The Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers (CNAM), is an institute of higher education and research founded in 1794 by Abbé Grégoire. Its main premises are located within central Paris and it has several annexes in neighbouring suburbs. Its major function is to provide qualifications to a wide spectrum of the working population outside the scope of the normal university system. Courses take the form of evening lectures, problem classes and practical laboratories. Daytime and distance learning are also major components of the teaching load. The Conservatoire is also home to several research laboratories where teaching staff are involved in research projects. The present funding request is for work carried out on the site of La Plaine Saint Denis, just north of the city. The work will be undertaken by the “ Lasers & Nonlinear Optics” team lead by Dr Jean-Jacques Zondy who has a considerable experience in these fields both theoretically and experimentally. Our fields of interest are:

1. Coherent optics and lasers physics - Linear optics, bi-refringent optics, atomic and molecular physics, laser frequency stabilisation, high-precision optical frequency metrology
2. Nonlinear Optics- Parametric frequency conversion – second harmonic generation (SHG), difference frequency generation (DFG), sum frequency generation (SFG), optical parametric amplifier/oscillator (OPA/OPO)
3.  Laser instrumentation Optical parametric oscillators (OPO), single frequency DPSS lasers
4. Trace Gas sensing for environmental and medical applications laser based optical sensors - Cavity ring down spectroscopy (CRDS)

The team is composed of one senior researcher Jean-Jacques Zondy (Director of Research), one assistant professor (Malo Cadoret), one post-doc (Thomas Zanon) and 2 Phd students (Emeline Andrieux and Abdallah Rihan). CNAM is currently participating in the 2008 EMRP-iMERA+ Health metrology program (contract N° 217257) (Joint Research Project n° T2 J02 Breath Analysis for early disease diagnosis).