

QFEXT’05
1. Published Proceedings (JPA, Vol 39,
N 21,
4. Pictures (with thanks to Florian
Bauer, Michael Bordag, Aleix
Elizalde and Mariel Santangelo)
The
poster was a composition of mine of the left and right side views of the Miralles fence, due to Gaudi (you can see him at the entrance). It brings to mind
a non-trivial case of the original Casimir effect.
Ours is a land of genial artists, so let your imagination fly: non-even
boundaries, Möbius topology, and what could the
pedestrians in the middle correspond to? If you didn’t see this place,
you’ve got a good reason to come back to
Seventh Workshop on
QUANTUM FIELD THEORY
UNDER THE INFLUENCE
OF EXTERNAL
CONDITIONS
IEEC, CSIC and
Continuation of a series of
workshops held at the Universities of Leipzig, in 1989, 1992, 1995, 1998, and
2001, and Oklahoma, in 2003.
Proceedings of the last
four workshops:
· K. Milton, ed., Quantum Field Theory Under the Influence of External Conditions,
QFEXT03 (Rinton, Paramus, NJ, 2004)
· Int. J. Mod. Phys., 17, Nos. 5&6, pp. 771-1064 (2002),
· M. Bordag, ed., The
Casimir Effect 50 Years Later (World Scientific,
Singapore,1999),
· M. Bordag, ed., Quantum
Field Theory Under the Influence of External Conditions (Teubner, Stuttgart, 1996)
Sponsors
Topics
General information
The
Conference will take place in the main conference room of the CosmoCaixa
building. Barcelona (Catalonia, Spain) is a wonderful city
on the Mediterranean coast. The weather
in September should be nice, maybe a bit hot and with some occasional rain.
Also, late Summer (i.e., after the Conference) is one
of the best periods to plan a vacation in Spain: hotels are much cheaper, the
beaches are beautiful and not crowded, the mountains are at their best. Just
three suggestions very close to Barcelona: the Costa Brava, the
See
here the list of participants (includes
technical staff) and presented contributions, here the final
Program of QFEXT’05, and here an incomplete
Book of Abstracts. You can download the official poster. Here some annotations posted
during the meeting.
Some additional
useful hints
1) Getting from the Airport to St Jordi’s: (a) Take Train at
Airport to Sants Estació.
(b) There, take Bus number 32 (see map). 2) From St Jordi’s to CosmoCaixa
(Conference site): take Metro (Tibidabo Line) at Pça Molina (see map) and follow directions, or either walk
directly (I’ve done it in less than
Where to eat near CosmoCaixa and in the city center
A list of restaurants, cafeterias,
bars, and hotels closest to CosmoCaixa is to be found
here. Find here the location of a few of them.
Here you’ll find a non-exhaustive
list of restaurants in the city center where you can
have a nice meal for less than 15 euros. You may ask for the set menu called "menu del dia" which consists of a first course, a second
course, bread, wine, and dessert or coffee (sometimes the “menu” is
only served at midday).
Find in these links: carvalho,
recom, bulli,
hints to some of the best restaurants around.
Barcelona is not a dangerous city,
but there are quite a lot of pickpocketers and
muggers active, especially downtown (Les Rambles, Barri
Gòtic, etc.), at tourist attractions and places like
train or metro stations, or at the airport. Please just pay a bit of extra
attention to where and how you're carrying your wallet, bag or backpack, and
this will spare you the ordeal of having your documents or money stolen, or
your camera or notebook. A significant percentage of scholars visiting
universities in Barcelona have suffered from this plague. None of them got
actually injured, however. Please keep an eye on those items while you're
walking in the street or sitting in public places. Don't do things like leaving
sensitive items on the floor or on a chair while drinking something at a bar or
on a terrace. You don't need to get obsessed with that, just a bit careful!
In case of emergency, you can call
the central alarm number 112, which is free from any phone. Other
numbers are: Health Emergency: 061,
Police: 091, City Police: 092, Fire Brigade: 080.
Registration
Registration with the possibility of a panel presentation is permanently open. The Conference fee is 230 €, for students 140 €. Participants are kindly requested to print and fill in (or vice versa) the registration form. Should you need a formal invitation letter, please send your request specifying if an e-mail or fax suits you. A list of participants and submitted contributions is here.
We got funds for some 30 participants in need of help (a record number!), who have been waived the fee and will be lodged in Sant Jordi’s Hostel. Participants can still choose this and similar residences, or else go to the lodging pages for reasonably priced hotels and hostels hst1 hst2 hst3. An important advice: in order to get cheap accommodation you should make your reservations as soon as possible. No residence (aside from St. Jordi’s) is at walking distance from the Conference site. In this sense, all are more or less equivalent: you need to take the metro (and change line once) or a bus. A wise criterion is to choose the cheapest residence available. The only hotel at walking distance (15 minutes) is Hotel Bertran.
Travel information
Barcelona is easy to reach from many European destinations (including London, Paris, Frankfurt, Düsseldorf, Milan, Rome, Berlin, Brussels, Dublin, Geneva, Stockholm, Glasgow, Liverpool, Turin, Eindhoven, Venice, and some others) at incredibly low cost (e.g. easy Jet, Ryan air, vueling, eDreams,…). However, tickets must be bought much in advance and the traveler ought to be aware of the conditions of each company about eventual changes or cancellations. A taxi ride from or to the airport will cost you something between 18 and 23 €. The aerobus, at 3.45 €, is of course cheaper and the train even more, 2.4 €. Car hire: see this link for information, rates and booking. If you plan to come by car, this route planner is very useful.
Moving around in
Barcelona has an excellent and cheap public transport network to go anywhere. Maps and addresses can be found here. Ten tickets (each one valid for a ride to any part of the city by any public transport mean) cost 6 €. In particular, the conference site can be reached from Plaça Catalunya (the very heart of the city, where the Ramblas start) with the Metro FGC (Tibidabo line, L7, ten minute ride) plus an eight-minute walk. On its turn, Plaça Catalunya is connected with every single part of the city.
The
Proceedings will be published as a special issue of the Journal of Physics A. Copies will be mailed to all
registered participants. Instructions for submitting papers corresponding to
talks and posters presented at the meeting can be found here.
For
further information, contact the organizing committee:
· email: elizalde@ieec.uab.es
· mail: QFEXT05, IEEC/CSIC, Campus UAB, Fac Ciencies, Torre C5-Parell-2a planta, E-08193 Bellaterra
(Barcelona) Spain
· phone: +34 93 581 4355
· fax: +34 93 581 4363
Some
links:
CSIC IEEC
ECM UAB IFAE La Caixa
E Elizalde's Home Page M Bordag’s Home Page
Updated