IV National Meeting of Statistical Physics
Event History and Objectives
The National Meeting of Statistical Physics (ENFE, in Portuguese) had its origins in the National Meeting of Condensed Matter Physics (ENFMC, in Portuguese), currently EOSBF, which is the largest annual event of the Brazilian Physics Society (SBF) and has been taking place for 40 years. The ENFMC has always been thought of as an event that brings together the various subareas, with Statistical Physics (SP) being the largest of them. However, SP, usually dealing with systems composed of an enormous number of units, is not limited to studying gases, liquids and solids formed by atoms and molecules, but also addresses pollution of neurons, economic agents, competing species, connected networks of the most diverse types, etc. These and other topics presenting diverse trends gave an interdisciplinary character to the big area and are the focus of research by different groups across the country. Consequently, from the 2010s onwards, a large part of this community was no longer properly fitting within the Condensed Matter (CM) subareas, and the ENFMC ceased to be the major guiding event for a significant portion of the SP community.
Although the interaction between areas of Physics is certainly essential, it is not only with CM that SP has connections, given its nature, but also with other areas that have their own characteristics, such as Plasma, Fields and Particles or Cosmology. Therefore, it is important that this interaction takes place within the scope of a joint meeting, the “Encontrão” (in Portuguese), with more frequent intervals. This has impacted the ENFMC events, with the participation of senior members significantly decreasing. Furthermore, the participation of students and researchers from distinct regions of the country, such as the North and Northeast, has also decreased notably.
Among other factors that also contributed to this trend, it is worth mentioning the ineffectiveness of very large events and the limited funds for attending these events. In particular, there was a tendency among CNPq researchers fellows, who make up the majority of the event's target audience, to prioritize international conferences. Thus, the Statistical and Computational Physics Commission, after consulting the community, launched the National Meeting of Statistical Physics in 2015.
1st National Meeting of Statistical Physics (ENFE 2015)
Date: November 1st to 4th, 2015
Coordination: Celia Anteneodo, Jeferson J. Arenzon and Marcos GE da Luz
City: Vitória, ES
2nd National Meeting of Statistical Physics (ENFE 2017)
Date: September 17th to 20th, 2017
Coordination: Marcelo Leite Lyra
City: Ilhéus, BA
3th National Meeting of Statistical Physics (ENFE 2021)
Date: November 22nd to 25th, 2021
Coordination: Letícia Ribeiro de Paiva
City: Virtual format, due to the Pandemic
The success of the last meetings confirms the fact that ENFE has progressively become a national reference for the Statistical Physics community, filling a previous gap in the calendar of national scientific events. The National Meeting of Statistical Physics, now in its IV edition (IV ENFE), which will be held from November 3 to 7, 2024 in Curitiba, PR, under the general coordination of Marcus W. Beims (UFPR) and co-organized by Edson D. Leonel (UNESP), Fernanda S. Matias (UFAL) and Marcos G. E. da Luz (UFPR), has therefore solidifies itself as an event of national scope, both due to the regularity and the geographical distribution of its editions, thus seeking to facilitate exchanges and interactions between different research groups within the national territory.
