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EPJ Plus Focus Point on Light Pressure across All Scales
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- Published on 01 July 2021
This focus point issue of European Physical Journal Plus (EPJ Plus) finds its inspiration in the huge number of applications of light pressure across all scales of Nature, from space to nanoscience and atomic physics. Together this issue features 11 papers, including both experimental and theoretical works, which span a wide range of activities. These also include 3 review papers on the theory and practice of optical tweezers, its application in single molecule experiments and in the study of critical Casimir forces.
EPJD has appointed new Editor-in-Chief Joachim Burgdörfer
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- Published on 30 June 2021
It is with great pleasure that the publishers of European Physical Journal D: Atomic, Molecular, Optical and Plasma Physics can announce the appointment of Prof Dr Joachim Burgdörfer (Vienna University of Technology, Austria) as Editor-in-Chief, effective July 1. A long-standing member of the Editorial Board of EPJD, he succeeds Prof. Dr. Andrey V. Solov'yov, who steps down after almost 7 years in the EiC role.
EPJ ST Highlight - Hunting Dark Energy with Gravity Resonance Spectroscopy
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- Published on 29 June 2021
A highly sophisticated technique enables researchers to search for minuscule anomalies in the quantum state transitions of neutrons, which could offer key clues about the elusive nature of Dark Energy
Dark Energy is widely believed to be the driving force behind the universe’s accelerating expansion, and several theories have now been proposed to explain its elusive nature. However, these theories predict that its influence on quantum scales must be vanishingly small, and experiments so far have not been accurate enough to either verify or discredit them. In new research published in EPJ Special Topics, a team led by Hartmut Abele at TU Wien in Austria demonstrate a robust experimental technique for studying one such theory, using ultra-cold neutrons. Named ‘Gravity Resonance Spectroscopy’ (GRS), their approach could bring researchers a step closer to understanding one of the greatest mysteries in cosmology.
EPJ A Highlight - THOR: Driving collaboration in heavy-ion collision research
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- Published on 02 June 2021
As an expansive platform for collaboration between different research groups, the THOR COST Action has enabled hundreds of physicists studying the aftermath of high-energy collisions between heavy ions to improve their predictions.
In the universe’s earliest moments, particles existed in an unimaginably hot plasma, whose behaviour was governed by deeply complex webs of interaction between individual particles. Today, researchers can recreate these exotic conditions through high-energy collisions between heavy ions, whose products can tell us much about how hot, strongly-interacting matter behaves. Yet without extensive, highly coordinated collaborations between researchers across many different backgrounds, studies like this simply wouldn’t be possible. This Topical Issue of EPJ A draws together a large collection of papers inspired by the theory of hot matter and relativistic heavy-ion collisions (THOR) European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) Action. Running between November 2016 and April 2021, THOR has provided a way for over 300 researchers involved in heavy-ion collision analysis to freely exchange their ideas, leading to exciting new advances in the wider field of particle physics.
EPJ Plus Focus Point on Classical and Quantum Information Geometry
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- Published on 25 May 2021
What is information? What can we do with information? How are we supposed to understand information? How does information influence the development of modern Science?
Some, if not all and a thousand more, of these questions come to the mind of almost every modern researcher whose research area is somehow interconnected with Information Theory. However, the answers to these questions are far from being completely unravelled, and some recent theoretical developments seem to suggest that our understanding of the geometrical aspects of Information Theory will play an increasingly important role in the quest for answers.
EPJD Colloquium - Challenges and opportunities in verification and validation of low temperature plasma simulations and experiments
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- Published on 21 May 2021
In the field of plasma physics, simulations are becoming increasingly relied upon to elucidate fundamental plasma phenomena as well as to simulate real-world plasma reactors. This new colloquium published in EPJD provides a description of how one research group (at Sandia National Laboratories) incorporates verification and validation (V&V) processes in their low temperature plasma (LTP) research and development activities.
EPJ Plus Highlight - Understanding the mechanism that gives light a ‘little extra push’
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- Published on 07 May 2021
The use of light to move matter has a wide range of technological applications and could one day even power spaceflight. New research suggests a method to better understand this subtle phenomenon.
We are all familiar with the sight of a white pool ball striking a red and smoothly transferring its momentum. What is less familiar is that light can also transfer momentum and is even able to give objects a tiny push. A new paper published in EPJ Plus suggests a way to examine the mechanism behind light’s subtle momentum transfer — the Poynting vector. The paper is the work of Manuel Marqués of IFIMAC-The Condensed Matter Physics Center, and the Nicolás Cabrera Institute (INC), Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain, and Shulamit Edelstein and Pedro Serena from the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC).
EPJ Plus Highlight - A deeper understanding of how cells move and stick together
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- Published on 06 May 2021
The way cells adhere to surfaces is an important element in allowing them to form cohesive tissues. A new study looks at how cells stick to a surface and spread across it.
Observing how cells stick to surfaces and their motility is vitally important in the study of tissue maintenance, wound healing and even understanding how cancers progress. A new paper published in EPJ Plus, by Raj Kumar Sadhu, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel, takes a step towards a deeper understanding of these processes.
EPJ H Highlight - Investigating heavy quark physics with the LHCb experiment
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- Published on 15 April 2021
In ten years of operation the LHCb experiment has probed the nature of physics attempting to answer some of the Universe’s most fundamental questions. A new review examines its past achievements and future potential.
A new review published in EPJ H by Clara Matteuzzi, Research Director at the National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN) and former tenured professor at the University of Milan, and her colleagues, examines almost three decades of the LHCb experiment – from its conception to operation at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) – documenting its achievements and future potential.
EPJ H Highlight - Tracking the progress of fusion power through 60 years of neutral particle analysis
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- Published on 14 April 2021
Harnessing the fusion power of the stars requires the control of plasma and a powerful diagnostic tool to analyse it
As the world’s energy demands grow, so too does growing concern over the environmental impact of power production. The need for a safe, clean, and reliable energy source has never been clearer. Fusion power could fulfil such a need. A review paper published in EPJ H examines the 6-decade history of neutral particle analysis (NPA), developed in Ioffe Institute, Saint Petersburg, Russia, a vital diagnostic tool used in magnetic plasma confinement devices such as tokamaks that will house the nuclear fusion process and generate the clean energy of the future.
