The international meetings on energetic processing of large molecules and interstellar dust were held on 12-16 June 2017 at the Université Paul Sabatier in Toulouse (France).
Energy relaxation in large isolated molecular species is an active subject when one considers the evolution of carbonaceous clusters and macromolecules, such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and fullerenes, in cosmic environments. This is a highly interdisciplinary field that has fostered discussions and collaborations between physicists, physical chemists and astrophysicists. It has motivated the creation of the international meeting EPoLM, Energetic Processing of Large Molecules. The EPoLM-1 and 2 meetings were held in Leiden (May 2015) and Stockholm (May 2016).
The EPoLM-3 meeting, held on June 14-16, maintained the spirit of the previous EPoLM meetings with a good diversity in the involved communities with a new participation of plasma physicists. The most recent results on the structure and dynamics of large molecular species, their evolution under photon irradiation and collisions, as well as the mechanisms at play in the relaxation of energy were presented. These results comprise new molecular dynamics simulations and new laboratory experiments obtained from storage rings and ion traps. The conference also continued to explore the connection with observational constrains and astrophysical models. In particular the promise of the coming James Webb Telescope in this topic was presented.
Despite the hot weather and temperature at the conference site, the meeting was the opportunity of very active and friendly exchanges between researchers who have no or little opportunities to meet in conferences.
The Nanocosmos workshop that was jointly organised on June 12-13, provided additional focus on the formation of analogues of cosmic dust, their spectroscopic properties as well as their interaction with gas. The workshop was motivated by the presentation of the activities at mid-term of the Nanocosmos ERC synergy project involving several teams in Spain and in Toulouse. In particular the first results of the new Nanocosmos setups, the Stardust machine (Madrid) and the AROMA setup (Toulouse), were reported. That was the occasion of discussions within teams and with invited experts and EPoLM-3 participants.
More than seventy participants from 12 countries attended the meetings. Following this successful week, it was proposed that the next EPoLM-4 meeting would be held in Madrid around fall 2018.
