About 110 attendees from all over the world joined the four-day conference at MPL that is intended to gather the international research community working on interactions between light, sound and mechanical vibrations and to bridge the gap between the fields of Brillouin-Mandelstam scattering and (cavity) optomechanics research.

WOMBAT hosted four tutorial speakers on the first day – Gustavo Wiederhecker, Warwick Bowen, Francesca Palombo and Marc Serra-Garcia – that brought everyone up to speed. Over the subsequent three days several high-profile speakers delivered invited talks, amongst them Yiwen Chu, Johannes Fink, Sarah Benchabane, Giuliano Scarcelli, David Marpaung and Xiaoyi Bao. The talks were complemented by contributed oral presentations and a poster session. The topics ranged from quantum acoustics, fiber sensors, microwave photonics, quantum transduction to acoustic design and biological imaging based on acoustic waves.

The invited evening speaker, Miles Padgett, broadened the spectrum towards application of multi-mode fibers for endoscopes.

The workshop also celebrated the 100 years of the prediction of Brillouin-Mandelstam scattering with an inspiring talk by Luc Thevenaz on the biography of Léon Brillouin and Leonid Mandelstam and a subsequent vivid podium discussion with Christopher Poulton, Avinoam Zadok, Yiwen Chu, Giuliano Scarcelli and Warwick Bowen.

On the last day, four PhD students received a prize for their talks and poster presentations sponsored by OPTICA: Jesse Slim, Lydia Kanari-Naish, Arjun Iyer and Maxwell Drimmer.

The chairs of the Wombat meeting, Birgit Stiller, Christian Wolff, Florian Marquardt, Jochen Guck and Philip Russell would like to thank all attendees and helpers that contributed to the stimulating atmosphere and smooth running of the event!

Photo (MPL): Group Picture (left), Opening talk by Birgit Stiller of MPL (upper right), 4 PhD students received prizes for talks and poster presentations (lower right)