Ladies and Gentlemen,
it is my great honor and pleasure to present an opening address of the 3rd International
Workshop on "State of the Art in Nuclear Cluster Physics"(SOTANCP3). On the behalf of
the organizing committee, I certainly welcome all your visits to KGU Kannai Media Center
belonging to Kanto Gakuin University, and stay in Yokohama. In particular, to whom come
from abroad more than 17 countries, I would appreciate your participations after long long trips
from your homeland to Yokohama.
The first international workshop on "State of the Art in Nuclear Cluster Physics", called
SOTANCP, was held in Strasbourg, France, in 2008, and the second one was held in Brussels,
Belgium, in 2010. Then the third workshop is now held in Yokohama. In this period, we had the
traditional 10th cluster conference in Debrecen, Hungary, in 2012. Thus we have the traditional
cluster conference and SOTANCP, one after another, every two years. This obviously shows our
field of nuclear cluster physics is very active and flourishing.
It is for the first time in about 10 years to hold the international workshop on nuclear cluster
physics in Japan, because the last cluster conference held in Japan was in Nara in 2003, about
10 years ago. The president in Nara conference was Prof. K. Ikeda, and the chairpersons were
Prof. H. Horiuchi and Prof. I. Tanihata. I think, quite a lot of persons in this room had
participated at the Nara conference. Since then, about ten years passed. So, this workshop has
profound significance for our Japanese colleagues.
The subjects of this workshop are to discuss "the state of the art in nuclear cluster physics"
and also discuss the prospect of this field. In a couple of years, we saw significant progresses of
this field both in theory and in experiment, which have brought better and new understandings
on the clustering aspects in stable and unstable nuclei. I think, the concept of clustering has been
more important than ever. This is true also in the related fields such as nuclear astrophysics,
hypernuclear physics, hadron physics, and condensate matter physics so on. In fact, in this
workshop, we also discuss the clustering aspects in the related fields. Thus, I expect in this
workshop we can grasp the present status of the nuclear cluster physics and demonstrate its
perspective in near future.
This workshop is sponsored by several institutes and organizations. In particular, I would
express our thanks for financial supports to Research Center for Nuclear Physics (RCNP),
Osaka University, Center for Nuclear Study (CNS), University of Tokyo, Joint Institute for
Computational Fundamental Science (JICFuS), and RIKEN Nishina Center for Accelerator-
Based Science. They are cohosting this workshop.
I would like also to appreciate my University, Kanto Gakuin University, who offers this nice
place for one week and helps us to hold this workshop smoothly and conveniently. Today, the
president of my University, Prof. Kuku, is here to present a welcome address. Thank you very
much.
Finally, with many of the participants leading this field both in theory and in experiment,
we wish this workshop offers an opportunity to simulate communications not only during the
workshop but also in the future. In addition, we hope you enjoy exploring city of Yokohama
and the area around, as well as scientific discussions. Thank you very much for your attention.