Abstract
This issue contains papers presented at the 15th International Conference on the Physics of Highly Charged Ions, HCI2010. The conference was held at Fudan University, Shanghai, 29 August–3 September 2010. HCI is a biannual conference series going back to the very first conference held in Stockholm, Sweden in 1982. Previous editions in this millennium were held in Berkeley, USA, 2000; Caen, France, 2002; Vilnius, Lithuania, 2004; Belfast, UK, 2006, and Tokyo, Japan, 2008.
The physics of highly charged ions, HCIs, is of great interest due to their key role in testing quantum electrodynamics in strong fields, and possible testing of parity non-conservation. However, HCIs also play crucial roles in the physics of hot plasmas, for example those produced in tokamak fusion devices and in inertial confinement fusion experiments. Much of the diagnostics of matter under such extreme environments relies very heavily on high quality atomic data of HCIs. The field of x-ray astronomy hinges almost entirely on the use of spectral lines from HCIs to provide information from distant astrophysical plasmas and objects. Given these fundamental interests and the current rapid developments in fusion and x-ray astronomy, it is clear that the physics of HCIs is a rich area of research with strong and important connections to many important subfields of physics. New application areas of HCI physics are also under development: two examples are (a) to provide 13.5 nm—and later half of this wavelength—radiation for lithography and (b) applications in medical research. The need for high quality atomic data of HCIs is as important now as it has ever been.
HCI2010 was attended by over 200 scientists from around 20 countries; see the following table. Over 70 of the participants were students, which is very encouraging for the future of HCI related physics. The academic programme was organized based on the suggestions from the International Advisory Board, and consisted of six review lectures, nine progress reports, one local report and 21 selected talks.
| Country | Tot. | Reg. | Stu. | Country | Tot. | Reg. | Stu. |
| Argentina | 1 | 1 | 0 | Ireland | 4 | 3 | 1 |
| Austria | 4 | 3 | 1 | Japan | 33 | 18 | 15 |
| Brazil | 1 | 1 | 0 | Jordan | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Canada | 1 | 1 | 0 | The Netherlands | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| China | 63 | 26 | 37 | Poland | 4 | 3 | 1 |
| Egypt | 1 | 1 | 0 | Portugal | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| France | 12 | 11 | 1 | Russia | 4 | 2 | 2 |
| Germany | 30 | 19 | 11 | Sweden | 5 | 3 | 2 |
| Greece | 1 | 1 | 0 | USA | 7 | 7 | 0 |
| India | 8 | 5 | 3 |
The proceedings could never have been published without the diligent work of the referees and we are very grateful for their help. The order of the 69 articles follows the five classic subfields of the HCI conference:
Fundamental aspects, structure and spectroscopy
Collisions with electrons, ions, atoms and molecules
Interactions with clusters, surfaces and solids
Interactions with photons, plasmas and strong field processes
Production, experimental developments and applications.
The day before the official opening of HCI2010, Sunday 29 August, we welcomed the conference delegates with a reception held at the Guanghua (Fudan twin towers) 15th floor 'sky bar' restaurant. Two poster sessions were arranged for the contributed papers on the afternoons of 30 and 31 August. After a visit to the Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility on the afternoon of Wednesday 1 September we enjoyed a conference dinner at the Shanghai Sea Palace restaurant. Throughout the dinner we were entertained with traditional Chinese music by members of Fudan University's folk music group. A visit to the Shanghai 2010 World Expo, the largest World Expo in history (so far), was arranged for the Thursday afternoon. Finally the conference came to a close at lunchtime on Friday 3 September. It was a very successful conference due to the contributions of all the participants, the International Advisory Committee and the Local Organization Committee. We would like to thank them all.
The next edition of the HCI conference series will be held at the University of Heidelberg, Germany in 2012, under the Chairmanship of Professors Thomas Stoehlker and Joachim Ullrich. We wish them all the best with their plans and look forward to meeting you all again in 2012.
Committees, Exhibitors and Sponsors
HCI2010 International Advisory Committee
F Aumayr (Austria) T Azuma (Japan) P Beiersdorfer (USA) J Burgdoerfer (Austria) A Cassimi (France) H Cederquist (Sweden) J Costello (Ireland) F Currell (UK) R Hoekstra (Holland) X Ma (China) F Martín (Spain) A Mueller (German) N Nakamura (Japan) M Pajek (Poland) R Rivarola (Argentina) Z Rudzikas (Lithuania) V Shabaev (Russia) R Schuch (Sweden) T Stoehlker (Germany) J Tanis (USA) L Tribedi (India) K Tokési (Hungary) J Ullrich (Germany) D Vernhet (France) Y Zou (China) T Zouros (Greece)
HCI2010 Local Organizing Committee
Co-chairs: Yaming Zou and Roger Hutton (Fudan university) Secretaries: Baoren Wei and Yunqing Fu (Fudan University) Treasurers: Xiuqing Xu and Daoli Xu (Shanghai Nuclear Society)
Members
Chongyang Chen (Shanghai) Jianmin Yuan (Changsha) Jun Yan (Beijing) Chenzhong Dong (Lanzhou) Xiaohong Cai (Lanzhou) Xinwen Ma (Lanzhou) Xuru Duan (Sichuan) Baohan Zhang (Sichuan)
Exhibitors
Andor Technology andor.com Shanghai Kelin Technology Development Co. Ltd chnkelin.com Varian Inc. varianinc.com
Sponsors
Natural Science Foundation of China International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) Fudan University