This volume presents the Proceedings of New Development in Optics and Related Fields, held in Erice, Sicily, Italy, from the 6th to the 21st of June, 2005. This meeting was organized by the International School of Atomic and Molecular Spectroscopy of the Ettore Majorana Center for Scientific Culture. The purpose of this Institute was to provide a comprehensive and coherent treatment of the new techniques and contemporary developments in optics and related fields. Several lectures of the course addressed directly the technologies required for the detection and identification of chemical and biological threats; other lectures considered the possible applications of new techniques and materials to the detection and identification of such threats. Each lecturer developed a coherent section of the program starting at a somewhat fundamental level and ultimately reaching the frontier of knowledge in the field in a systematic and didactic fashion.

Advanced spectroscopic techniques allow the probing of very small systems and very fast phenomena, conditions that can be considered "extreme" at the present status of our experimentation and knowledge. Quantum dots, nanocrystals and single molecules are examples of the former and events on the femtosecond scale examples of the latter. The purpose of this book is to examine the realm of phenomena of such extreme type and the techniques that permit their investigations.

Each author has developed a coherent section of the program

starting at a somewhat fundamental level and ultimately reaching the frontier of knowledge in the field in a systematic and didactic fashion. The formal lectures are complemented by additional seminars.

This volume presents the Proceedings of New Development in Optics and Related Fields, held in Erice, Sicily, Italy, from the 6th to the 21st of June, 2005. This meeting was organized by the International School of Atomic and Molecular Spectroscopy of the Ettore Majorana Center for Scientific Culture. The purpose of this Institute was to provide a comprehensive and coherent treatment of the new techniques and contemporary developments in optics and related fields. Several lectures of the course addressed directly the technologies required for the detection and identification of chemical and biological threats; other lectures considered the possible applications of new techniques and materials to the detection and identification of such threats. Each lecturer developed a coherent section of the program starting at a somewhat fundamental level and ultimately reaching the frontier of knowledge in the field in a systematic and didactic fashion.

Advanced spectroscopic techniques allow the probing of very small systems and very fast phenomena, conditions that can be considered "extreme" at the present status of our experimentation and knowledge. Quantum dots, nanocrystals and single molecules are examples of the former and events on the femtosecond scale examples of the latter. The purpose of this book is to examine the realm of phenomena of such extreme type and the techniques that permit their investigations.

Each author has developed a coherent section of the program

starting at a somewhat fundamental level and ultimately reaching the frontier of knowledge in the field in a systematic and didactic fashion. The formal lectures are complemented by additional seminars.