NAPP 2003 is the second in a series of international conferences on Nuclear and Particle Physics with CEBAF at Jefferson Lab to be held in beautiful medieval City of Dubrovnik. The first conference examined the physics that has been done at that time using CEBAF and also focused on physics that could be done by proposed upgraded energies. The conference proceedings were published in special issue of journal Fizika B (Vol. 8, No. 1 & 2, 1999). During the conference an agreement was made between Jefferson Lab, Rudjer Boskovic Institute, University of Zagreb and North Carolina Central University that these JLab related conferences would be held every 4 years in Dubrovnik. The City of Dubrovnik is selected not only because of its attractive architecture, but also because of its location. The region of East and South Europe has a number of experts related to the JLab physics, which are unfortunately until present not interacting actively with JLab. The main reason is the distance and high travel expenses. Placing the conference in Dubrovnik makes it possible for many of them to attend the Conference and to have that so necessary initial contact with JLab scientists. First conference already had more then 50 participants from this under represented region and we are thankful to have some of them at JLab, as well as the number of graduate and postdoctoral students who we also recruited through the Conference. We are positive that the new conference will also result in new connections and collaborations, which will probably be the main achievement in addition to the physics program.
The second conferences will be held 26 - 31 May, 2003 and it should bring back together the participants of the previous conference to discuss the work that has been done since then and to make a research plan for participating collaborators. In addition, we hope to attract new scientists to come and discuss the physics and detector issues facing us. The ultimate goal of this meeting is to produce a detailed proposals including physics motivation, accelerator requirements and detector requirements, which can be presented at the next CEBAF User's Group meeting, especially in respect to the latest CEBAF upgrade to 12 GeV.
The importance of the Conference can be understood by realizing that Jefferson Lab’s CEBAF (Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility) is a unique device for exploring the transition between the regime where strongly interacting (nuclear) matter can be understood as bound states of protons and neutrons, and the regime where the underlying fundamental quark-and-gluon structure of matter is dominant. CEBAF is the only facility worldwide with the capabilities to fully explore the energy region where the standard picture of the nucleus as a group of protons and neutrons interacting through potentials is appropriate, and the region where the quarks and gluons inside the nucleons must be explicitly included. At the high-energy end of this transition region, the essentially exact theoretical calculations of perturbative quantum chromodynamics (QCD) provide a framework for this exploration, and in the lower-energy, non-perturbative region, characteristic of normal nuclear matter, an important new “strong QCD” framework is required. Elucidating the nature of this transition is one of the last frontiers in our understanding of an “ordinary” matter.
The CEBAF upgrade provides exciting new venues not envisioned at the time of CEBAF’s construction and it would provide significant new insight into:
- powerful new force fields responsible for quarks confinement,
- quark and gluon structure,
- nature of forces between two quarks,
- origin of the nuclear force,
- generation of non-zero quark masses,
- quark masses affect the properties of the nuclear matter, . . .
The Conference program will span over 6 working days and will be divided in the following sections:
- Overview of the experimental program at JLab,
- Research program at European Facilities,
- Theoretical Considerations,
- Weak Interactions,
- Electron Scattering,
- Heavy Nuclei,
- Nuclear Physics,
- Few Body Systems.
Detailed Conference program will be posted on Web soon after a deadline for Abstract and Paper Submission (15 February, 2003)