to student's outstanding poster presentations.Summaries of the presentations were available to Congress attendees. In addition, a call was made for submission of elaborated papers to be peer reviewed and published in the Journal of Physics: Conference Series. Conference papers were presented on applied optics, including color science and optomechanics (7 papers), optical imaging (7 papers), biophotonics (2 papers), optical metrology (4 papers), lasers and laser processing (5 papers), optoelectronics and optical communications (6 papers), nonlinear optics (5 papers), quantum optics (4 papers) and education and sustainability (4 papers).We would like to express our gratitude to the Bureau of the International Commission for Optics, the members of the organizing and scientific advisory committees, and to the University of Vigo and the University of Santiago de Compostela for their support and help in the organization of the Conference. We finally want to acknowledge all the authors that have submitted their work to be included in this number and very specially thank all those collaborating persons who acted as reviewers of the papers included in this number for their excellent (and often little recognized) work.