The SPIE Photonics West 2023 Symposium and Industry Exhibition, the world's largest photonics, optics and laser event, took place from January 28 to February 2, 2023 in San Francisco, California.
After restrictions due to covid, there was a record interest in SPIE Photonics West this year, with the number of participants exceeding twenty-two thousand. One of the most prestigious sub-conferences of the symposium is the Fiber Lasers: Technology and Systems conference, where, in strong competition, Ondřej Schreiber from the Fiber Lasers and Nonlinear Optics team won the second prize in the student competition for the best lecture for the work "The effect of temperature dependence of thulium cross sections on thulium-doped fiber laser operation". The surprisingly little-explored temperature dependence of the spectroscopic parameters of thulium fibers (see e.g. our pioneering work here) can significantly affect the operation of high-power fiber lasers, which was the main topic of Ondřej's lecture.
Information on all awarded prizes can be found here.
