The 8th technical workshop and exhibition focused on advances and innovations in the field of specialty optical fibers and their applications (Workshop on Specialty Optical Fibers and Their Applications – WSOF) was organized by UFE at the Clarion Congress Hotel in Prague-Vysočany. Nearly 200 participants registered for WSOF were able to see 106 presentations, including 4 plenary and 15 invited talks, 43 lectures and 44 posters. The industrial exhibition was also a success, with 25 companies exhibiting, with an exceptionally representation of companies supplying technological units for the preparation of optical fibers.
Lectures
The lectures were given by the world’s leading figures in photonics and optics, and the plenary lectures were a great success. Francesco Polleti (University of Southampton, UK) in his lecture “One (hollow) fibre to rule them all…” talked about anti-resonant hollow optical fibres with record low attenuation; Heike Ebendorff-Heidepriem (University of Adelaide, Australia) presented “Soft glass fibres: Versatility through glass composition, nano/micro-crystal incorporation and fiber structure”; Frank Wise (Cornel University, USA) presented “Fiber regenerative amplifiers for femtosecond pulse generation”. Clémence Jollivet (Coherent Corp., USA) in her Tuesday plenary lecture talked about current directions in the development of active fibers for power pulsed fiber lasers. Monday’s Industry panel, moderated by Alexis Mendez (MCH Engineering LLC, USA), attracted great interest; see the program for additional presentations.
Our colleagues presented research results in several sessions of the workshop. Michal Kamrádek gave a talk on highly doped optical fibers for high efficiency holmium lasers. Petr Vařák presented to the participants an interactive online software for Judd-Ofelt analysis. Pavel Honzátko, Ivan Kašík and Michal Kamrádek chaired three sessions of the conference.
Poster session and award ceremony
The traditional poster session was included in the programme for Tuesday April 8. In the closing ceremony, the prize for the best student paper (Fabrication of an antiresonant hollow-core fibre for mid-infrared nonlinear Raman conversion in nitrogen pumped at 2 μm, Achille Bogas-Droy from Institut Franco-Allemand de Recherches de Saint-Louis, France) was awarded and the two best posters were evaluated, one from the field of fiber sensors (ZnO-doped preform preparation approaches towards radioluminescent optical fibers, Dennis Köhler, Leibniz-IPHT, Germany) and the other from the field of fiber lasers (Thulium-doped fiber laser with longitudinally segmented active fiber, Bára Švejkarová, UFE CAS).
Lab tours
On Thursday, April 10, WSOF participants also had the opportunity to visit the laboratories for fiber optic production technology at the UFE’s detached workplace in Prague 6-Lysolaje. During the tour, we presented our research infrastructure to approximately 35 visitors, starting with the lathe for the production of glass rods (preforms) by MCVD, through the drawing tower where the preform is melted at 2000 °C, to the station where the drawn optical fibre is wrapped with a special polymer and wound onto a spool.
On Friday, April 11, the participants had another opportunity to look into the laboratories, this time at Crytur in Turnov, a world-leading company in the production and processing of synthetic crystals. The participants of the excursion got acquainted with the process of growing synthetic garnet crystals, precise material processing and assembly of integrated optoelectronic devices in a special room. The excursion at Crytur was also open to participants of the SPIE Optics+Optoelectronics Symposium, which ran concurrently with the WSOF; we wrote about the symposium here.
Social events
We have also prepared several social events for the conference and workshop participants. On Monday, April 7, we hosted a welcome reception at the Residence of the Mayor of Prague on Mariánské náměstí, a unique space considered an art deco architectural gem. On Wednesday April 9, participants had the opportunity to take part in a short guided tour of the historic centre of Prague and then see the sights they had discovered, such as Charles Bridge, Prague Castle and Kampa Island, again, this time from the deck of a boat during an evening cruise on the Vltava River.
Photo source: UFE / SPIE