A workshop on “Celestial, Molecular, and Atomic Dynamics” (CEMAD-2013) was held at the University of Victoria, Canada, 29 July-2 August, 2013. The workshop was sponsored by the Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences (PIMS) and the University of Victoria, and organized by Florin Diacu (University of Victoria), Gregor Tanner (University of Nottingham, UK), and Andreas Buchleitner (University of Freiburg, Germany).
A continuation of the workshop “Few-Body Dynamics in Atoms, Molecules, and Planetary Systems,” held at the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems in Dresden, Germany, June 28-July 1, 2010, CEMAD-2013 aimed to bring together experts in celestial mechanics and semi-classical theory, as applied to the study of atoms and molecules, for the benefit of all those involved. The main emphasis was on the mathematical aspects of these research fields. The event was a satellite meeting of the Mathematical Congress of the Americas (MCA-2013) and part of Mathematics of the Planet Earth (MPE-2013).
One-hour invited lectures were given by (in alphabetical order):
- Paula Balseiro, UFF – Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
- Luis Benet, Mexico City, Mexico,
- Stefanella Boatto, UFRJ – Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
- Alessandra Celletti, Rome, Italy
- Nark Nyul Choi, Kumih, South Korea
- Holger Dullin, Sydney, Australia
- Andreas Knauf, Erlangen, Germany
- Jacques Laskar, Paris, France
- Javier Madronero, Munich, Germany
- Jesús Palacian, Pamplona, Spain
- Thomas Pfeifer, Heidelberg, Germany
- Gareth Roberts, Worcester, USA
- Manuele Santoprete, Waterloo, Canada
- Cristina Stoica, Waterloo, Canada
- Susanna Terracini, Torino, Italy
- Turgay Uzer, Atlanta, USA
- Patricia Yanguas, Pamplona, Spain
- Shiqing Zhang, Chengdu, China
Several contributed talks were given during the five days of the meeting. The pleasant atmosphere led to many interesting discussions. The most notable ones were about:
- connecting the Wannier ridge, which is the single central configuration in helium, with the latest developments in the theory of central configurations;
- finding the connection between atoms with more than three electrons and various central configurations that occur for the Coulomb potential;
- generalizing the eZe configurations of the isosceles problem;
- using the recent achievements in KAM theory to put into the evidence some new periodic orbits in atomic and molecular systems;
- using the formalism of geometric mechanics to explore the symplectic structure of the equations that describe molecular dynamics;
- exploring the use of symbolic dynamics and borrow from each other’s experience, for the benefits of all groups involved;
- using new ways to apply McGehee coordinates in the study of motion near total collisions;
- finding and investigating new symmetries, both in flat and curved space; and
- exploring the latest quantum experiments from various mathematical points of view.
The participants deemed the meeting a great success and many of them reinforced the idea that workshops on this topic should continue in the future.
Florin Diacu, University of Victoria