Laser Optics of Condensed Matter

The Third Binational USA-USSR Symposium titled "Laser Optics of Con- densed Matter" was held in Leningrad 1 June - 5 June 1987. This volume con- tains the full text of 64 papers presented at (or prepared for) the Symposium in both plenary and poster sessions. This Symposium reestablished the very productive series of "Light Scattering" Binational Symposia which were initi- ated in Moscow in 1975. Unfortunately there was an eight-year hiatus follow- ing the Second Symposium in New York (1979). This interval, caused by serious chilling of the climate of USA-USSR collaboration, deprived the active scien- tists on both sides of the opportunity to meet and interact in the active format of a conference. During this eight year interval there has been very rapid and intense development of scientific activity in the general area of laser optics phe- nomena. The development of ultrafast laser sources has permitted rapid advances in time resolved spectroscopy and ultrafast processes; the field of optical bistability and strong nonlinearity became a hot topic; and intense work is now underway to clarify ideas of photon localization. These new dev- elopments complement many advances in the study of low dimensional systems such as surfaces, new work on phase transitions, and novel studies of elemen- tary excitations such as polariton-excitons in localized environments such as quantum wells and heterojunctions.