Abstract

The competitive cluster "Route des Lasers" has been labeled by the French Government in July 2005. Its main purpose is to become:

• the reference in the development and in the outreach of innovative technologies of optics and lasers (laser systems and applications, metrology, and imaging, innovative physics) in the industrial sectors, as aeronautics, space and embedded systems, health, vision, chemistry, food industry, electronics…

• the center of excellence in research for its specialities: intense lasers, fiber lasers, ultra short lasers, ultrafast optical instrumentation…

• the leader for training on lasers and optics. In this respect, its target is to set-up in Aquitaine another major economic sector, creating jobs and becoming attractive to industrial researchers.

In this context, it has launched in September 2005, in cooperation with Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique (CEA) and Regional Council a project involving scientific exhibitions, called "Terre des Lasers ®", in order to create an exhibition and an area of communication and science discovery or a very large target (public, school, industry) in the fields of optics, lasers, optronics and imaging.

This initiative is part of the strategy of the "Route des Lasers" center which aims to promote technologies developed in the areas of photonics, targeting in particular children and teenagers and their awareness for this particular industrial and scientific topic.

© 2009 Optical Society of America