The CECAM School on: “Theoretical Spectroscopy Lectures: theory and codes” reaches the 6th edition and takes place from 18th to 22th of May, 2015 at the CECAM-HQ-EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland.

Electronic excitations are probed by experimental techniques such as optical absorption, EELS and photo-emission (direct or inverse). From the theory point of view, excitations and excited state properties are out of the reach of density-functional theory (DFT), which is a ground-state theory. In the last twenty years other ab-initio theories and frameworks, which are able to describe electronic excitations and spectroscopy, have become more and more used: time-dependent density-functional theory (TDDFT) and many-body perturbation theory (MBPT) or Green’s function theory (GW approximation and Bethe-Salpeter equation BSE). In fact, computational solutions and codes have been developed in order to implement these theories and to provide tools to calculate excited state  properties.The present school focuses on these points, covering theoretical, practical, and also numerical aspects of TDDFT and MBPT, and codes implementing them (ABINIT, DP, EXC).

The presentation of the theory will be followed by practical classes and hands-on  tutorials. At the end of the school, students will have sufficient working knowledge to  pursue their projects at their home institution. The participants are expected to have a fair knowledge of DFT prior to the school (see Ref. 1, given in the school’s website) and to be familiar with one plane-wave pseudopotential based software.
Indeed, although at the beginning of the school, we will make sure that the DFT level of all participants is enough in this respect and provide the needed complementary  information and training, the purpose of the school is to go beyond DFT, with hands-on exercices based on plane-wave implementations.

The deadline for application is on 15 April 2015, but giving the limited number of places (around 25) many applications will be considered even before the deadline. Especially student candidates coming from outside EU are encouraged to register soon: an answer to them will be given as soon as possible for VISA and traveling purposes.

In order to apply for the school, please go to: http://www.cecam.org/workshop-1136.html

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

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

2^nd MOLIM Training School: Advanced technics for molecular spectroscopy and dynamics

The 2^nd MOLIM Training School focuses on the recent experimental developments occurred in the field of molecular spectroscopy and reaction dynamics. World-wide experts working in European country will be invited to present the most relevant state-of-the-art techniques and their applications. The trainees will benefit from visits of the brand new laser servers ATTOLAB and CILEX as well as of the synchrotron SOLEIL. By team of 2 to 3 trainees, the students will be involved in a laboratory project hosted in several laboratories of the Paris-Saclay University.

The registration is open to Master students, Ph.D students, post-docs and permanent scientist from all European countries. Affiliation to the COST MOLIM is not required to participate to this school. The school can welcome up to 40 Europeans trainees and 10 more students from Paris region.

The registration deadline is fixed at Feb 24th 2017. Booking of rooms by the Committee will be possible up to Jan. 31st 2017.

Registration: http://iramis.cea.fr/meetings/MTS2/index.php

Confirmed speakers:

Knuth Asmis (Leipzig, D)
Valérie Blanchet (Bordeaux, FR)
Juraj Fedor (Prague, CZ)
Gustavo Garcia (Paris-Saclay, France)
Katharina Kohse-Höinghaus (Bielefeld, D)
Anne Lafosse (ISMO, F)
Franck Lépine (Lyon, FR)
Andrew Orr-Ewing (Bristol, UK)
Katharine Reid (Nothingham, UK)
Claire Vallance (Oxford, UK)
Katalin Varjú (Szeged, HU)
Roland Wester (Innsbruck, AU)

Organizing Comittee :

Dr. Lionel Poisson
Pr. Majdi Hochlaf
Dr. Laurent Nahon
Pr. Satchin Soorkia

The International school on “The Frontiers of Attosecond and Ultrafast X-ray Science” will be held from 19th to 28th March 2017 in Erice, Sicily, Italy.

The primary objective of this new school is to educate the next generation of scientists who will impact the future of attosecond and ultrafast x-ray science. We anticipate that the school will meet on a regular basis every two years and become a foundation for the ultrafast community. Consequently, the main topics of the course are the following: (i) attosecond science and technology, devoted to the generation and application of attosecond pulses to the investigation of electronic dynamics in atoms, molecules, nanostructures and condensed phases; (ii) fundamentals, methods and applications of free electron lasers, synchrotron radiation, ion collisions in atomic and molecular science. Lectures will cover current developments in theory and experiments but are also intended to give the basics of the field.

Please note that, PhD students and post-docs willing to attend the school can apply for scholarships (deadline 30 January 2017). For more details see: http://www.erice-attosecond.it/registration

The school co-organised by XLIC COST Action and sponsored by Politecnico di Milano, Italian Ministry of Education and Scientific Research, Sicilian Regional Parliament, ELI-ALPS and Ettore Majorana Foundation and Centre for Scientific Culture.

The organizers,

Louis Di Mauro, Alicja Domaracka, Mauro Nisoli and  Sergio Martellucci

The recent development of novel light sources like x-ray free-electron lasers and table-top lasers for high-harmonic generation, which are capable of delivering controllable sequences of intense sub-femtosecond ionizing pulses, has opened the way to monitor and control electron dynamics in atoms and molecules at its natural time scale, the attosecond (Chem. Rev. 2017, DOI: 10.1021/acs.chemrev.6b00453). The description of the coherent superposition of electronic continuum states that the interaction of such pulses with molecules generates goes beyond the capabilities of standard quantum-chemistry packages, which have been designed to describe the lowest bound states. Furthermore, stationary state-based pictures based on lowest-order perturbation theory are, in most cases, inapplicable. The purpose of this school is to introduce state-of-the-art ab-initio, hybrid and TDDFT numerical methods that can cope with ultra-fast dynamics in the electronic continuum of molecules, with an emphasis on unbound states in strong-fields and on the need to go beyond single-active-electron models to properly account for electron correlation. The course is directed to advanced master students, PhD students and young post-doctoral researchers in atomic and molecular physics, theoretical chemistry and applied mathematics, with an interest in developing new software for coherent control of electronic dynamics in systems of chemical interest.

The tutorial will be organized in 5 theoretical sessions and 4 practical sessions in the computer lab. Both theoretical and practical sessions will be of 4 hours. The school comprises four didactic blocks. The first block has an introductory character. It offers an overview of the field and a tutorial on strong field physics. The following three blocks focus on systems of increasing complexity and will be devoted to the description and use of new computational methods for fast time evolution in correlated systems in non-perturbative conditions (see description below). The school will end with a comprehensive overview of state-of-the-art results in attosecond pump-probe and strong field molecular science obtained with ab initio “exact” simulations in small systems, on the one side, and with TD-DFT effective-field simulations, capable of coping with larger systems, on the other side. The future perspectives, challenges and mutual interaction of these two complementary approaches will be discussed.

More information: https://www.cecam.org/workshop-1552.html