Exciting physics – nothing else

Abstract

A year passed-by full of exciting physics and new discoveries. One of the major announcements in 2013 was the discovery of the Higgs boson at CERN 1. ATLAS and CMS experiments confirmed that a new particle has been found which is compatible with the Higgs boson. In the same year, the Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to François Englert and Peter W. Higgs “for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles…” 2. Although the prize went to two theory pioneers it is clear that this success was a result of major efforts of thousands of people, including experimentalists, engineers as well as people working in administration, logistic and funding. A truly Big Science enterprise. Annalen der Physik congratulates all people involved for this feast of human curiosity, endurance and the untiring will to understand nature. In addition to this, understanding fundamental physical laws can also be brought forward on a low energy scale which marked a major theme in Annalen der Physik last year, see our (double) special issue on “Precision Experiments and Fundamental Physics at Low Energies” edited by Klaus Blaum, Holger Müller, and Nathal Severijns3, 4. Other topics were of interest, too. Recently, and most likely inspired by the seminal work from Nobel laureates Serge Haroche 5 and David Wineland 6, our guest editors and advisory board members Rainer Blatt, Immanuel Bloch, Ignacio Cirac, and Peter Zoller organized the special issue “Quantum Simulation” which also presents the Nobel lectures of the afore mentioned prize winners 7. In this context I would like to point to the work of S. Schmidt and J. Koch “Circuit QED lattices – Towards quantum simulation with superconducting circuits” earlier last year 8 and to M. Schlosshauer, J. Kofler and A. Zeilinger's discussion on “The interpretation of quantum mechanics: from disagreement to consensus?” 9. Yet, there were more aspects in physics that seemed worth to be brought forward. Peter Hommelhoff, Matthias Kling, and Mark Stockman organized a special issue with invited contributions in the field of “Ultrafast Phenomena on the Nanoscale” 10, including intensely discussed problems in the field like high-harmonic generation 11-14. What else is out there? For 2014, Annalen der Physik has announced to publish focus issues on three major topics to catch up with recent research efforts in some of the most challenging and promising branches in our field. One of the most puzzling and controversially discussed questions concerns the destiny of our universe. Richard Battye, Ariel Goobar, and Jochen Weller organize the special issue “The Accelerating Universe” (submission deadline March 17, 2014). Invitations to participate are still open and can be viewed at www.ann-phys.org. This special issue complements the issue on “Dark Matter” by Matthias Bartelmann and Volker Springel 15 from 2012 with highlight articles from Lars Bergstrom 16, Carlos S. Frenk and Simon D.M. White 17 and many more. Another topic will be covered by Jack Harris, Peter Rabl and Albert Schliesser, focusing on “Quantum and Hybrid Mechanical Systems – From Fundamentals to Applications” (submission deadline May 2, 2014). This issue, too, adds nicely to our previous efforts to publish more articles in this field, see for example Pierre Meystre's overview article “A short walk through quantum optomechanics” 18. Further submissions are welcome! Finally, Francisco Guinea, Misha I. Katsnelson, and Tim Wehling will organize the issue “Two-dimensional Materials: Electronic Structure and Many-Body Effects” (submission deadline May 1, 2014). As the guest editors said these new materials “hold the promise for novel devices with designed electronic properties” thus being today's subject of basic research and tomorrow's everyday technology. For further details, please visit our homepage. In this current issue we present some interesting overview works in the fields of quantum optics (G. Feve et al. page 1) and two-dimensional spectroscopy (G. Scholes et al. page 31), as well as novel research work by P. Kinsler and M. McCall on spacetime transformation theory (page 51) and J. E. Hirsch's work on superconductivity and diamagnetism (page 63). R. L. Hall et al. report on Nodal theorems for the Dirac equation (page 79), C. Henkel and V. E. Mkrtchian describe the Casimir effect (page 87), A. Kolovsky discusses bosonic and fermionic carriers in one- and two-dimensional lattices (page 102), and Y. Fu et al. report on light absorbing by meta-nanorings (page 112). Enjoy reading Annalen der Physik!