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EPJA Topical Collection: The QCD Phase Diagram in Strong Magnetic Fields
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- Published on 03 November 2022

Guest Editors: Pedro Costa, Débora Peres Menezes, Vladimir Skokov and Carsten Urbach
Read all articles of this topical collection for free until 2nd January 2023!
In recent years, the impact of strong magnetic fields on the strongly interacting matter phase diagram has been a very active field of research with important developments. The presence of these strong magnetic fields modifies the dynamics of quarks, gluons and hadrons and is expected to have an enormous influence over all regions of the phase diagram: from the first stages of the Universe to the physics of neutron stars and the quark gluon plasma.
EPJ Web of Conferences Highlight – 10th EPS-QEOD Europhoton Conference on Solid-State, Fibre, and Waveguide Coherent Light Sources
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- Published on 26 October 2022

The 10th EPS-QEOD Europhoton conference took place in Hannover, from August 28th to September 2nd, 2022. Host was the Leibniz University and the Cluster of Excellence PhoenixD. The Volkswagen Foundation generously sponsored the event.
With great pleasure, the European laser and optics community came together again in one place after the long pandemic downtime and enjoyed the interaction in the beautiful Herrenhausen Palace. The meeting was intentionally not planned as a hybrid conference, and in fact, all 80 presentations took place on-site.
EPJ Web of Conferences Highlight – Multi-line Diagnostics of the Interstellar Medium
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- Published on 26 October 2022

The IRAM conference “Multi-line Diagnostics of the Interstellar Medium” took place in Nice (France), from April 4-6, 2022.
Different aspects of the millimeter and submillimeter astronomy were tackled, from the chemical complexity of the interstellar medium in the local and early Universe, to the environment of stars in the earliest stages of formation but also the physical and chemical evolution of galaxies over cosmic time.
EPJ D Topical Issue on Quantum Aspects of Attoscience
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- Published on 24 October 2022

This collection of articles contains contributions arising from the virtual conference Quantum Battles in Attoscience. The conference attracted more than 300 attendees from 34 different countries, and has spawned a successful series of bimonthly, online seminars – the so called 'AttoFridays'.
The aim of this novel workshop format was to support constructive debate about areas of controversy in attosecond science, and the centrepiece of the conference program were the Quantum Battles - an interactive, structured debate between early career researchers from competing groups in each field. These three battles – on tunnelling, interference and imaging in intense laser fields, and analytical vs ab initio theoretical approaches – have been written up as articles for this collection and each serves as an in-depth review of the topics, and the controversies therein. Alongside these are several articles on the quantum aspects of attosecond science including decoherence and entanglement in strong or tailored fields and ultrafast dynamics in novel materials. The collection is thus unusual in that it spans fundamental atomic and quantum physics all the way up to quantum technologies.
EPJ Web of Conferences Highlight – EOSAM 2022: EOS Annual Meeting
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- Published on 20 October 2022

EOS Annual Meeting EOSAM brought together photonics experts. The European Optical Society Annual Meeting, EOSAM, took place onsite in Porto from 12th to 16th September 2022.
EOSAM is a major international scientific conference covering all aspects of optics and photonics. It is attended by top researchers, key leaders, students, and industry experts.
As an integral conference in the field in Europe, EOSAM has always provided a valuable opportunity for presenting and discussing work, stimulating contact between colleagues, from young researchers to seasoned experts. EOSAM is where research meets industry and education.
EPJ Plus Highlight - Assessing the environmental impact of future ‘Higgs factories’
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- Published on 20 October 2022

New research looks at planned particle accelerators that will follow the retirement of the Large Hadron Collider— the world’s most powerful particle accelerator
In 2012 CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) revolutionised particle physics when it was announced that the Higgs boson had been created and detected by the world’s most powerful particle accelerator.
Yet, the work of the LHC isn’t done. It is currently in its third run and being prepared for a high luminosity upgrade that will lead to more collisions and thus the creation of more Higgs particles. But eventually the accelerator will need to be retired and replaced.
The comparisons of power consumptions or luminosity delivered for a given power for future Higgs-producing colliders have been widely considered, but a new paper in EPJ Plus by CERN researcher Patrick Janot and the University of Geneva’s Alain Blondel considers the environmental impact of future ‘Higgs factories’ that could replace the LHC.
EPJ C Topical Issue on New frontiers in holographic duality: From quantum complexity and black holes to hydrodynamics and neutron stars
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- Published on 20 October 2022

Guest Editor: Ayan Mukhopadhyay
Over the last 25 years, holographic duality has revolutionised our understanding of gauge theories, quantum many-body systems and also quantum black holes. This topical issue is a collection of review articles on recent advances in fundamentals of holographic duality and its applications with special focus on a few areas where it is inter-disciplinary to a large measure. The aim is to provide a sufficient background on relevant phenomenology and other theoretical areas such as quantum information theory to researchers whose primary expertise is in quantum fields, strings and gravity, and also the necessary concepts and methods of holography to researchers in other fields, so that these recent developments could be grasped and hopefully further developed by a wider community.
Slobodan Žumer joins the EPJ Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC)
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- Published on 14 October 2022

The Scientific Advisory Committee of EPJ is delighted to welcome Professor Slobodan Žumer, who has been an Editor for EPJ E for many years, as the new representative for the Society of Mathematicians, Physicists and Astronomers of Slovenia.
Slobodan Žumer is a professor of physics (University of Ljubljana) and a scientific adviser (Jozef Stefan Institute). He was the president of the International Liquid Crystal Society and is its Honored Member and recipient of the Pierre Gilles de Gennes ILCS Prize. He is an APS Fellow, an APS Outstanding Referee, and a European Academy of Sciences and Arts member. His interests are modeling, simulations, & theory of topological soft matter including liquid crystals, polymers, nematic elastomers, composites, colloids, active systems, and their use in optics & photonics.
EPJ Plus Focus Point on Advances in Photonics for Heritage Science: Developments, Applications and Case Studies
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- Published on 14 October 2022

Guest Editors: Daniela Comelli, Austin Nevin & Gianluca Valentini
Photonics is the science of light and is considered one of the key enabling technologies for innovation in all industries. New photonic applications are emerging in various fields, such as environmental monitoring and medicine. The same technological innovation is being adopted in the field of heritage science, where photonics is the foundation for the application of a range of non-invasive, non-contact, and often portable devices for studying works of art and artistic materials.
In this Focus Point on “Advances in Photonics for Heritage Science: Developments, Applications and Case Studies”, the guest editors have selected seventeen papers that present a range of optical and photonics-based techniques, highlighting their advantages and limitations, as well as current and future applications to study our heritage.
EPJ Plus Highlight - How advanced optical tweezers revolutionized cell manipulation
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- Published on 12 October 2022

A new review looks at devices called optical tweezers and how they are used to better uncover the natural secrets of human life at the single-cell level.
Optical tweezers (OTs), also known as optical traps, are highly focused laser beams that can be used to trap and manipulate microscopic objects with a noncontact force. Employed in a wide range of nano and micro-scale operations, OTs have become particularly useful in the manipulation of biological objects including human cells.
A new review published in EPJ Plus conveys the latest achievements in OTs over recent decades. The review is authored by researchers from the College of Information Science and Engineering, Northeastern University, Shenyang, China — Sheng Hu, Jun-yan Ye, Yong Zhao and Cheng-Liang Zhu .