FUSION03: From a Tunneling Nuclear Microscope to Nuclear Processes in Matter

The international conference FUSION03 was held from November 12 till 15, 2003, at Hotel Taikanso at the Matsushima Bay near Sendai, Japan. It was attended by 87 physicists from 15 countries with 22 nationalities. Two subjects were set to be the major aims of the conference. The first is to clarify the mechanism of heavy-ion fusion reactions at energies near and below the Coulomb barrier, and conversely extract structural information through the analysis of fusion cross section. The second is to explore nuclear reactions and radioactivity in matter.

The conference was intended to discuss new ideas about the subjects discussed in the Fusion97, International Workshop on Heavy-Ion Collisions at Near-Barrier Energies, which was held at South Durras, Australia. Besides the major subjects, many related subjects such as screening effects in low energy nuclear reactions in laboratory experiments and in stars, decay out of superdeformed band, theoretical as well as experimental studies of the synthesis of superheavy elements have also been intensively discussed. Lots of discussions followed each presentation and the conference was very lively. It was also celebrated with good weather including the excursion day. The proceedings of the conference, comprising the opening address, two plenary talks, 59 invited talks and the summary talk, form the contents of this volume.

We wish to thank the International Advisory Committee, A. B. Balantekin, D. M. Brink, H. Esbensen, D. Hinde, K. H. Langanke, C. Rolfs, N. Rowley and C. Signorini for useful comments in making the program. The conference was hosted by the Physics Department and the Laboratory of Nuclear Science of the Graduate School of Science, Tohoku University, Japan, and it was supported by the Grant-in-Aid for international conferences from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of the Japanese government.

The conference seeded many new problems. We wish them to be clarified in the succeeding studies and many new developments will be discussed in the next conference.