2023 Impact factor 0.8
Historical Perspectives on Contemporary Physics

EPJ A has a new Editor in Chief for experimental physics

Nicolas Alamanos new Editor-in-Chief of EPJ A as of 1 January 2013

From January 2013 Nicolas Alamanos succeeds Enzo De Sanctis as Editor in Chief of EPJ A for the experimental physics section.

Professor Alamanos is Deputy Director of the Institute of Research into the Fundamental Laws of the Universe (IRFU) and Research Director at CEA Saclay working in the domain of fundamental research in Nuclear Physics. During his long scientific career, he has served on many scientific and program advisory committees and has occupied different managerial positions. Most notably he has been president of GANIL’s scientific council and director of Saclay Nuclear Physics Division. He is a member or evaluator of many national committees – ARISTEIA (GRECE), FRS-FNRS (Belgium), ANR (France). He is currently a member of the GANIL/SPIRAL2 scientific council, of GANIL’s program advisory committee, and scientific counselor of the European program “CEA-Euro talents” in the domain of high energy physics and physics of the universe.

In addition to his various scientific and administrative duties, Professor Alamanos has always been very active editorially: beyond having been a member of the editorial board of EPJ A for many years, he is the Editor of the Scholarpedia Encyclopedia of Nuclear Physics.

EPJ A Review - Coherent Investigation of Nuclear Data at CEA DAM: Theoretical Models, Experiments, and Evaluated Data

alt
Figure 1: (Bauge et al’s Fig. 46). Jezebel (a plutonium sphere) reactivity induced by components of the evaluated BRC09 and ENDF/B-VII.0 239Pu file, demonstrates that two different evaluated data sets predict the same k-eff criticality for different underlying reasons; one or more of them (probably both) are in need of improvements.

Dr. Eric Bauge et al describe a body of work accomplished by the CEA/DAM. Their goal is to determine accurate nuclear reaction cross sections for use in neutron transport codes. This work integrates theory and modeling, experiment, computer simulation, and statistical analysis. It involves researchers who thrive on multidisciplinary work, and who are motivated to achieve realistic simulation predictions in nuclear technology applications. Not only has the group succeeded in creating databases of accurate cross sections, but in every aspect of the work significant progress has been made in advancing our understanding of the underlying nuclear physics.

Read more...

EPJ A Highlight - Nuclear physics with a medium-energy Electron-Ion Collider

alt
Possible realizations of a medium-energy EIC: MEIC at Jefferson Lab (top) and eRHIC at Brookhaven National Lab (bottom)

Quarks and gluons are the fundamental constituents of most of the matter in the visible Universe; Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), a relativistic quantum field theory based on color gauge symmetry, describes their strong interactions. The understanding of the static and dynamical properties of the visible strongly interacting particles - hadrons - in terms of quarks and gluons is one of the most fascinating issues in hadron physics and QCD. In particular the exploration of the internal structure of protons and neutrons is one of the outstanding questions in experimental and theoretical nuclear and hadron physics. Impressive progress has been achieved recently.

Read more...

EPJ A - Existence of neutron-rich superheavy element 116 confirmed

neutron-rich superheavy element 116

The synthesis of a superheavy element with the proton number Z=116 has been studied at the velocity filter SHIP of GSI in Darmstadt using a 48Ca beam on radioactive 248Cm targets. At excitation energies of the compound nuclei of 40.9 MeV, four decay chains were measured, which were assigned to the isotope 292116 produced in 4n channel, and one chain, which was assigned to 293116 produced in 3n channel. All chains are terminated by spontaneous fission decays of either 277Hs or 284Cn isotopes on the shoreline of the neutron-rich superheavy island.

Read more...

EPJ A - A new technique for simultaneous measurement of neutron-induced capture and fission reactions

The accurate knowledge of (n,gamma) neutron-capture cross-sections for fissile isotopes is highly relevant for next-generation applications of nuclear technology. However, accurate measurements are difficult due to the gamma-ray background generated in competing (n,f) fission reactions. Scientists at the n_TOF facility at CERN have developed a new experimental setup that is capable of simultaneously measuring and identifying the capture and fission reactions.

Read more...

EPJ A - Vector Correlators in Lattice QCD: Methods and Applications

Vacuum polarisation, the modification of the photon propagator due to virtual electron-positron pairs, is one of the first quantum loop corrections encountered in field theory. In both QED and QCD it causes the running of the appropriate fine structure constant as the physical scale is varied, and also corrects the magnetic moments of electrons and muons from the value 2 predicted by the Dirac equation.

Read more...

EPJ A - The Similarity Renormalization Group for Three-Body Interactions in One Dimension

One important message that has emerged from developments of effective field theories and effective Hamiltonians for nuclear physics is that many-body forces are inevitable whenever degrees of freedom are eliminated. At the same time, first-principles calculations have shown that two-body forces alone are not able to give an accurate account of the energies of light nuclei and the saturation of nuclear matter. Three- (and possibly more-) body forces are thus essential in low-energy nuclear physics.

Read more...

EPJ A – Validating Aspects of the Strong-Coupling Regime of QCD

EPJ A – Validating Aspects of the Strong-Coupling Regime of QCD

A key to our understanding of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) in the strong regime is our ability to reproduce the hadronic excitation spectrum. Up to now, and due to their limited predictive power, quark models forecast of this spectrum at high excitation energies is unsatisfactory and is dubbed ``the missing resonances problem”. To explore the high excitation energies in the hadron spectrum production or scattering of heavier mesons from a nucleon target is essential.

Read more...

EPJ A broadens its scope in heavy ion physics

EPJ A broadens its scope in heavy ion physics by merging with the Acta Physica Hungarica A - Heavy Ion Physics (APH A) as of January 1st, 2007. APH A, a well respected journal in the field has emerged from the Acta Physics Hungarica, initially covering all areas of physics, in the 1990s.

Editors-in-Chief
A. Blum and M. Leone
ISSN (Print Edition): 2102-6459
ISSN (Electronic Edition): 2102-6467

© EDP Sciences and Springer-Verlag