In addition to traditional topics covered by the LEOS-sponsored International Conference on Transparent Optical Networks (ICTON), ICTON’06, for the first time in the conference history, hosted a Special Session: “Microresonators and Photonic Molecules: Trapping, Harnessing and Releasing Light”. Microresonator structures that make possible slowing and storing light as well as altering the interaction between light and matter are a subject of intense research activity worldwide. The field yields diverse applications in areas that range from telecommunications to laser science to quantum computing to medicine and national defense yet offers numerous scientific, computational and technological challenges.
The Special Session at ICTON’06 showcased the latest developments in the theory, design and fabrication of optical microcavities, emphasized the tremendous successes of the last decade and the remaining challenges, and provided a forum for exchange of knowledge in this highly interdisciplinary field of research.
The session featured over 30 participants from the USA, UK, Ireland, China, Germany, Ukraine, Belarus, Korea, Japan, Italy, and Switzerland. The session program included several invited lectures presented by our keynote speakers: Vasily N. Astratov (University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA), Toshihiko Baba (Yokohama National University, Japan), Richard Chang (Yale University, USA), John Donegan (Trinity College, Ireland), Evgenii Narimanov (Princeton University, USA), Alexander I. Nosich (Institute of Radiophysics and Electronics NASU, Ukraine), and Jelena Vuckovic (Stanford University, USA). The lectures provided informative perspectives on current trends in microcavity research. Ways to achieve low thresholds and directional emission from microcavity lasers, amazing opportunities offered by complex coupled-cavity structures, and the role of microcavities in classical and quantum information processing were among the issues discussed. A number of contributed presentations focused on the field’s hottest topics, including microresonators design for specific applications such as optical switching, filtering, biosensing, and waveguide dispersion modification.
As a result of its tremendous success in 2006, the Special Session will again be a part of the ICTON program in 2007. 9th International Conference on Transparent Optical Networks ICTON 2007 will be held in Rome, Italy, on July 1-5, 2007. Up-to-date conference information is available at http://www.itl.waw.pl/icton.
The suggested 2007 Microresonators Special Session topics include but are not limited to the following:
• Whispering-gallery modes
• Microcavity shape engineering
• Photonic molecules
• Microcavity lasers
• Photonic crystal microcavities
• Coupled-cavity waveguides
• Microresonator-based sensors
• Optical information processing with microresonators
As the Special Session organizer, I wish to thank all the participants for contibuting to the session program and also the ICTON’06 organizers, Marian Marciniak and Trevor M. Benson, for their kind support.
Looking forward to seeing all of you in Rome next year,
Svetlana V. Boriskina,
Special Session organizer

Left: Richard Chang outlines reached milestones and remaining challenges in the quest for uni-directionality with whispering-gallery modes in microlasers; Center: Evgenii Narimanov talks about effects of dynamical tunneling and Anderson localization in dielectric resonators; Right: ICTON participants at the windmill in Nottingham that once belonged to and was run by George Green, whose formulas and theorems are better remembered than the flour his mill produced.