Foreword
Authors: Attaelmanan Atta G. 
Published: October 2019

The First Sharjah International Conference on Particle Physics, Astrophysics and Cosmology (FISICPAC-2018), was organized by the University of Sharjah (UoS) from November 11 to 13, 2018, under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Dr. Sultan Al Qassimi, ruler of Sharjah and president of the University of Sharjah

The conference was organized within the framework of the ongoing research collaborations between the University of Sharjah, the Abdu Salam International Center for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) and the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). Its program addressed the interests of theorists, phenomenologists and experimentalists working within the realms of Particle Physics, Astrophysics and Cosmology. Attendees representing various institutions from 24 countries consisted of 250 participants for whom the conference provided a real platform for the exchange of new ideas and experiences, as well as, to promote and establish a collaborative framework of researchers and academic partners.

Participants included several international speakers and representatives from various prominent universities and research centers, lead by Professor Hamid Al Naimiy, chancellor of the University of Sharjah, director of the Sharjah Academy for Astronomy & Space Science & Technology (SAASST) and Founder & President of the Arab Union for Astronomy and Space Sciences. Also present was Prof. Fernando Quevedo, ICTP director, Prof. Patrick Fassnacht advisor of the CERN DG to the MENA region, Prof. Karl Jacobs, Spokesperson of the ATLAS experiment and Prof. Martin Barstow, director Leicester Institute of Space and Earth Observation and former president of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The conference’s scientific program included presentations of research findings via oral and poster sessions, in addition to a series of overviews and plenary talks delivered by pioneering physicists specialized in the fields of particle physics, cosmology and astrophysics such as Prof. John Ellis, Clerk Maxwell professor of theoretical physics at King's College London, Prof. Bobby Acharaya, professor of physics at King’s College London UK and ICTP and Prof. Andreas Eckart, professor of physics at Physikalisches Institut, Universität zu Köln, Germany. In total the scientific program featured 9 plenary speeches, 62 oral presentations and 19 posters. There were 36 contributions from the UAE, including 13 contributions from the University of Sharjah, 5 of which were by students. Moreover, the program included an international training Master Class for science and engineering students, organized by the Physics Without Frontiers ICTP program. The training was unique in its type in the country and it provided the participating students (from UOS, UAEU, NYUAD and other universities in the region) for the first time an intensive introduction to the related physics and detectors engineering design at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN and its experiments.

Topics discussed at the conference highlighted research in several relevant themes. The majority of participations were from the frontline of elementary particle physics, astrophysics and cosmology. As a general framework that was tackled extensively during the conference talks is the Standard Model (SM) of the electroweak and strong interactions, which is extremely successful in explaining most of the current results in high energy particle physics, in-spite of many unsolved intriguing puzzles. Among the un-explained mysteries: the neutrino masses and mixing, the nature of the Dark Matter, and the origin of the Baryon Asymmetry of the Universe. Most of the talks emphasized Dark Matter searches, which is considered as one of the most striking and hot research topics nowadays, and a key point of several overlapping astrophysics, cosmology and particle physics disciplines. In addition, astronomical data and recent observations in cosmology show that 95% of the universe's energy density is in a dark sector including Dark Matter, a form of unidentified material, and dark energy whose origin is unknown.

Participants also discussed the need for physics beyond the SM at about the weak scale, with additional features that could explain the presence of dark matter in the universe and provide a mechanism to naturally stabilize the Higgs boson mass at its observed value of 125 GeV. Driven at present by the available experimental data, ATLAS and CMS detectors at the CERN-Large Hadron Collider (LHC) are exploring new energy frontiers with its high rate of recorded integrated luminosities.

Moreover, exciting results related to the study of Black Holes were presented. Instruments like GRAVITY at the VLT in the near-infrared and the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) in the sub-mm domain were utilized to study and understand the physics close to the event horizon of the super massive black hole Sagittarius A* (SgrA*). Results presented at the conference has shown that the center of the Milky Way presents itself as a region in which stars and gas are exposed to the relativistic environment of SgrA*. The combination of these instruments enabled detailed determinations of the proper motion and radial velocities of the stars in the central arcsecond. The presence of dusty objects, young stars and plenty of molecular gas in the Circum Nuclear Ring, as well as the mini-spiral, indicates that periodic and ongoing star formation may be prevalent in that region. The interaction of hot gas with the central supermassive black hole SgrA* reveals that matter can be detected as it is orbiting the center close to being accreted onto SgrA*. This process is most likely responsible for the emission we observe all across the electromagnetic spectrum from SgrA*.

The FISICPAC-2018 generated national and regional interest in particle physics, astrophysics and cosmology. Students and young researchers who attended the conference and participated in the Master Class reaped huge benefits from the presentations as well as interacting personally with the plenary speakers and other experienced scientists in attendance. Moreover, the conference was deemed a resounding success by participants and organizers due to the high number of participants and the high quality of research output presented during the oral and poster sessions. To the extent that plans are already underway to conserve the momentum gained by this conference and transfer that momentum into a quadrennial Sharjah conference.