A particular theme for this volume is precision measurements. Motivated by the untapped potential for vast improvements in accuracy offered by atomic systems, this subject has advanced tremendously in recent years by new developments in laser technology. This has been recognized by the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to two of the pioneers in the field and contributors to these proceedings, J L Hall and T W Hänsch.

The other main theme of the proceedings is cold atoms and quantum degenerate gases. This conference marked the 10th anniversary of the first announcement of an atomic Bose–Einstein Condensate at the 12th International Conference on Laser Spectroscopy with a contribution from Nobel Laureate Eric Cornell.

Contents:

• High Precision Measurements:
• Improving Laser Coherence (J L Hall et al.)
• Precision Spectroscopy of Hydrogen and Femtosecond Laser Frequency Combs (Th Udem et al.)
• Towards a New Measurement of the Electron’s Electric Dipole Moment (J J Judson et al.)
• Symposium on Cold Atoms and Molecules:
• BEC — The First 10 Years (C E Wieman)
• Sympathetic Cooling of Fermionic Lithium via a Bosonic Rubidium Gas (S Günther et al.)
• Loading of Selected Sites in an Optical Lattice Using Light-Shift Engineering (P F Griffin et al.)
• Atomic Clocks:
• Simulate Ion Traps with Neutral Atoms: Stark Atom Chip and Optical Lattice Clock (H Katori et al.)
• Microfabricated Atomic Clocks and Magnetometers (S Knappe et al.)
• Quantum Control and Quantum Information:
• Attosecond Physics: Controlling and Tracking Electron Dynamics on an Atomic Time Scale (R Kienberger & F Krausz)
• Managing Continuous Variables for Single Photons (L Zhang et al.)
• and other papers