The first MOLIM WG3 Meeting (CMST COST Action CM1405) “Algorithm Development and High Performance Computing in Chemistry and Physics 2016” will be held on March 21 and 22, 2016 in Bratislava, Slovakia.

This two-day meeting is aimed at bringing together theoretical and experimental researchers working in high-profile algorithms and high-performance computing to treat efficiently the nuclear motions in molecular systems and at molecule/surface interfaces. The meeting is organized within the COST Action CM1405 “Molecules in Motion” (MOLIM) led by Prof. Attila G. Császár (Action Chair) and Prof. Majdi Hochlaf (Action Vice-Chair). The action’s website is http://cost-molim.eu.

The number of participants is limited to 50 and the early deadline for registration is November 30, 2015.

The invited speakers include:

Chiara Cappelli, Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, Italy Klaus von Haeften, University of Leicester, United Kingdom Lauri Halonen, University of Helsinki, Finland Shimshon Kallush, The Hebrew University, Israel Kari Laasonen, Aalto University, Finland Vincent Liegeois, Université de Namur, Belgium Jorge M. C. Marques, Universidade de Coimbra, Portugal Hans-Dieter Meyer, Universität Heidelberg, Germany Alexander O. Mitrushchenkov, Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée, France Antonio Sarsa, Universidad de Cordoba, Spain Nathalie Vaeck, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium Graham Worth, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom

Detailed information can be found at http://web4.umb.sk/molim2016.

Enquiries about the meeting can be directed to the conference e-mail address (molim2016@umb.sk) or to one of the organizers: Miroslav Medveď (Meeting Chair, Miroslav.Medved@umb.sk), Philippe Carbonniere (Philippe.Carbonniere@univ-pau.fr), María Pilar de Lara-Castells (Pilar.deLara.Castells@csic.es), Miroslav Melicherčík (Miroslav.Melichercik@umb.sk)

1st MOLIM Training School (MTS1) “Molecular Potentials and Dynamics: The Starting Journey”, supported by the COST program Molecules in Motion (MOLIM) (http://cost-molim.eu), will be held from March 30 to April 3, 2016, in Curia, Portugal. The scientific program of MTS1 focuses both on experimental and theoretical studies of molecular interactions, collision dynamics, spectroscopy, and related fields. MTS1 involves 11 invited trainers from 8 countries, who were asked to summarize at an introductory post-graduate level the topics of their presentations, with the objective of revealing the basic knowledge for the trainees to understand the current thinking of leading research within their field. It is hoped that their authoritative contributions presented at MTS1 will also appeal to non-specialists through their clear and broad introductions to the field as well as references to the accessible literature. MTS1 will comprise contributions covering a wide range of topics, from electronic and ro-vibrational structure theory of molecules and clusters to dynamics of elastic, inelastic and reactive encounters between atoms, molecules, ions, clusters, and surfaces.

It will also have a section for the trainees to report their own ongoing work via presentation of posters at the end of every day during the TS.

The invited speakers include:
S. Adhikari (Calcutta – India)
J. L. Alonso (Valladolid – Spain)
A. G. Császár (Budapest – Hungary)
R. Fausto (Coimbra – Portugal)
M. Hochlaf (Paris – France)
D. Per Jensen (Wuppertal – Germany)
I. Kleiner (Paris – France)
T. J. Martinez (Stanford – CA, USA)
A. J. C. Varandas (Portugal)
W.-T. Yang (Durham – NC, USA)
G. Zerbi (Milano, Italy)

The number of trainees is limited to 74 according to the following distribution:
30 trainees (with full accommodation and local travelling support from COST)
16 trainees (with partial support from COST; 8 meals)
28 (at maximum) trainees not supported by COST.

Detailed information can be found at http://www.uc.pt/go/molim2016 with pre-registration open. Grant applications and poster submissions will open soon.

Looking forward to see you in Curia
A.J.C. Varandas and R. Fausto

The 2nd COST XLIC Working Group 3 Meeting –  Control of Chemical Reactivity will be held at Queen’s University Belfast, on 4th – 5th April 2016.

Scope of the meeting:
The topic of interest of the XLIC Working Group 3 (WG3) is to control the reactivity of highly excited and/or ionized molecules through pump-probe techniques and High Harmonic spectroscopy, i.e., to control electron transfer, isomerization and dissociation with attosecond temporal and sub-Angstrom spatial resolution.
Specific areas addressed by the WG are:
* Development and application of optimal control theory (OCT)
* Use of time-resolved pump-probe techniques to control process relevant to atmospheric chemistry or biomolecules
* Development and use of current theories to treat the dynamics of pump-probe experiments
* Study of the response of molecular systems irradiated by strong fields

Meeting Details:
The 2nd WG3 meeting will be hosted by Queen’s University Belfast over two full days (4th-5th April 2016) with contributions from invited speakers and young scientists, including a poster session.

The WG1 Expert Meeting on ‘Frontiers in attosecond theory: from atoms to molecules to solids’’ has been approved by the COST Management Committee. The workshop will take place in Han-sur-Lesse (The Ardennes, Belgium) on April 4-8, 2016, at the Domain des Masures.
The chair of the organizing committee is Prof. Bernard Piraux.

The meeting will cover the following topics:
– hole dynamics in inner/valence shells of atoms/molecules
– ultrafast response to electron removal in solids
– ultrafast dynamics in chiral systems
– theoretical methods for ultrafast dynamics

Invited speakers:
Vitali Averbukh (Imperial College, London);  Jamal Berakdar (Martin-Luether University, Halle), Alexander Galstyan (University Louvain la Neuve), Bernard Pons (CELIA, Bordeaux), Armin Scrinzi (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich).

Registration:
Due to the capacity of the venue, the workshop will be limited to 30 participants. The total cost per person is 309 €, and it includes all meals and accommodation for 5 days.
If you plan to attend the workshop, please fill out this form. The deadline for registration is January 29, 2016. Once the list of participants will be known, you will receive the confirmation of your registration as well as more information about the organization of the workshop

The abstract submission deadline  is January 29.
Please send one page abstract to olga.smirnova@mbi-berlin.de  and Bernard.Piraux@uclouvain.be.
Please use the following subject line: Ardennes_abstract_name
and indicate in your email the type of the contribution you wish to present: oral or poster.

Abstracts will be reviewed by the program committee, which includes:
Prof. Henri Bachau (CELIA Bordeaux), Prof. Piero Decleva (Università di Trieste),  Prof. Lars Madsen (Aarhus University), Prof. Fernando Martin (Universidad Autonoma de Madrid).

Scope

The topic of the 2^nd meeting on the Energetic Processing of Large Molecules (EPoLM-2) is Carbon- and hydrocarbon molecules: from the lab to space. Building on the success of the first meeting at the Lorentz Center in Leiden in May 2015, we aim to bring together scientists from a broad range of research fields (physics, chemistry, astrophysics, and astronomy) to exchange expertise and work together on joint projects. Here, the focus will be on the latest laboratory results on mechanisms and rates for the formation and destruction of carbon and hydrocarbon molecules under space-like conditions. The aim of the meeting is to combine this knowledge with new observations and astrophysical models.

The 2^nd meeting for the members of the XLIC Working Group 2 is organized in the framework of the COST Action CM1204 (XUV/X-ray light and fast ions for ultrafast chemistry). Working Group 2 is concerned with the stability of highly excited and highly charged molecules in the gas phase and their reactivity: interaction with other molecules and formation of new species through isomerization and/or fragmentation.

 Conference site

The meetings will be held during 11-13 and 13-15 April 2016 in Stockholm (Sweden), with one common day (April 13). The conference venue is the AlbaNova University Center, which is located close to the city center and is easily accessed by public transport.

Deadlines     

Registration: 29 February 2016
Abstract submission: 29 February 2016
Note that the registration may be closed earlier due to the capacity of the venue

Support

Speakers invited to attend the second XLIC WG2 meeting (and some selected participants) can be reimbursed for their travel and subsistence expenses in accordance to COST rules. Please, note that no support to attend the EPoLM-2 meeting will be provided by XLIC Action.

Before incurring on any expense, please check COST Vademecum pages 20-24. In particular, please,
– check the supporting documents you should provide in case you are travelling to and from countries other than that where the approved meeting is being held and the country where you are residing. A proper justification and all the documents detailed in page 22 of COST Vademecum should be provided when sending the claim. If not, the claim will be rejected.
– take note on the current definition on Local transport expenses on page 24 of COST Vademecum: now, you should provide tickets/invoices for any trip occurring within the same country if the claim exceed 25 EUR.

Participants are kindly asked to keep their expenses as low as possible and ask only for the amounts they have spent, even if flat rates allow for a higher contribution, so the Action budget can be used to support more activities/participants. Thank you in advance!

Organizing committee

Henrik Cederquist (Stockholm University), Henning Zettergren (Stockholm University), Henning Schmidt (Stockholm University), Ronnie Hoekstra (University of Groningen), and Alexander Tielens (Leiden Observatory).

The tutorial will be organized in 4 theoretical and 5 practical sessions, the latter taking place in the computer lab. The theoretical sessions will be of 4.5 hours and practical sessions will last 4 hours. The school will comprise 3 didactic blocks.
The first block will have an introductory character and will offer an overview of the field. The following block will focus on mono- and multi-configurational electronic structure methods for the description of excited states. The last block will cover dynamics methodologies. (see description below). The school will end with a comprehensive overview (2 hours) of state-of-the-art applications, limitations, suitabilities, future perspectives and challenges of the different static and dynamical approaches described in the school.

1st Block (6 hours): Overview of modern electronic and vibrational photochemistry. Born-Oppenheimer approximation. Ground and excited potential energy surfaces topology and light-matter interaction. Building bridges between experiment and theory: theoretical approaches to simulate steady state and transient absorption spectra. Excited state deactivation processes.

2nd Block (18 hours): Quantum Chemical Calculations of Excited States: Mono- and Multiconfigurational Methods. CASSCF and RASSCF methods. Choice of the active space. Single vs. state-average calculations. Basis sets considerations. Introducing dynamical correlation: the CASPT2 method. CASPT2 problems and solutions. DFT. Runge-Gross theorems. Linear response TDDFT. Propagation of the electronic density. Spectra calculation. Approximation of xc-functionals. This block includes 3 practical sessions of 4 hours each, comprising introductions to MOLCAS and OCTOPUS codes, simulation of absorption spectra and exploration of the topography of potential energy surfaces (location of stationary points and surface crossings).

3rd Block (14 hours): Wave Packet propagations and semiclassical dynamics. Time-evolution operator, propagation. Relaxation method, filtering method. Interaction with an electric field. Correlation functions, spectra and eigenfunctions. Pump-probe spectroscopy and control, including an introduction to optimal control theory and local control. Born-Oppenheimer and Ehrenfest dynamics. Nonadiabatic dynamics, Tully’s surface hopping. This block includes 2 practical sessions of 4 hours each, introducing quantum and semiclassical dynamics techniques.

Registration: http://www.cecam.org/workshop-6-1316.html

The tutorial will cover the fundamentals and the practical use of state-of-the-art codes for the calculation of the electronic structure of bulk solids, surfaces, and defects and impurities in solids. This includes applications in thermodynamical properties, phase transitions, temperature and pressure effects, magnetic and spectroscopic properties, and surface properties including reactivity of and at surfaces. The influence of structural vacancies both in bulk and at surfaces will be addressed as an important topic influencing in a significant way the properties of different materials. The chemical reactivity of surfaces will be the subject of one of the lectures of the course, with a full discussion of different aspects of the modelling of the CO oxidation in a Y-doped TiO2 supported gold nanoparticles catalyst. That is, in summary, the content of the main theoretical and practical sessions, grouped into 8 and 4 subjects, respectively.

(Theo-1) Symmetry (Pablo García Fernández)
Summary of basic concepts. Space groups. Tensor quantities. Crystal strain. Bloch theorem. The symmetry of the wavefunction under periodic boundary conditions.

(Theo-2) Electronic structure. (Cristina Díaz)
Cluster and periodic models. Atomistic models. Kohn-Sham equations and DFT methodologies. Electronic structure calculations. Phonons and crystal searching.

(Theo-3) Thermodynamic properties. (Cristina Díaz)
Static models. Equation of state of solids. Phase transitions. Mechanisms and kinetics of phase transitions. Thermal effects.

(Theo-4) Chemical bonding and microscopic approach. (Julia Contreras)
Topologies of scalar fields in crystals. Electron density, electron localization function and reduced density gradient chemical functions. Chemical origin of compresibility. Chemical bonding reconstruction along a phase transition.

(Theo-5) Ab initio simulation of the structure, thermodynamic properties and reactivity in surfaces. (Antonio Márquez)
Computational models in Surface Science. Structure of surfaces: Tasker’s classification of ionic surfaces. Relaxation, rumpling, and reconstruction of surfaces. Surface energies. Surface defects: O vacancies in metal oxides. Adsorption at surfaces. Case studies: organic molecules and transition metal atoms at oxide surfaces. Reactivity at surfaces: organic molecules at simple surfaces. Role of point defects. Case study: CO oxidation on an oxide supported metal catalyst. Case study: highly correlated metal oxides: the case of ceria.

(Theo-6) Ab initio simulation of magnetic and optical properties, and structural instabilities of solids. (Miguel Moreno)
Introduction: Role of impurities in crystalline solids. Impurities in insulators. Localization. What are the calculations useful for? Substitutional Transition Metal Impurities in insulators: Description of states. Study of Model Systems: interatomic distances and colour. The colour of gemstones containing Cr3+. Static Jahn-Teller effect: description. Static Jahn-Teller effect: experimental evidence. Insight into the Jahn-Teller effect. Off centre motion of impurities: evidence and characteristics. Origin of the off centre distortion. Softening around impurities.

(Theo-7) Magnetic interactions in Molecules and Solids: Basic concepts and Spin Hamiltonians (Coen de Graaf)
Spin Hamiltonians. Effective Hamiltonian theory. Magnetism in condensed matter. Spin waves for ferromagnets. Antiferromagnetic lattices. Electron transport. Quantum Chemical approach to solid state magnetism. Four center interactions in cuprates.

(Theo-8) Magnetic anisotropy, Double exchange and spin wave theory (Coen de Graaf)

Registration: http://www.cecam.org/workshop-6-1308.html

The 13th edition of the ETSF’s Young Researchers Meeting (YRM) will be held at King’s College London (London, UK) from the 6th till the 10th of June.

Please, note that registration is now open!

The ETSF – YRM is an international meeting held yearly on theoretical methods of condensed matter. It gathers young researchers (Ph.D. and post-docs) from all around Europe and it constitute a unique opportunity for them to join a growing community.

The Meeting will be focused on the hot topics of the field and will benefit from an excellent range of invited speakers both from academia and industry.

Participants will profit from a friendly atmosphere, ideal to improve their presentation skills in an international environment and to present works even at early stages of advancement.

Introductory talks will be scheduled at the beginning of each session with the explicit aim of being didactic. The intent is to make all the talks of the session accessible even to participants working on other fields.

Moreover the first day will be dedicated to speakers from the private sector with a background in condensed matter who will share their experiences of working outside academia.

All attendees, and especially researchers at the early stages of their career, are encuraged  to submit abstracts for talks/posters. The submission deadline for this event is 11/03/2016. For more information please visit our website (https://yrm2016.github.io/) or contact us through  yrm-info@kcl.ac.uk.

Registration for the Ultrafast X-Ray Summer School 2016 is now open. UXSS 2016 will take place during June 12-16 at the PULSE institute at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. UXSS 2016 is organized in collaboration with the Center for Free Electron Laser Science (CFEL) at DESY in Hamburg, Germany. The summer school is intended to give a comprehensive introduction to the field of ultrafast x-ray science and free electron lasers. The program, directed towards graduate students and post-docs, is highly interdisciplinary and focuses on the latest developments and opportunities in the field. A limited amount of travel support is available. Students interested to apply are requested to send a brief one-page statement describing their background and research interests. For more information visit:

https://ultrafast.stanford.edu/uxss-2016

The 7th International Meeting on Atomic and Molecular Physics and Chemistry (IMAMPC) will be held in Le Havre (France).
The conference is organized by both the University of Le Havre and Caen
and will be devoted to the following topics:
– Astrochemistry
– Chemical reactivity in the gas phase and at the gas/surface interface
– Collisional energy transfers
– Electronic structure calculations and spectroscopy of molecules
– Cold atoms and molecules
– Macromolecules and aggregates

The International Meeting on Atomic and Molecular Physics and Chemistry (IMAMPC), started in 2010, was conceived to encourage the assistance and active participation of young researchers, both theoreticians and experimentalists in the field of atomic and molecular physics. This Meeting is intended to promote high-quality research carried out by young scientists, in order to highlight their contributions to the field.

A large place will be given to the presentation of selected contributions of young scientists.

Registration and abstract submission will be open next January.
News on the preliminary organization can be found in the web page: http://imampc2016.sciencesconf.org