This volume is the outcome of a community-wide review of the field of dynamics and thermodynamics with nuclear degrees of freedom. It presents the achievements and the outstanding open questions in 26 articles collected in six topical sections and written by more than 60 authors. All authors are internationally recognized experts in their fields.

A timely presentation of new results, challenges, and opportunities in the quickly developing field of nuclear cluster physics, presented by an international group of eminent theoretical and experimental scientists active in the field. Their work reveals how correlations of nucleons can appear spontaneously, propagate, and survive in nuclear matter at both low and high densities. Characteristic nuclear substructures, beyond those predicted by mean-field or collective scenarios, appear on microscopic and cosmic length scales. They can influence the dynamics of fusion of light nuclei and the decay of heavy, fissioning nuclei or of systems produced transiently in heavy-ion reactions. A must-read for young scientists entering the field and a valuable resource for more seasoned nuclear researchers!

This book provides a collection of reviews of some of the recent developments in nuclear physics research at intermediate energies from across the globe. It especially focuses on the most essential aspects, such as multifragmentation and associated phenomena in nuclear collisions, with the incident energy region between a few MeV and several hundreds of MeV/nucleon. The topic of the book—multifragmentation—was chosen based on the fact that all heavy-ion collisions revolve around a fragmenting system, which is also thought to have a link to phase transitions. One unique and valuable dimension of this book is that it has brought together the research of several experts working in the field of intermediate energy heavy-ion collisions in various renowned laboratories of the world. It provides a thorough review of the recent developments in various related phenomena, especially multifragmentation, observed at the intermediate-energy range, both theoretically and experimentally. It extensively discusses the concept of nuclear symmetry energy, which is important for the nuclear physics and astrophysics communities. In addition, the book identifies potential research directions and technologies that will drive future innovations. It will serve as a valuable reference for a larger audience, including students who wish to pursue a career in nuclear physics and astrophysics.

Ab initio molecular dynamics revolutionized the field of realistic computer simulation of complex molecular systems and processes, including chemical reactions, by unifying molecular dynamics and electronic structure theory. This book provides the first coherent presentation of this rapidly growing field, covering a vast range of methods and their applications, from basic theory to advanced methods. This fascinating text for graduate students and researchers contains systematic derivations of various ab initio molecular dynamics techniques to enable readers to understand and assess the merits and drawbacks of commonly used methods. It also discusses the special features of the widely used Car–Parrinello approach, correcting various misconceptions currently found in research literature. The book contains pseudo-code and program layout for typical plane wave electronic structure codes, allowing newcomers to the field to understand commonly used program packages and enabling developers to improve and add new features in their code.

The Erice International Seminars are multidisciplinary seminars attended by over 100 eminent participants from all fields of science. Each year, a few scientific issues are selected and experts are invited to present contrasting views during the plenary multidisciplinary sessions of the seminar, followed by general debates. These sessions offer a unique opportunity for specialists to enlarge their vision of their related fields by being confronted with ideas and suggestions from high-level scientists in complementary domains of science. Associated workshops allow the experts to further refine and process the ideas evoked during the seminar. This year's topics are all actual. For instance, on climate issues we have focused on the management of a global warming and on new theoretical alternatives to climate modeling. On global monitoring of the planet, we have focused on the US missile defence shield, the energy externalities and waste disposal and the historical dive by Dr Chilingarov on the North Pole shelf. On the medical side, we have investigated the Alzheimer epidemics and the role of infectious agents in cancer.