From today until Friday the Higher Technical School of Civil Engineering at the University of Castilla-La Mancha (UCLM) on the Ciudad Real campus has gathered around fifty researchers from Germany, Russia, the United States, England, the Czech Republic, China, India, Iran, Poland and France, who are involved in one of the most ambitious scientific projects of the European Union: the FAIR particles accelerator. This is a research facility with antiprotons and ions which is under construction in Germany, in which fundamental issues about the birth and evolution of the universe will be studied as well as the origin of matter, and it will have direct applications in industries such as energy.

The conference, which is annual, will be held for the first time outside Germany and will gather the group of researchers who will participate in the experiments which will be done at FAIR and whose work revolves around the physics of plasma and high energy density matter, or in other words, matter in extreme pressure conditions. Organised by the Fluidos y Plasmas( Fluids and Plasmas) research group headed by professor Roberto Píriz, the researchers will have the chance to debate and set strategies to follow, identify the most important experiments which can only be done in this accelerator and coordinate joint efforts to develop it.

Among this research, as explained by professor Píriz, there are interesting studies in planetary sciences aimed at understanding the conditions of matter in the nuclei of the planets of the solar system or the exoplanets which have been discovered in recent years. "The study of these exotic states of matter also aims to find new materials which can later on be produced in the laboratory", Píriz stated.

The group Fluidos y Plasmas at the UCLM has been working alongside international researchers in the field of high energy physics for fifteen years and, more specifically, in experiments to be carried out in the FAIR particles accelerator. So, Píriz stated, his group, and another German one, has designed and studied the "main experiment" which will be done on high energy density matter. "The Germans, led by Naeem Tahir, have taken care of the numerical simulations. We have developed the theoretical models supporting the viability of the experiments that will be carried out", he explained. These experiments, called LAPLAS, consist in compressing samples of matter with pressure created by an extremely intense beam of ions which will come out of the accelerator. This compression process is inherently unstable, so in order to carry it out, this instability must be controlled. "We- the UCLM professor added- have discovered the way of controlling it and recently we have found the way to completely master this instability. Likewise, we have determined the way in which the beam of ions must compress matter and given the design parameters of the equipment, which is currently under construction in Russia, which will regulate the beam produced by the accelerator in order to ensure the compression is stable".

The studies carries out by the UCLM group are important in energy production by means of thermonuclear fusion, from which it is hoped that one day plentiful, clean and safe energy can be created.

On the last day of the conference, Friday, there will be a gathering of the executive committee of the group of high energy density matter scientists entrusted with designing experiments and experimental devices at FAIR, which is made up of nine researchers, among which is professor Roberto Píriz. At the meeting, the committee will decide on the guidelines to follow and will discuss whether possible new members for the group are to be accepted.

UCLM Communication Office Ciudad Real, 3rd of October, 2018.