International Topical Conference on Plasma Physics: New Plasma Horizons
Authors: Shukla P K , Stenflo L 
Published: July 2003

The "International Topical Conference on Plasma Physics: New Plasma Horizons" was held at the University of Algarve, Faro, Portugal, during the period 3–7 September 2001. The conference was organized by P. K. Shukla, R. Bingham, J. I. Mendonça and L. Stenflo with the help of an international advisory board and a program committee that included well known scientists from all over the world. The conference enters into a series of previous activities that we have held at the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste (Italy) since 1989 and at the University of Algarve (UA), Faro (Portugal) since 1999.

The purpose of this meeting was to provide an informal forum for scientists who have a broad experience/knowledge in science including, for example, nonlinear optics and nonlinear waves and structures in fluids and plasmas. The selected topics represented new horizons in areas that were interdisciplinary. They spanned from basic physics to many applied aspects in diverse areas, and described new trends of research in optics, fluids, as well as in several sub-branches of plasma physics and associated fields arising in the twenty-first century.

The response of the conference, which was attended by approximately ninety delegates from Europe, USA, Japan, and the developing countries, was excellent. The participants were an admixture of young and senior researchers. This helped to disseminate knowledge between these two generations of plasma and fluid dynamics physicists.

The scientific program was structured into five review talks (45 minutes) and thirty-seven invited topical lectures (30 minutes) covering the history, theory/simulations, experiments and observations. In addition, there were about fifty poster papers in two sessions. The latter gave opportunities to younger physicists to display the results of their recent work and to obtain comments from the other participants. During the five days at the UA, we focused on fundamental and applied aspects of:

(i) various nonlinearities in sciences

(ii) plasmas in space and astrophysics

(iii) plasma turbulence in laboratories

(iv) collective processes in dusty plasmas

(v) some exotic topics.

In his keynote address, Professor Akira Hasegawa described the physics of localized pulse propagation through optical fibers, and emphasized the success of optical solitons for ultra-high speed communications to very long distances. His presentation revealed that the Kerr nonlinearity is indeed useful for practical purposes. Following Hasegawa's speech there were many talks dealing with new aspects of the statistical description of partially incoherent optical wave dynamics in nonlinear media, solitons and radiating quasi-solitons, solitons in Madelung fluids, mutual interaction between laser beams, formation and dynamics of vortices in fluids and plasmas, as well as axisymmetric plasma equilibria in general relativity. The new horizons in space plasmas and astrophysics covered solar system plasmas and their diagnostic power (a lucid presentation by Professor Ruedi von Steiger), nonlinear structures in our solar system, lamentation of Alfvén beams, transonic MHD flows, stochastic ion heating by large amplitude Alfvén waves, topical phase transitions, and the physics of numerous solitary structures in the Earth ionosphere/magnetosphere. Professor Pat Diamond took a broad view on nonlinear theories and observations of drift wave turbulence and zonal flows in association with transport barriers in magnetic fusion devices. Several papers also dealt with novel aspects of zonal excitation and transport modulation by radially coherent flow structures and fast magnetic field explosions. A symposium on complex plasmas was dedicated to the late Nagesha Rao and Anatoly Nefedov who were among the pioneers in the new field of dusty plasma physics. Here, the lectures were focused on charging, shielding and dynamics of dust grains, formation and melting dynamics of ordered Coulomb crystals, image tracking of particle fluctuations, three-dimensional wake potentials in magnetized plasmas, waves in nonideal plasmas, electrostatic solitary waves, shocks, etc. An exotic lecture discussed a method for detecting vacuum nonlinearities due to the quantum electrodynamic terms in the Maxwell equations. Extended discussions were held in order to emphasize on future developments and on the impact of one field to others. The discussions were intense (sometimes even heated) and successful. Most of the invited papers and a few poster papers from the Faro meeting appear in this Topical Issue of Physica Scripta, which will be distributed to all the participants. We expect that the papers of the present proceedings shall be useful for understanding the many complex phenomena that are common in numerous branches of physics.

The organizers are grateful to Professor Adriano Pimpão, the President of the University of Algarve for his generous support and warm hospitality in Faro. The editors express sincere gratitude to their colleagues and co-organizers Professors R. Bingham and J. T. Mendonça for their constant and wholehearted support in our endeavours. We appreciate the excellent work of the scientific secretary Dr. Tahir Farid as well as of Mrs. Anabela Gonçalves. Thanks are also due to the European Commission for supporting our activity through the Research Training Network entitled "Complex Plasmas: The Science of Colloidal Plasmas and Mesospheric Charged Aerosols".

Finally, we would like to express our gratitude to the Universidade do Algarve for providing the venue and for administrative support, the Universidade Técnica de Lisboa for secretarial support, and the FCT-Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia for a limited financial support to our conference at the UA, Faro. Besides, the organizers cordial thanks are extended to the speakers and the attendees for their contributions which resulted in the success of the Faro conference. Specifically, we appreciate the speakers for delivering excellent talks, supplying well prepared manuscripts for publication, and enhancing the plasma physics activity at the UA, Faro.