CONFERENCE SCOPE:The 8th International Conference on X-Ray Lasers  will be held from the 27th to the 31st  of May 2002,  at the Aspen Meadows facilities of the Aspen Institute in the outskirts of Aspen, Colorado. The conference is part of a series of  biennial international meetings that provides a forum for recent experimental and theoretical developments in the field of X-ray lasers (XRLs), other coherent x-ray sources, and their applications.  The conference will consist of invited oral and poster presentations that will report and review recent advances, as well as of contributed oral and poster contributions.  The environment and schedule of the meeting will also provide ample opportunities for informal discussions among the participants.

The conference will include, but will not be limited, to the following topics:

Laser pumped and discharge pumped XRLs
Collisional excitation and recombination pumping schemes
Ultrashort pulse laser pumping of XRls , including transient collisional excitation and recombination to the ground state.
Drivers for XRLs
Modeling of gain medium, beam propagation, and related atomic and plasma physics.
High order harmonics and other alternative tabletop coherent short-wavelength sources.
Short wavelength free-electron lasers and alternative accelerator based high brightness sources.
Applications of XRLs and other bright coherent sources
X-ray optics and instrumentation

CONFERENCE LOCATION: Aspen is a small town located in one of the most scenic regions of the mountains of Colorado. It originated as a mining town in the mid-1800’s and now is best known as a ski destination. Direct flights to Aspen are available from Denver, and several cities in the western United States.  Is it also reachable by ground transportation (3 - 4 hours) drive from the Denver International airport.  For those interested is some sight-seeing the ground transportation option should be of interest, as the landscape between Denver and Aspen is beautiful. There are shuttle buses connecting the Denver Airport with Aspen.

CONFERENCE FACILITIES AT THE ASPEN INSTITUTE/ ASPEN MEADOWS : The facilities of the Aspen Institute at the Aspen Meadows consist of a small campus designed for meetings of small to medium size groups. The Aspen Meadows has 15,000 square feet of conference space, that include an auditorium accommodating up to 340 persons. It also has meeting rooms that can accommodate up to 100 posters. One of the rooms is wired with fast Internet access, and participants will have access to 4 internet lines for e-mail purposes during the entire week of the conference. The Aspen Meadows campus is located not far from downtown Aspen (a long walk), yet is in an isolated and beautiful mountain surrounding. Its campus is considered a leading example of one of the most significant  architectural movements of the 20th century, the Bauhaus-inspired International Style. For illustrations of the conference facilities open the link below :

Aspen Meadows Facilities
The Aspen Meadows

The weather in Aspen in May can be quite changable.  It can be summer-like with warm days, reaching 70 F.  But a spring snow storm can not be ruled out.   It is advisible to bring warm clothes to be prepared in the event of cold weather.

For more information on Aspen, visit Aspenalive