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EPJ E Highlight - Macroscopic and microscopic structures of clay-surfactant mixtures
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- Published on 28 October 2024
As a tribute to the late colloid scientist Isabelle Grillo, two of her principal co-workers have published a summary of some of the ground-breaking work in her PhD thesis.
The premature death of Isabelle Grillo (1972-2019), a distinguished colloid scientist at the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL), Grenoble, France, left much of the work on clay-surfactant mixtures that she had presented in her PhD thesis still unpublished. This gap has now been filled by two of her former co-workers, Sylvain Prévost of ILL and Thomas Zemb of the Institut de Chimie Separative de Marcoule, Bagnols-sur-Cèze, who have published an extensive overview of this work and her legacy in EPJ E.
EPJ E Highlight - Investigating the Flow of Fluids with Non-Monotonic, ‘S-shaped’ Rheology
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- Published on 28 October 2024
Analysis of cornstarch suspensions under different stresses suggests that some fluids with non-monotonic rheology can segregate into regions of high and low viscosity in a capillary tube.
Water and oil, and some other simple fluids, respond in the same way to all levels of shear stress and, as termed Newtonian fluids, their viscosity is constant for all stresses although it will vary with temperature. Other non-Newtonian fluids exhibit much more complex patterns of behaviour under different stresses and pressure gradients. Laurent Talon and Dominique Salin from Université Paris-Sacly, Paris, France have now shown that, under certain circumstances, cornstarch suspensions can display a banding pattern with alternating regions of high and low viscosity. This work has been published in the journal EPJ E.
EPJ C: Susha Parameswaran appointed Guest Editor for String Phenomenology
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- Published on 18 October 2024
EPJ C is pleased to announce the appointment of Susha Parameswaran as the journal’s Guest Editor for String Phenomenology. Susha Parameswaran is a theoretical physicist based in the UK at the University of Liverpool.
Her research interests are in string theory and its applications and potential implications across particle physics and cosmology.
Together with Ignatios Antoniadis, Associate Editor of EPJC, she will supervise the long-term topical collection which has now opened for submissions:
String theory predictions for astroparticle and collider physics, and beyond
EPJ Web of Conferences indexed in Scopus
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- Published on 03 October 2024
We are thrilled to announce that EPJ Web of Conferences has been accepted for indexing in Scopus.
EPJ Web of Conferences is an open access publication series focused on publishing high-quality conference proceedings in the fields of Physics and related sciences.
EPJ D Highlight - Discovering new details in atomic hyperfine structures
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- Published on 20 September 2024
A new approach to analysing infrared spectra reveal 20 new energy levels in the hyperfine structure of Protactinium
Since the late 1960s, the Laboratoire Aimé Cotton (LAC) in Orsay, France, has made significant progress in the classification of complex atomic spectra. These advances have been driven both by the development of Fourier transform spectroscopy, and through novel theoretical interpretations of atomic spectra.
In new research published in EPJ D, Sophie Kröger from the Berlin University of Technology and Economics carried out detailed analysis of Protactinium's infrared (IR) spectrum, revealing 20 new energy levels that were previously undetectable with earlier methods employed by the LAC. The study showcases important progress in the precision of atomic spectrum measurements, which could soon offer deeper insights into atomic structures and interactions.
EPJ H Highlight - Merging two journals dedicated to the history of physics
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- Published on 20 September 2024
Under new leadership, EPJH has been integrated with Quaderni di Storia della Fisica
On July 1st, 2024, the European Physical Journal H (EPJ H) merged with Quaderni di Storia della Fisica (Notebooks of History of Physics), one of very few other journals dedicated to the history of physics. The merger was announced through a new editorial published in EPJ H by the journal’s new Editors-in-Chief, Alexander Blum at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, and Matteo Leone at the University of Turin.
EPJ H Special Issue - From history of physics to “history for physics”
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- Published on 18 September 2024
The special issue “History for Physics: Contextualizing modern developments in the foundations of quantum theory” aims at demonstrating the importance of the history of physics within physics itself.
With their special issue “History for Physics: Contextualizing modern developments in the foundations of quantum theory” the guest editors aim to bridge contemporary topics in physics with their historical context and to draw attention to the history of physics as a subject of study and research for the active practitioner in physics but also hope to encourage historians of physics to engage with contemporary questions in physics, to possibly draw from this inspiration, or recognize need, for further historical research.
Central to carrying over the “history for physics” theme to the special issue format is the concept of tandem articles. Each tandem article consists of two parts: a part written by a historian of physics and a part written by a physicist. Both parts are supposed to treat one and the same aspect of a foundational issue involving quantum theory in a broad sense. In their respective parts, each author treats this aspect from their own respective perspective: The physicist contributes to the description of the state of the art of an open problem or debated phenomenon related to quantum physics, whereas the historian provides an appropriate historical account related to this actual case. The precise shaping and proportioning of the parts were left to the authors.
EPJ H Highlight - Were Bohr and von Neumann really in conflict over quantum measurements?
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- Published on 18 September 2024
Analysis suggests that the two pioneers of quantum mechanics may have had more similar views than previously thought regarding the nature of quantum systems, and the classical apparatus used to measure them.
In the early years of quantum theory, two foundational thinkers developed independent ideas about how measurements of quantum systems should be interpreted. While Niels Bohr suggested that these measurements require a clear distinction between the quantum system being measured and the classical apparatus performing the measurement, John von Neumann argued that quantum mechanics should apply to everything, including the measurement apparatus.
Since these interpretations emerged, quantum theorists have widely viewed them as being in conflict with each other. Yet through new analysis published in EPJ H: Historical Perspectives on Contemporary Physics, Federico Laudisa at the University of Trento suggests that Bohr and von Neumann’s views are far closer than currently thought.
EPJ C Highlight - The ALICE experiment – A journey through QCD
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- Published on 04 September 2024
The comprehensive review article “The ALICE experiment – A journey through QCD” has been recently published in the European Physical Journal C (EPJ C).
As of today, QCD is a gauge theory describing the interactions of quarks and gluons, the carriers of the strong force in analogy to the photon in electromagnetic processes. There is, however, a fundamental difference regarding the underling gauge symmetry, which is nonabelian in contrast to the one governing electromagnetic processes. Consequently, the strong force has the outstanding feature that its strength increases with increasing distance, resulting in a phenomenology of quark and gluon interactions depending upon the distance scale. In experiments where small distances are probed, the quarks and gluons behave like quasi-free elementary particles. Such processes can be described theoretically by perturbative methods; otherwise the quarks and gluons are confined, forming a small complex system inside a hadron, and lattice methods are required to describe the processes. In hindsight it becomes obvious why the searches for free quarks during the 1960s were doomed to fail.
EPJ D Highlight - Improving tuneability in optical differentiation
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- Published on 23 August 2024
By considering waves which propagate through sample surfaces as light interacts with them, a new technique could make it easier for researchers to create real-time images of microscopic samples.
Optical differentiation is a useful technique for analysing images of microscopic samples in real time. Currently, however, it lacks the ability to fine-tune the resolution in the images it produces.
Through new research published in EPJ D, a team led by Jian Wu at the National University of Defence Technology in Changsha, China, propose a new approach, which enabled them to tune the wavelengths reflected from crystal samples. Their technique could allow researchers to extract far more detailed images of their samples, and would be especially useful for analysing systems of cells and large molecules.
