We are pleased to announce the 6th International Conference on High Energy Density Laboratory Astrophysics, to be held March 11 to 14 on the campus of Rice University in Houston, Texas. This is a continuation of the very successful previous conferences, held in 1996 in Pleasanton, California, in 1998 at the University of Arizona, in 2000 at Rice, in 2002 at the University of Michigan, and in 2004 at the University of Arizona (organized by the University of Rochester).

During the past decade, research teams around the world have developed astrophysics-relevant research utilizing high energy-density facilities such as intense lasers and z-pinches. Research is underway in many areas, such as compressible hydrodynamic mixing, strong shock phenomena, radiation flow, radiative shocks and jets, complex opacities, equations of state, superstrong magnetic fields, and relativistic plasmas. Ongoing research is producing exciting results using the Omega laser at the University of Rochester, the Z machine at Sandia National Laboratories, and other facilities worldwide. Future astrophysics-related experiments are now being planned for the 2 MJ National Ignition Facility (NIF) laser at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the 2 MJ Laser Megajoule (LMJ) in Bordeaux, France; petawatt-class lasers now under construction in several countries, and future Z pinches. To further focus attention on this emerging research frontier, we are convening the 6th International Conference in this series.

The abstract deadline is January 27, 2006.

All conference presenters will be invited to submit papers for the refereed conference proceedings, once again to be published in Astrophysics and Space Science. The proceedings of the 5th Conference are available as Vol. 298.

Topics Include


• Stellar evolution, stellar envelopes, opacities, radiation transport


• Planetary Interiors, high-pressure EOS, dense plasma atomic physics


• Supernovae, gamma-ray bursts, exploding systems, strong shocks, turbulent mixing


• Supernova remnants, shock processing, radiative shocks


• Astrophysical jets, high-Mach-number flows, magnetized radiative jets, magnetic reconnection


• Compact object accretion disks, x-ray photoionized plasmas


• Ultrastrong fields, particle acceleration, collisionless shocks

Sponsor:


• Rice University

Co-Sponsors:


• Los Alamos National Laboratory


• Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory


• American Physical Society, Topical Group for Plasma Astrophysics



 

Conference Administrator:

Umbe Cantu, Rice University
Physics & Astronomy Department MS 108,
6100 Main St., Houston, TX 77005-1892
Tel. (713) 348-4939, Fax: (713) 348-5143, e-mail: umbe@rice.edu


Organizing Committee:


Edison Liang Rice University Local Committee Chair email: liang@spacsun.rice.edu	George Kyrala Los Alamos National Laboratory Program Chair email: kyrala@lanl.gov
Sergey Lebedev Imperial College London Proceedings Editor email: s.lebedev@imperial.ac.uk	Paul Drake University of Michigan Website and Registration email: rpdrake@umich.edu
Bruce Remington Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory email: remington2@llnl.gov	Hideaki Takabe Osaka University Japan email: takabe@ile.osaka-u.ac.jp


Scientific Advisory Committee:

Paul Bellan California Inst. of Technology email: pbellan@its.caltech.edu	Serge Bouquet Commissariat Energie Atomique email: bouquets@bruyeres.cea.fr
Wil van Breugel Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory email: wil@igpp.ucllnl.org	Adam Frank University of Rochester email: afrank@pas.rochester.edu
Patrick Hartigan Rice University email: hartigan@sparky.rice.edu	Masahiro Hoshino University of Tokyo email: hoshino@eps.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp
Michel Koenig Ecole Polytechnique email: michel.koenig@polytechnique.fr	Hui Li Los Alamos National Laboratory email: hli@LANL.GOV
Shin Mineshige Kyoto University email: minesige@yukawa.kyoto-u.ac.jp	Tom Ray Dublin Inst. for Advanced Studies email: tr@cp.dias.ie

plus the Organizing Committee members