Advances in Information Optics and Photonics

This volume is the sixth in a series of books initiated in 1989 by the International Commission for Optics (ICO). These books highlight the advances and trends in the research and development of optical sciences, technologies, and applications at the time of their publication. In this age of the photon, information optics and photonics represent the key technologies to sustain our knowledge-based society. New concepts in classical and quantum-entangled light and coherent matter and novel materials and processes have lead to remarkable advances in today's information science and technology. The ICO is closely involved with information optics, as exemplified by the ICO topical meeting on Optoinformatics / Information Photonics (St. Petersburg, Russia, 2006), the ICO/ICTP Winter College on Quantum and Classical Aspects of Information Optics (Trieste, Italy, 2006), and the many ICO Prizes recently awarded on outstanding contributions on these topics. This book is in part based on these ICO activities.