Review of the Joint Annual Meeting 2011 in Lausanne

The annual meeting 2011 which took place at the EPFL in Lausanne on June 15-17, was organized jointly with the Austrian Physical Society ÖPG, and both national societies of Astronomy and Astrophysics (SSAA and ÖGAA), as a successful follow-up of the Innsbruck meeting in 2009. With 10 parallel sessions, more than 470 submitted abstracts and nearly 650 participants, one can claim that our goal to make our meeting more attractive to the physics community was achieved. The commercial exhibition with the presence of 22 companies was the largest ever organized by our society.

The 10 plenary talks of the three morning sessions covered a broad spectrum of modern physics from condensed matter physics (Bose Einstein condensation of photons, Quantum cascade lasers, 2D electron gas between insulators, stretchable electronics, superconductivity) to large scale physics (LHC at CERN, the ITER project at Cadarache) without forgetting Earth and planetary science (high velocity impacts in the solar system) and simulation of the universe by computational astrophysics. The presence of our Austrian colleagues had also an impact on the parallel sessions. For example a session "Surfaces, Interfaces and Thin films" was organized as a complement to the Condensed Matter one. To our great pleasure a session on "Theory and Simulations", composed of the three suptopics "Large Scale Computing", "Theoretical Physics Today" and "Computational Astrophysics" was part of the program. Another novelty was the session on Geophysics which covered topics like geophysical fluid dynamics, Earth and planetary magnetism or even the safety assessment of deep geological nuclear waste depositories.
On the first evening, a public lecture given in the Polydôme by M. Marthaler and colleagues on the topic "Le Cervin est-il africain? Une histoire de la dérive des océans et continents" unravelled the mystery of the origin of our most famous Swiss mountain, the Matterhorn.

For the second time a successful series of contributions on History of Physics (HoP) gathered a large audience, thanks to the joint action of Peter Schuster, chair of the EPS HoP group and Jan Lacki, chair of the new SPS HoP section. The section Physics in Industry (Kai Hencken) organized this year a special afternoon session on "Careers for Physicists" which attracted many young people interested in the professional experience of physicists who went into industrial research or business management.

Last but not least the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the discovery of superconductivity was the occasion to listen to a series of interesting talks on the development of this exciting field over the years with insight on the different theories and applications. A lively round table with all the speakers and the two Nobel laureates K. A. Müller and J. G. Bednorz, demonstrated that after the boost produced by the discovery of high-T_c superconductors 25 years ago, this field of physics has still a strong momentum and good potential for large scale applications. As a complement to this special event, an exhibition on superconductivity by the artist Mix&Remix, kindly sponsored by the University of Geneva and MaNEP, was on display in the hall. Another cool attraction was also the model of a superconducting levitation train presented by the University of Zürich, constantly surrounded by a stream of visitors.

On the official side the SPS has elected this year four new distinguished honorary members, J. G. Bednorz (IBM Rüschlikon), J. P. Eckmann (Uni. Genève), J. Fröhlich (ETHZ) and M. Huber (Zürich) for their outstanding contributions (see SPS Communications no. 34 for the laudationes). During the joint award ceremony, which took place on the first day of the meeting, the 3 SPS prizes in general physics (ABB), condensed matter physics (IBM) and applied physics (Oerlikon), were attributed. The winners and their works are presented here.
On the Austrian side, the prestigious Boltzmann prize as well as the Anton Paar prize, the Viktor F. Hess prize, and the AT&S Research award were attributed. The ÖGAA rewarded two Diploma students.
Nothing better than getting together at the conference dinner in the Chalet Suisse above Lausanne. Although the few rainshowers did not permit to enjoy the terrasse and the magnificent view on the lake, the atmosphere within the restaurant was really hot with good food, even cheese raclette and of course a few glasses of excellent local wine.

Altogether the successful annual meeting 2011 in Lausanne can be regarded as the fruitful result of the decision taken a couple of years ago, namely to organize a joint meeting with the ÖPG every two years in alternation with the meeting taking place with the Swiss NCCRs. This procedure should allow the annual meetings to reach their critical mass and remain or become again more attractive to the Swiss physics community. As announced at the General Assembly the next SPS meeting will take place in June 2012 in Zürich and the following year we shall be the guests of the ÖPG in Vienna.

I would like here to warmly thank S. Albietz, I. Furno and A. Pochelon and their crew for the local organization, and all my colleagues of the executive committee. Acknowledgement goes also to our colleagues of the ÖPG, its president Erich Gornik as well as the two coordinators Gottfried Strasser and Reinhold Koch for their support and a fruitful collaboration. Thank you also to Daniel Schaerer and Manuel Güdel, the respective presidents of the SSAA and ÖGAA.

Christophe Rossel, SPS President

The Joint Annual Meeting of the Swiss and Austrian Physical Societies together with the Swiss and Austrian Societies for Astronomy and Astrophysics in Lausanne was a successful continuation of the course established at the first joint meeting of these societies in Innsbruck in 2009. It was once more a strong indicator that topics of physics are recognized and pursued internationally, and that the physicists of both countries need not shy back from matching their work with their colleagues from other countries in an international meeting.

We have to thank the organizers for compiling a program that represented the wide range of topics and the internationally recognized achievements of the participating societies. In particular, the plenary talks conveyed insight into the current state of research spanning from high energy physics, photonics and astronomy. The celebration of 100 years of superconductivity, in presence of two Nobel laureates, was an event to remember.

The newly introduced special session “Careers for Physicists” turned out to be so interesting that is was immediately considered to make such a session as a fixed constituent of future annual meetings.

The success of the meeting in Lausanne led to the decision that joint meetings of the societies involved should be repeated biennially, alternating between Switzerland and Austria, next time in 2013 in Austria.

We would like to thank the Swiss Physical Society for the excellent local organisation, and to all societies involved for their stimulating cooperation. We are looking forward to future joint activities!

Erich Gornik, ÖPG President, Karl Riedling, ÖPG General Secretary

For the first time, sessions on geophysics took place at a SPS Annual Meeting. The reason for organizing such an event is that geophysics is thematically attached to geosciences but is methodologically a complete physical science.

There were sessions dedicated to the science of fluids dynamics, planetary magnetism and dynamo, using physical methods and developing models. Geophysics covers also many engineering and application aspects. For example, the issue of deep geological waste storage was addressed in a special session, whereas another session was dealing specifically with methods in geophysics. With more than 30 contributions and a large audience, this first meeting on geophysics was a great success.

In his plenary lecture on collisions in the solar system, Philippe Gillet explained how to read the history of planets and meteorites via the traces left in rocks and other various minerals after the extreme pressures generated during collisions. A brilliant investigation à la Sherlock Holmes!

An evening public lecture gave us the opportunity to bring together geology and geophysics. Under the title "Is the Matterhorn African?", Michel Marthaler developed the themes of continental drifts, subduction and Alp formation with many illustrations and the numerical simulations of Marcel Thielmann, a PHD student in geophysics at ETHZ: indeed a nice pedagogical condensate of the formation of the Alps over million years, compressed in a few seconds video! The fast progress made in this field during the second half of the last century was outlined by Gilles Borel in his introduction.

The speakers were favourably impressed by the quality of the event, by the number of younger scientists attending and the questions they asked. The positive experience of this first geophysics session at the SPS will provide a good basis for next meetings. Other topics related to this field such as environmental and climate issues, natural resources, alternative energies, i.e., geothermal sources, early detection of natural hazards (volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis), materials characterization, monitoring of contaminated sites, etc. could be addressed in the future to attract a broad audience and motivate potential organizers.

Antoine Pochelon EPFL, SPS Secretary and Pascal Turberg, EPFL