The embryonic development of femtoscience stems from advances made in the generation of ultrashort laser pulses. Beginning with mode-locking of glass lasers in the 1960s, the development of dye lasers brought the pulse width down from picoseconds to femtoseconds. The breakthrough in solid state laser pulse generation provided the current reliable table-top laser systems capable of average power of about 1 watt, and peak power density of easily watts per square centimeter, with pulse widths in the range of four to eight femtoseconds. Pulses with peak power density reaching watts per square...

This volume comprises a collection of invited and selected contributions presented at the 16th International Conference on Laser Spectroscopy in Palm Cove, Queensland, Australia, 13-18 July 2003. The papers report the latest and most exciting developments in laser spectroscopy and related areas: new ultra-precise spectroscopic measurements based on optical frequency combs including tests of the stability of the fundamental constants; the first realization of Bose-Einstein condensation in cesium and ytterbium; the behavior of ultra-cold bosons and fermions in optical lattices; the production...