07.08.2023
The "25th European Conference on Few-Body Problems in Physics" took place this year on the campus of JGU Mainz. In 13 sessions over 5 days more than 150 scientists from all over the world discussed current issues in the fields of hadrons, (hyper-)nuclear physics, cold atoms and molecular physics. Ukrainian researchers were connected online, as they were unable to attend on site due to the war in Ukraine.
Prof. Sonia Bacca from the Institute of Nuclear Physics, who organized the conference together with her colleague Prof. Hans-Werner Hammer from the TU Darmstadt, is pleased that more than 30% of invited speakers were female. "We also had a separate poster session with a jamboree for young scientists, in which 28 students participated - of course, as per Mainz tradition, with a glass of Rhine-Hessian wine," reports Sonia Bacca.
Another highlight - not only for students - was a public evening lecture by Prof. Ulrich Stroth (Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Garching) entitled "A Sun on Earth - Nuclear Fusion as a CO2-free Energy source". In this highly topical subject in view of the energy transition, Prof. Stroth introduced the concept of magnetic fusion and showed how it could be applied in a fusion reactor.
The conference was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG), the Helmholtz Institute Mainz (HIM), the Johannes Gutenberg University (JGU), the Cluster of Excellence PRISMA+, the SFB 1245, the NUPECC (Nuclear Physics European Collaboration Committee), as well as the Helmholtz Alliance EMMI (ExtreMe Matter Institute).