The Cosmology of Extra Dimensions and Varying Fundamental Constants: A JENAM 2002 Workshop Porto, Portugal 3-5 September 2002 - Tapa dura

Reseña del editor

The workshop on The Cosmology of Extra Dimensions and Varying Fundamental Constants, which was part of JENAM 2002, was held at the Physics Department of the University of Porto (FCUP) from the 3rd to the 5th of September 2002. It was regularly attended by about 110 participants, of which 65 were officially registered in the VFC workshop, while the others came from the rest of the JENAM workshops. There were also a few science correspondents from the national and international press. During the 3 days of the scientific programme, 8 Invited Reviews and 30 Oral Communications were presented. The speakers came from 11 different European countries, and also from Argentina, Australia, Canada, Japan and the U.S.A. There were also speakers from six Portuguese research institutions, and nine of the speak­ ers were Ph.D. students. The contributions are presented in these proceedings in chronological order. The workshop brought together string theorists, particle physicists, theoretical and observational cosmologists, relativists and observational astrophysicists. It was generally agreed that this inter-disciplinarity was the greatest strength of the work­ shop, since it provided people coming into this very recent topic from the various different backgrounds with an opportunity to understand each other's language and thereby gain a more solid understanding of the overall picture.

Reseña del editor

The workshop on the cosmology of extra dimensions and varying fundamental constants was part of JENAM 2002, held in Porto in September 2002. It was the first major international workshop devoted to this topic. It brought together string theorists, particle physicists, theoretical and observational cosmologists, relativists and observational astrophysicists.

The overall motivation for the workshop was to discuss the current theoretical motivations for the existence of additional space-time dimensions, and to confront these expectations with existing or upcoming observational and experimental tests. The interaction between specialists in different areas was quite fruitful, and a number of outstanding issues were identified which are likely to become the main paths of research to be explored in this area in the coming years.