Proceedings

EPJ A Highlight - Celebrating the impacts of Jacques Raynal’s work in the development of nuclear reaction formalism, codes and analysis

alt

This topical article edition of EPJ A is dedicated to the memory of French nuclear physicist Jacques Raynal, who passed away on April 10th, 2020.

It illustrates, through a series of peer-reviewed articles, the various facets of what Raynal and his colleagues accomplished, as well as the profound influence of his results in several domains of nuclear reactions, both for theory formalism and for the analysis and understanding of experimental observables. The articles also demonstrate how his work paved the way for the future development of concepts and numerical codes for nuclear reaction calculations.

In 1959, Jacques Raynal joined the Department of Mathematical Physics, which later became the division of Theoretical Physics (SPhT, now IPhT), at the CEA Saclay (Commissariat à l’Énergie Atomique), where he obtained his PhD (1964) and worked until his retirement in 1996. Afterwards he served as a scientific advisor to the CEA, while continuing his own scientific work. From a practical, technical and numerical standpoint, the nuclear reaction codes he elaborated (from his relativistic coupled channel code ECIS) were the foundations of a series of extended codes that are now used in laboratories around the world, and in particular at the IAEA in Vienna, for the calculation of nuclear data evaluations.

His whole life, which was intertwined with his scientific career until the end, was devoted to nuclear research. With his diligence, blend of curiosity and enthusiasm, and his rigorous mathematical language for physics problems, Jacques Raynal was the perfect combination: a theorist capable of addressing the fundamental questions of nuclear reactions and of making progress in solving problems of nuclear dynamics.

The articles in this issue highlight his global influence and the legacy of his work. The authors also pay tribute to how he interacted with his colleagues and the friendships he shared with them. He was invited by various international laboratories to teach on using his codes for the phenomenological analysis of experimental data. From Havana to Vienna and Bucharest, from Saclay and Hamburg to Tokyo, the sun never sets on the countless versions of the ECIS code now being used around the globe.

All articles of the Topical Issue “A Tribute to J. Raynal”, are available here and are freely accessible until 4 January 2022. For further information, please read the Editorial.

This was our first experience of publishing with EPJ Web of Conferences. We contacted the publisher in the middle of September, just one month prior to the Conference, but everything went through smoothly. We have had published MNPS Proceedings with different publishers in the past, and would like to tell that the EPJ Web of Conferences team was probably the best, very quick, helpful and interactive. Typically, we were getting responses from EPJ Web of Conferences team within less than an hour and have had help at every production stage.
We are very thankful to Solange Guenot, Web of Conferences Publishing Editor, and Isabelle Houlbert, Web of Conferences Production Editor, for their support. These ladies are top-level professionals, who made a great contribution to the success of this issue. We are fully satisfied with the publication of the Conference Proceedings and are looking forward to further cooperation. The publication was very fast, easy and of high quality. My colleagues and I strongly recommend EPJ Web of Conferences to anyone, who is interested in quick high-quality publication of conference proceedings.

On behalf of the Organizing and Program Committees and Editorial Team of MNPS-2019, Dr. Alexey B. Nadykto, Moscow State Technological University “STANKIN”, Moscow, Russia. EPJ Web of Conferences vol. 224 (2019)

ISSN: 2100-014X (Electronic Edition)

© EDP Sciences