"Science Plaza 2001", the annual open house event of NTT Basic Research Laboratories, was held from February 13-14, 2001, at the NTT Atsugi R&D Center. The International Symposium on Carrier Interactions in Mesoscopic Systems (CIM2001) was held concurrently. Participants of "Science Plaza 2001" were allowed to attend the CIM opening remark by Dr. Sunao Ishihara, Director of NTT Basic Research Laboratories, and the CIM plenary talk by Dr. K. von Klitzing, Physics Nobel Laureate.
In "Science Plaza 2001", the activities of NTT Basic Research Laboratories were demonstrated via presentations in a "Poster Session", "Laboratory Tour", and "Video Theater". The "Poster Session" featured 41 presentations on the topics of materials and physics, and the actual researchers directly explained and discussed these topics with the participants. The "Laboratory Tour" featured extremely low temperature technology, the creation of X-ray lasers, the synthesis of high-Tc materials by molecular beam epitaxy, a clean room tour and a peta-media tour, and we showed our research equipment and facilities to the participants. The "Video Theater" featured "Mesoscopic Superconductors-A Perspective from an International Symposium" and "Novel Trend-Mysteries of Quantum Theory Clarified by Experiments", and we demonstrated some of our research activities with pictures.
We had about 200 participants at "Science Plaza 2001" even though the NTT Atsugi R&D Center is located about 2 hours far from the center of Tokyo. In addition, some participants came from cities more than 300 km away (Sapporo, Sendai, Nagoya, Kyoto, Osaka, and Kohchi) by plane, train, and/or bus. Many of the CIM participants also attended "Science Plaza 2001". Since so many people requested to join the "Laboratory Tour", we prepared additional tours. The participants gave us many hints and insights for future research and many words of encouragement for uninterrupted basic and fundamental research in materials and physics. We would like to again thank all participants of "Science Plaza 2001".
