Since the advent of the laser about 40 years ago, the fields of laser physics and quantum optics have evolved into a major disciplines. The early studies included optical coherence theory and semiclassical and quantum mechanical theories of the laser. More recently many new and interesting effects have been predicted. These include the role of coherent atomic effects in lasing without inversion and electromagnetically induced transparency, atom optics, laser cooling and trapping, teleportation, the single-atom micromaser and its role in quantum measurement theory, to name a few. The International Conference on Laser Physics and Quantum Optics was held in Shanghai, China, from August 25 to August 28,1999, to discuss these and many other exciting developments in laser physics and quantum optics. The international character of the conference was manifested by the fact that scientists from over 13 countries participated and lectured at the conference. There were four keynote lectures delivered by Nobel laureate Willis Lamb, Jr., Profs. H. Walther, A.E. Siegman,and M.O. Scully. In addition, there were 34 invited lectures, 27 contributed oral presentations, and 59 poster papers. We are grateful to all the participants of the conference and the contributors of this volume.

The Seventh Rochester Conference on Coherence and Quantum Optics was held on the campus of the University of Rochester during the four-day period June 7 - 10, 1996. More than 280 scientists from 33 countries participated. This book contains the Proceedings of the meeting. This Conference differed from the previous six in the series in having only a limited number of oral presentations, in order to avoid too many parallel sessions. Another new feature was the introduction of tutorial lectures. Most contributed papers were presented in poster sessions. The Conference was sponsored by the American Physical Society, by the Optical Society of America, by the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics and by the University of Rochester. We wish to express our appreciation to these organizations for their support and we especially extend our thanks to the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics for providing financial assistance to a number of speakers from Third World countries, to enable them to take part in the meeting.

Annotation The scope of the July 1999 conference covers Brownian ratchets, stochastic resonance, biomedicine, semiconductors, electronic devices, lasers, turbulence, and spectroscopy. Among the topics of the 66 papers are quantum stress tensor fluctuations, signatures of electron-electron interaction in nanoelectric device shot noise, the scale invariance of 1/f noise, Parrondo's paradoxical games, and what physicists can contribute to economics. Other topics include additive noise and noise-induced nonequilibrium phase transitions, entropy generation in computation and the second law of thermodynamics, high frequency noise modeling in MOSFETs, a percolative approach to resistance fluctuations, short time-scales in the Kramers problem, activated escape of driven systems, and numerical methods for systems excited by white noise. No subject index. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

This volume contains 33 of the papers presented at the Advanced Research Workshop in July 1997. The workshop was designed to initiate a dialogue among specialists in resonator and cavity design from NATO and CP countries. The papers fall under the headings of physics and theory, phase conjugation, optics, and optimization of design. Topics include nonorthogonal optical modes and resonators; thermal lensing in Kerr-lens modelocked solid-state lasers; beam divergency studies on a long pulse XeCl excimer laser; highly efficient high-average power Nd:YAG laser with a passive Q-switch; and creation of channels into Ti:sapphire waveguiding layers. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR