Special Issue Photoluminescence in Rare Earths: Photonic Materials and Devices - Selected papers from PRE'12 Conference Preface: Photoluminescence in rare earths: Photonic materials and devices

Optical materials and photonic structures based on rare earth ions are the cornerstone of the scientific and technological building where photonics and material science smartly cooperate to develop new physics, new devices, and new applications in both high-tech domain and daily use tools. These ancient but ever innovative kinds of materials are used to construct luminescent structures, which can perform sensing and functionalized structures to address successfully the main socio-economic challenges that we are facing in many fields, going from health care to security, from energy saving to efficient and clean industrial production, from environment protection to fast and efficient communications Photonics, with its pervasiveness, has already been identified as one of the Key Enabling Technologies in the XXI century, and through advanced research it can not only give a strong contribution to find new technical solutions to still unsolved problems, but it can also pave the way to applications that up to now are far from being imagined. The Workshop on Photoluminescence in Rare Earths: Photonic Materials and Devices (PRE) has the motivation to provide a platform for the above mentioned prospects.