Anatomy of a Conference: DAMOP Day 2-- The Rise of Precision Measurement

Since I sort of implied a series in the previous post, and I have no better ideas, here's a look at Thursday's DAMOP program:

Thursday Morning, 8am (yes, they start having talks at 8am. It's a great trial.)

Session J1 Novel Probes of Ultracold Atom Gases

Chair: David Weiss, Pennsylvania State University Room: Imperial East

Invited Speakers:  Cheng Chin,  Markus Greiner,  Kaden Hazzard,  Tin-Lun Ho 

Session J2 Coherent Control with Optical Frequency Combs
Chair: Linda Young, Argonne National Laboratory Room: Imperial Center

Invited Speakers:  J. Ye,  Moshe Shapiro,  W. Campbell,  Svetlana Malinovskaya 

Session J3 Ultracold Chemistry
Chair: Marjatta Lyyra, Temple University Room: Imperial West

Session J4 Atomic and Molecular Collisions Related to Astrophysical Applications
Sponsor: GEC Chair: Murtadha Khakoo, California State University, Fullerton Room: Regency Ballroom

Invited Speakers:  S. Schippers,  J.E. Lawler,  Kate Kirby,  Ara Chutjian 

Session J5 Strong Field Dissociative Ionization: Wave Packets in Molecular Ions
Chair: Carlos Trallero, National Research Council Canada Room: Arboretum I-III

Session J6 Bose-Einstein Condensation
Chair: Hal Metcalf, Stony Brook University Room: Arboretum IV-V

In this session, we see the first appearance of the other major thread in DAMOP, namely precision measurement. The first session is the usual ultracold atoms stuff, but the second session, on frequency combs, is the first real precision measurement session at this year's DAMOP. It involves ultrafast lasers, but it's primarily about measuring physical quantities with ridiculous precision, which is practically a topic unto itself.

The other sessions, in order, are ultra-cold atoms, old school atomic collisions/ applications, ultrafast lasers, and ultracold atoms. It's a good morning for ultra.

At 10:30, we have:

Session K1 Focus Session: Strongly Interacting Fermi Gases I
Chair: Sophie Rittner, Rice University Room: Imperial East

Invited Speakers:  Tilman Esslinger,  Thomas Schaefer 

Session K2 Attosecond Electron Physics
Chair: Markus Guehr, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory Room: Imperial Center

Invited Speakers:  Thomas Pfeifer,  J. Burgdoerfer,  Giuseppe Sansone,  Hiroki Mashiko 

Session K3 Focus Session: Tests of Lorentz Invariance
Sponsor: GPMFC Chair: Zheng-Tian Lu, Argonne National Laboratory Room: Imperial West

Invited Speakers:  Holger Mueller,  Michael Romalis 

Session K4 Trapped Ion Quantum Information
Sponsor: GQI Chair: Wes Campbell, University of Maryland Room: Regency Ballroom

Session K5 Undergraduate Session
Chair: Jan Chaloupka, University of Northern Colorado Room: Arboretum I-III

Session K6 Atom-Atom Collisions

Chair: Brett Esry, Kansas State University Room: Arboretum IV-V

In the late morning session, we have ultra-cold atoms, ultra-fast lasers, precision measurement, quantum information, a general interest session featuring outstanding undergrads, and old-school collisions.

After lunch, we have:

Session L1 Focus Session: Many-Body Physics with Ultracold Atoms

Chair: Brian DeMarco, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Room: Imperial East

Invited Speakers:  Wolfgang Ketterle,  Klaus Sengstock 

Session L2 Focus Session: Symmetry Breaking & Dissociation in Small Molecules
Chair: David Schultz, Oak Ridge National Laboratory Room: Imperial Center

Invited Speakers:  Ann Orel,  Thomas Rescigno 

Session L3 Quantum Entanglement of Simple Systems
Chair: Boris Blinov, University of Washington Room: Imperial West

Invited Speakers:  Klaus Molmer,  Dietrich Leibfried,  Kihwan Kim,  Poul Jessen 

Session L4 Precision Measurements: EDMs and Other
Sponsor: GPMFC Chair: Carol Tanner, University of Notre Dame Room: Regency Ballroom

Session L5 Collisions Involving Charged Particles
Chair: Gregory Childers, California State University, Fullerton Room: Arboretum I-III

Session L6 Attosecond Pulses: Generation, Characterization and Utilization

Chair: Gilles Doumy, The Ohio State University Room: Arboretum IV-V

Here we have ultracold atoms, old-school molecular physics, quantum information, precision measurement, old-school collisions, and ultrafast lasers.

I'm being a little loose with the labels, but the idea is just to give you the basic flavor of the meeting. If you're into ultracold atoms, ultrafast lasers, or old-school moleculuar physics, you can have a more or less seamless conference experience in which you go from one session in your area of choice to another without ever needing to see a talk on a different area. And if you're into precision measurement, well, Thursday is a day just for you...

On the other hand, if you're just looking around for interesting stuff, you've always got a pretty good variety to choose from, in every time block.