21st International Conference on the Physics of Highly Charged Ions

Dear Colleagues,

The study of highly charged ions (HCIs) is a cornerstone of contemporary atomic and plasma physics research. Advances in this field have had (and will continue to have) far-reaching consequences for numerous fundamental and applied scientific disciplines.  Their unique structures serve as a testbed for today’s most advanced bound-state quantum electrodynamics (QED) calculations, and may be exploited in the future as frequency standards as atomic clocks as well as in searches for variations in fundamental constants and physics beyond the standard model. Moreover, HCIs are encountered in practically every high-temperature plasma environment from stellar objects and black-hole accretion disks to terrestrial plasmas developed for fusion and semiconductor manufacturing purposes. The diagnosis of these extreme environments requires extensive knowledge of the structures, collisional and radiative properties of HCIs, information which is largely lacking.

The generation of fundamental atomic data, both structural and collisional, is a core component of HCI physics involving the close interplay of theory and experiment. On the theoretical front, HCI research extends from the development of many-body effects in QED calculations to the accurate modelling of energy transfer in strongly radiating, HCI-dominant plasmas. The development of experimental facilities and advanced instrumentation for HCI production (ion sources, accelerators, free-electron lasers) as well as the development of methods to interrogate the structures and dynamics of HCIs in complex environments (e.g. clusters, surfaces) are key for future developments in HCI physics.

The present Special Issue documents the proceedings of the 21^st HCI conference, the leading conference for researchers working in the field of HCI physics. This biennial conference is held in Egmond aan Zee on 2^nd – 6^th September 2024. It is the second time that the HCI conference will be held in the Netherlands, with the first instance being in 1986 in Groningen. The topics presented in this Special Issue cover research on fundamental HCI structures via interactions with photons, electrons, ions, atoms, molecules and solids to applications in astrophysical, fusion and industrial plasma.

Dr. John Sheil
Prof. Dr. Ronnie Hoekstra
Guest Editors

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• highly charged ions
• atomic structure and spectroscopy
• collision dynamics involving ions