During the past few decades we have witnessed at least two major innovations in science which have had substantial impact on technology as well as science itself, pervasive enough to modify many facets of our daily lives. We refer, of course, to the tran­ sistor and the laser. It is striking that now with the advent of optical bistability we may have opened the door to another such field, which combines these two aspects (transistor and laser) and has the possibility for important device applications as well as providing a unique window into the as yet not thoroughly explored frontiers of nonequilibrium statistical physics. This has prompted us to organize an international conference on the subject of optical bistability to provide an adequate means for assessing the current state of the art of this important field and to stimulate further significant developments by means of in­ tense technical exchange and interaction among the leading scien­ tists in this subject area.

Conditions and Limitations in Intrinsic Optical Bistability.- Semiclassical and Quantum Statistical Dressed Mode Description of Optical Bistability.- Instabilities in Optical Bistability: Transform from cw to Pulsed.- Bistable Systems in Nonlinear Optics.- Bistability in Irradiated Josephson Junctions.- Optical Bistability Experiments and Mean-Field Theories.- Optical Bistability in a GaAs Etalon.- Optical Bistability and Multi-Stability in the Semiconductor InSb.- Optical Bistability Effects in a Dye Ring Laser.- Microwave Dispersive Bistability in a Confocal Fabry-Perot Microwave Cavity.- Bistability and Phase Transitions of Nuclear Spin Systems.- Transient Phenomena in Bistable Devices.- Analytic Description of Multiphoton Optical Bistability in a Ring Cavity.- Active Two-Beam Optical Bistability.- Absorptive and Dispersive Bistability for a Doppler-Broadened Medium in a Fabry-Perot: Steady-State Description.- The Role of Phases in the Transient Dynamics of Nonlinear Interferometers.- Frequency Switching in Dispersive Optical Bistability.- Dispersive Optical Bistability with Fluctuations.- Fluctuations and Transitions in the Absorptive Optical Bistability.- Short- and Long-Time Evolution in Absorptive Optical Bistability.- Cooperation in an Optical-Bistability System.- The Driven Dicke Model and Its Macroscopic Extension: Bistability or Bifurcation?.- Optical Bistability Based upon Atomic Correlation in a Small Volume.- Complex Order Parameters in Quantum Optics First-Order Phase Transition Analogies.- Theory of Plane Wave Reflection and Refraction by the Nonlinear Interface.- Optical Properties of Nonlinear Interfaces.- Applications of the Generalized P-Representation to Optical Bistability.- Effects of Propagation, Transverse Mode Coupling and Diffraction on Nonlinear Light Pulse Evolution.- Panel Discussion.- List of Contributors.