9^th International Conference on the Physics of Dusty Plasmas

ICPDP 2022

Moscow, Russia, May 23-27, 2022

The 9th International Conference on the Physics of Dusty Plasmas (ICPDP 2022) has been carried out in Moscow at the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences on May 23-27, 2022. The history of this conference dates back to 1996 when the first of this series of international conferences was held in Goa (India) in response to the growing interest in the topic of dusty plasma after the discovery of the dusty plasma crystal^1,2. Subsequently, International Conferences on the Physics of Dusty Plasmas were held every three years in different parts of the world (Hakone, Japan, 1999; Durban, South Africa, 2002; Orleans, France, 2005; Azores, Portugal, 2008; Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, 2011; New Delhi, India, 2014; Prague, Czech Republic, 2017). The choice of Moscow as a conference venue was discussed back in 2014 in New Delhi. However, the decision about a conference on dusty plasmas in Moscow was then postponed in view of the organization of the 40th Scientific Assemb ly of COSPAR at Moscow State University at that time, and the issue was moved to 2017. The decision to hold the conference in Moscow was finally made by the International Advisory Committee of International Conferences on the Physics of Dusty Plasmas at the 8th International Conference on the Physics of Dusty Plasmas, which was held in Prague.

Initially, the conference in Moscow was planned for 2020. However, the organizers were forced to reschedule it several times because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Ultimately, the final dates for the conference were agreed in January 2022 with the Directorate of the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the International Advisory Committee. The conference in Moscow was hampered not only by the COVID-19 pandemic, but also by a number of other obstacles, including those related to the current political climate in the world. In particular, it turned out to be impossible for members of the Program and Organizing Committees of the conference to communicate with members of the International Advisory Committee from the European Union and the United States after February 2022 due to the prohibition for researchers in a number of Western countries to communicate with Russian colleagues. Subsequently, a considerable number of researchers from Europe and North America were unable to participate in the conference despite invitations from Moscow. In addition, the untimely decease of Academician Vladimir Evgen’evich Fortov, the Chairman of the Program and Organizing Committees of the conference, on November 29, 2020 was a serious loss for conference organizers.

Despite all these unfavorable circumstances, the conference in Moscow was quite successful. A total of two hundred eighty one participants were registered for the conference. One hundred twenty six reports were presented by researchers from fourteen countries, namely, Austria, Belarus, Germany, Egypt, India, Kazakhstan, People’s Republic of China, Myanmar, Netherlands, Pakistan, Russia, USA, France, and South Korea. It should be noted that a number of participants from the European Union bypassed the formal prohibition imposed on them to communicate with Russian colleagues by posting their poster presentations on the conference website without direct communication. Table 1 shows the number of reports of different categories at the International Conferences on the Physics of Dusty Plasmas in New Delhi (India, 2014), Prague (Czech Republic, 2017), and Moscow (Russia, 2022).

Table 1. Number of reports of different status at the International Conferences on the Physics of Dusty Plasmas in New Delhi, India (2014), Prague, Czech Republic (2017), and Moscow, Russia (2022)

The conference organizers tried not to degrade the ranks of the invited reports. Only researchers with indisputable international recognition and fame were invited to the role of invited speakers. Such a high status bar, as well as the fact that many key experts from Europe and North America were not able to participate in the conference, led to a smaller number of plenary lectures compared to previous conferences. Nevertheless, the reports at the conference in Moscow managed to cover all the traditional fields of research on dusty plasmas, as well as new areas that have significantly developed since the 2017 conference in Prague. The new research fields associated with studying active Brownian particles and a dusty plasma in the Martian ionosphere are of particular importance. The conference addressed the topics related to future lunar missions Luna-25 and Luna-27, dusty plasmas in a magnetic field and in facilities for controlled nuclear fusion, a high-density dusty plasma, nonlinear waves and self-assembly processes in dusty plasmas, astrophysical applications, a dusty plasma in the solar system, etc.

¹ J.H. Chu and I. Lin, Direct observation of Coulomb crystals and liquids in strongly coupled rf dusty plasmas. Phys. Rev. Lett. 72, 4009 (1994).
² H. Thomas, G.E. Morfill, V. Demmel, J. Goree, B. Feuerbacher, and D. Möhlmann, Plasma crystal: Coulomb crystallization in a dusty plasma. Phys. Rev. Lett. 73, 652 (1994).