EPJ

About EPJ

The European Physical Journal (EPJ) is a series of peer-reviewed journals covering the whole spectrum of physics and related interdisciplinary subjects. EPJ is committed to high scientific quality in publishing and is indexed in all main citation databases.

Read more...

Distinguished EPJ Referees

Authors & Readers

Latest news

EPJ D Highlight - Enabling longer space missions

Details
Published on 15 August 2019
A Hall thruster in operation. Image by the user Dstaak at Wikimedia Commons .

Hall thrusters, which are already used to propel spacecraft and satellites on long missions, could be used for even longer ones if models for minimising surface erosion were taken into account.

The 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing has reignited interest in space travel. However, almost any mission beyond the moon, whether manned or unmanned, will require the spacecraft to remain fully operational for at least several years. The Hall thruster is a propulsion system that is often used by craft involved in long missions. A recent study by Andrey Shashkov and co-workers at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Russia has shown how the operating lives of these systems can be further extended; their work was recently published in EPJ D.

Read more...

EPJ D Highlight - Quantum momentum

Details
Published on 05 August 2019
Schemes for measuring time-of-flight in classical mechanics (top) and quantum mechanics (bottom). In quantum mechanics, the classical particle is represented by a wave packet. Values of X indicate position and t time.

A new quantum-mechanical model has been developed that allows the momentum of quantum particles to be measured using a variant of the classical time-of-flight.

Quantum mechanics is an extraordinarily successful way of understanding the physical world at extremely small scales. Through it, a handful of rules can be used to explain the majority of experimentally observable phenomena. Occasionally, however, we come across a problem in classical mechanics that poses particular difficulties for translation into the quantum world. A new study published in EPJ D has provided some insights into one of them: momentum. The authors, theoretical physicists Fabio Di Pumpo and Matthias Freyberger from Ulm University, Germany, present an elegant mathematical model of quantum momentum that is accessible through another classical concept: time-of-flight.

Read more...

EPJ B Highlight - Entropy explains RNA diffusion rates in cells

Details
Published on 02 August 2019
RNA molecules diffuse in characteristic ways. https://commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/File:50S-subunit_of_the_ ribosome_3CC2.png

Mathematical analysis reveals that the exponential patterns in RNA diffusion rates linked to small-scale diffusive behaviours

Recent studies have revealed that within cells of both yeast and bacteria, the rates of diffusion of RNA proteins – complex molecules that convey important information throughout the cell – are distributed in characteristic exponential patterns. As it turns out, these patterns display the highest possible degree of disorder, or ‘entropy’, of all possible diffusion processes within the cell. In new research published in EPJ B, Yuichi Itto at Aichi Institute of Technology in Japan explores this behaviour further by zooming in to study local fluctuations in the diffusion rates of RNA proteins. By associating these small-scale diffusion rates with time-varying values for entropy, he finds that the rates of change of entropy in certain time intervals are larger in areas with higher RNA diffusion rates.

Read more...

Subcategories

All news

Open calls for papers

Special issues

EPJ 2019 calendar

Conference announcements