Table of contents

The gravitational properties of gauge and global relativistic cosmic strings in Abelian Higgs and scalar field models are presented. A complete classification of the strings is given and the ranges of the parameters allowing static configurations are determined. Gravitational properties of cosmic strings in the relevant limiting cases are treated analytically.

Experimental and theoretical studies of convective heat transfer from a heat-generating fluid confined to a closed volume are reviewed. Theoretical results are inferred from analytical estimates based on the relevant conservation laws and the current understanding of the convective heat-transfer processes. Four basic and one asymptotic regime of heat transfer are identified depending on the heat generation rate. Limiting heat-transfer distribution patterns are found for the lower boundary. Heat transfer in a quasi-two-dimensional geometry is analyzed. Quasi-steady-state heat transfer from a cooling-down fluid without internal heat sources is studied separately. Experimental results and theoretical predictions are compared.

A joint scientific session of the General Physics and Astronomy Division of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), the Scientific Council on Luminescence of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the United Physical Society of the Russian Federation was held in the Conference hall of the PNLebedev Physics Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, on 28 March 2001 at 11 a.m. The session was dedicated to the 110th anniversary of the birth of Academician Sergei Ivanovich Vavilov (XXV Jubilee Vavilov Reading). The following reports were presented at the session: (1) Alfimov M V (Photochemistry Center, RAS, Moscow) 'Luminescence of guest – host type organic nanostructures'; (2) Bolotovskii B M (P N Lebedev Physics Institute, RAS, Moscow) 'Vavilov – Cherenkov effect: the history of the discovery and the current status of the problem'. (3) Osipov Yu S (President of the RAS, Moscow) 'Opening address'; (4) Ginzburg V L (P N Lebedev Physics Institute, RAS, Moscow) 'About Sergei Ivanovich Vavilov'; (5) Krokhin O N (P N Lebedev Physics Institute, RAS, Moscow) 'S I Vavilov — the founder of the P N Lebedev Physics Institute'; (6) Feinberg E L (P N Lebedev Physics Institute, RAS, Moscow) 'Sergei Ivanovich Vavilov and his time'; (7) Bonch-Bruevich A M (S I Vavilov State Optical Institute, St. Petersburg) 'Sergei Ivanovich Vavilov in my life'.

The 10th International Conference on ferroelectricty was held on 3 – 7 September, 2001 in Madrid, Spain. At a plenary session of the conference, a talk was delivered, whose content is presented in the present paper. The paper is primarily concerned with the work of V L Ginzburg and other Russian physicists on the theory of ferroelectric phenomena.

Supplementary papers for this conference are available at Chernogolovka 2000: Mesoscopic and strongly correlated electron systems

An overview of optical effects in micrometer-sized droplets is presented. The fundamentals of microdroplet optics are expounded. The scope of the analyzed phenomena includes enhancement of the spontaneous emission probability, laser generation, Raman light scattering, changes in the rates of physicochemical processes, and peculiarities of action on droplets by high-power light pulses. It is emphasized that the knowledge acquired can be applied to droplet structure analysis based on the measurement of resonance positions and amplitudes in elastic or inelastic light scattering spectra.

This paper offers a biography of the eminent scientist Yurii Borisovich Rumer (1901 – 1985). The appendix features two accounts in which Yu B Rumer describes his work in Göttingen and his encounters with A Einstein between 1929 –1932.

Yurii Borisovich Rumer (Yu B) was an excellent story-teller. Grateful listeners long remembered his stories about life in the first years after the 1917 Great Socialist Revolution in Russia, about the Göttingen School, about Albert Einstein, about Soviet physicists, about the years he spent in prison and in the secret research institution where all researchers and staff were prisoners. Unfortunately, nobody was perceptive enough to record these stories for posterity. Yu B himself would not agree to it as after the many years of his gruesome prison experience he was always cautious and carefully censored his stories himself according to the audience and the political climate of the period. The few reminiscences published in his lifetime also exhibit evidence of such self-censorship. M P Kemoklidze made detailed records but she says she destroyed them after publishing the book Quantum age (1989) for which they were intended. Here we are publishing a transcript of the tape recording made by Anna Livanova in 1962 when Yu B visited her in Moscow (she knew him from her days as a student of the Physics Department of Moscow State University). When Livanova was on a business trip to the Novosibirsk Academy Town she attended a talk given by Yu B to the students of Novosibirsk University at which they asked him to tell of the most important occasion in his life. He said it was his meeting with Einstein. In Moscow Livanova recorded an extended version of that talk. Livanova used the recording for writing the essays ''Academy Town in Siberia'' (Znamya magazine, No. 11, 12, 1962) and ''Physicists about Physicists'' (in the book Roads to the Unknown — Writers Telling about Science in which a section was entitled 'Meeting with Einstein'), and her book 'Physicists about Physicists' (Moscow: 'Molodaya Gvardiya' Publishers, 1968) which also included a section on Rumer's meeting with Einstein. The publications were significantly edited and only a part of the recording transcript was used. It was the unflagging support of L V Al'tshuler and the technical assistance rendered by his grandchildren that made it possible to resurrect the old magnetic tape and make a new transcript. Of course, the stories often repeated by Yu B who referred to them as my 'discs' include some inconsistencies caused by lapses of memory. They present a lively picture of the science community and its life, however, as well as a congenial portrait of the story-teller himself. When we prepared the transcript for publication we practically did not edit it. We believe that the emotional and expressive story presented in exactly the way it was told with inevitable slips and errors better conveys the stirring atmosphere of those distant events than a polished and verified historical treatise. We deciphered the passages on the tapes that were difficult to make out from our personal recollections of Rumer's stories and added our comments to the text. I F Ginzburg, M Yu Mikhailov (Rumer)