Sixty-six leading researchers from ten nations gathered in the Homeric village of Kardamyli, on the southern coast of mainland Greece, from August 29–September 4, 1993 for the International Workshop on Acceleration and Radiation Generation in Space and Laboratory Plasmas. This Special Issue represents a cross-section of the presentations made at and the research stimulated by that meeting.
According to the Iliad, King Agamemnon used Kardamyli as a dowry offering in order to draw a sulking Achilles into the Trojan War. 3000 years later, Kardamyli is no less seductive. Its remoteness and tranquility made it an ideal venue for promoting the free exchange of ideas between various disciplines that do not normally interact. Through invited presen tations, informal poster discussions and working group sessions, the Workshop brought together leaders from the laboratory and space/astrophysics communities working on common problems of acceleration and radiation generation in plasmas. It was clear from the presentation and discussion sessions that there is a great deal of common ground between these disciplines which is not at first obvious due to the differing terminologies and types of observations available to each community.
All of the papers in this Special Issue highlight the role collective plasma processes play in accelerating particles or generating radiation. Some are state-of-the-art presentations of the latest research in a single discipline, while others investi gate the applicability of known laboratory mechanisms to explain observations in natural plasmas. Notable among the latter are the papers by Marshall et al. on kHz radiation in the magnetosphere ; Barletta et al. on collective acceleration in solar flares; and by Dendy et al. on ion cyclotron emission.
The papers in this Issue are organized as follows:
In Section 1 are four general papers by Dawson, Galeev, Bingham et al. and Mon which serves as an introduction to the physical mechanisms of acceleration and radiation generation in plasmas. The next section includes state-of-the-art papers on laboratory accelerators driven by lasers (Nakajima et al., Shukla, Johnson et al.), microwaves (Nishida et al., Bogomolov et al.) and by particle beams (Ogata et al.). Also in this section are theoretical papers presenting new work on synchrotron like oscillations in plasma waves (Fedele) and two types of laboratory radiation sources, FEL's (Marshall et al.) and ionization fronts (Lai et al.), and Frantzeskakis et al. described the Hamiltonian analysis of a slow-wave autonomous cyclotron buncher. Section 3 contains papers on astrophysical plasmas, with the general presentations of Colgate and Krishnan. Kazanas and Krishnan address active galactic nuclei (AGNs). Thielheim discusses general acceleration mech anisms in rotating magnetized systems. Asseo discussed Langmuir solitons in pulsars and Blackman et al. treat magnetic reconnection relativistically. Su et al. analyze the possibility of plasma wave excitation and particle acceleration by neu trinos from supernovae. Dogiel et al. on cosmic ray scattering by MHD fluctuations.
The papers in Section 4 treat fusion plasmas (Dendy et al. and Lashmore-Davies et al.). Section 5, space plasmas, includes papers on acceleration processes in the magnetosphere (Anagnostopoulos and Marshall et al.) and the sun (Barletta et al.).
It is evident from the Workshop and the papers collected here that this is indeed a rich field of investigations and that both the natural and laboratory plasma communities can benefit from the cross-fertilization of ideas between them.
We wish to thank the authors and attendees for their contributions to the success of this workshop, Dr Philip Debenham and Dr David Sutter of the U.S. D.o.E. and Dr Charles Roberson of the U.S. O.N.R. for their financial support (Grants DE-FGO3-93ER40776 and N00014-93-1-0814), and the ECC Twinning Grant SC1*-CT92-0773.
We appreciate the considerable local support from Mr Glegles and his staff at the Agricultural Bank of Greece. We thank Mr V. Tataronis, mayor of Kardamyli, and members of the Kardamyli organizing committee and the community for their incredible hospitality. The excellent work of the Conference Secretaries, Ms Shirin Mistry and Mrs Sheila Shield is gratefully acknowledged. Finally, a special thank you goes to Mr S. C. Katsouleas who is so much more than our local organizing chairman.
