New Eras in Physics

Abstract

Dear readers, authors and reviewers of Annalen der Physik, On 16 November 2018, the 26th meeting of the General Conference on Weights and Measures in Versailles adopted a resolution on the revision of the International System of Units (SI).1 With this, the French metrology institution BIPM will give up its traditional role as host of the famous “Grand K”, the kilogram prototype, which is to be replaced by a fixed value of the Planck constant h.2 At the same time, also the elementary charge e,3 the Boltzmann constant k,4 and the Avogadro constant NA5 received new definitions so that in the future all seven SI units will be defined in terms of physical constants. These changes will come into effect on 20 May 2019, and on this occasion Annalen der Physik will publish a special issue “The Revised SI: Fundamental Constants, Basic Physics and Units”, edited by our Editorial Advisory Board member Klaus Blaum (Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics Heidelberg), Dmitry Budker (Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz), Andrey Surzhykov (Technical University and Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt – PTB, Braunschweig), and Joachim H. Ullrich (President of the PTB, the National Metrology Institute of Germany) (Figure 1). It is planned to contain Review Articles on the fundamental constants and corresponding units, as well as a substantial collection of further overview articles and new research results around these and the required high-precision measurements. Watch out for many articles to be already online at http://www.ann-phys.org (Early View)! This special issue will clearly be one of the AdP highlights in the New Year, as it is of fundamental importance for physics and the foundations of physical measurements. However, there are also other fields of physics that currently undergo revolutionary developments. One of them is certainly gravitational wave astronomy. We have already been glad to publish the article by the LIGO and VIRGO Collaborations on “The basic physics of the binary black hole merger GW150914” (the first detection in September 2014) which has been downloaded more than three times a day on average since. Now we are even happier to follow up with the Nobel Lectures 2017 “LIGO and the Discovery of Gravitational Waves”, Parts I to III, authored by the Laureates Rainer Weiss (article number 1800349), Barry C. Barish (article number 1800357), and Kip S. Thorne (article number 1800350) in the present issue. They are being accompanied by an Expert Opinion (article number 1800442) from our Board member Bruce Allen of the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics Hannover and a Review Article on Forecasting Gamma-Ray Bursts with Gravitational Waves by Sarp Akcay (Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena and University College Dublin). The spectrum of recent top Review and Feature Articles in Annalen der Physik spreads further from astrophysical black holes over self-collimation in photonic crystals to Bose–Einstein condensation (article numbers 1700430, 1700049, and 1700124). And, last but not least, special issues will continue to be a cornerstone of the journal, with the 2017 article collection on Many-Body Localization having been cited almost 400 times already at present, also to be followed by ‘Physics of Information’ and ‘Advances in Physics of Semiconductors’ later this year. Suggestions for new special issue topics are always welcome at ann-phys@wiley.com. Generally, we have noticed increasing submission numbers as well as better-quality contributions, and we intend to keep up the standards of the journals by a strict editorial and peer-review selection process that currently results in an acceptance rate below 20%. Recent trends also include increasing submission numbers in applied physics fields as well as from China (more than one third of contributions in 2018), most notably in current topical areas such as quantum information or photonics. To support this significant development, we have appointed four new Editorial Advisory Board members in 2018, among them Qihuang Gong, Peking University; Hong-Bo Sun, Jilin University Changchun; Dingyu Xing, Nanjing University; and Pu Yu, Tsinghua University, Beijing, and with our colleague Huan Wang we have now an Editor working in the Wiley Beijing office. A warm welcome to each of you, and to all authors joining the growing AdP community! Wishing you a peaceful, healthy, successful and pleasant year 2019. Stefan Hildebrandt, Editor-in-Chief Nadezda Panarina, Maria E. Stournara, Huan Wang, James Cook, Matthew Lock, Editors