Abstract
This conference, held at Internationales Wissenschaftsforum, Heidelberg, Germany, from 4-8 April 2005, brought together physicists, chemists, and surface scientists from around the world to discuss advances in our understanding of how atoms and molecules interact with each other and with applied fields when they are near surfaces. The fields include static magnetic and electric fields as well as electromagnetic fields in the optical frequency range. This understanding is, of course, essential for the controlled manipulation of matter at the atomic scale by micro- and nanostructured devices. Several principal themes motivate the efforts of this interdisciplinary community: the fundamental physics of quantum degenerate gases near surfaces, the realisation of `atom chips' for the construction of quantum information gates and registers, the development of integrated `on chip' sources providing atoms on demand, the ability to control precision doping, at the atomic level, new molecular spectroscopies appearing under reduced dimensionality imposed by surfaces, and advances in STM and AFM `bottom up' construction of functional devices, starting from the fundamental atom building block. What follows here are the written CAMS proceedings based on the presentations, oral and poster, of the research pursued by the various participating groups.
CAMS was organised and supported by FASTNet, Field-Atom-Surface Training Network, a 5th Framework Research and Training Network of the European Union. A sister network, ATOMCHIPS, also participated in the financial and scientific support of the conference. The CAMS workshop emphasised the participation of the young scientists, post-docs and pre-docs of the two networks. In addition financial support from the European Science Foundation is gratefully acknowledged.
The conference was held at the Internationales Wissenschaftsforum of the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg. The excellent facilities and the competent support of the professional staff, headed by Dr Theresa Reiter, managing director, created a genial environment for scientific discussion and exchange. Their invaluable assistance is also gratefully acknowledged.