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The Highly Frustrated Magnetism 2006 (HFM 2006) conference took place on 15–19 August 2006 at the Icho Kaikan of Osaka University, Osaka, Japan. This conference was the third one of the series, following the first one in Waterloo, Canada (HFM 2000) [1] and the second one in Grenoble, France (HFM 2003) [2]. The HFM 2006 conference was held as a satellite of the International Conference on Magnetism (ICM 2006) held on 20–25 August 2006 in Kyoto, Japan. The conference attracted 191 participants from all over the world. The number of participants of the HFM conference series has been increasing steadily, from about 80 participants for HFM 2000 and about 120 participants for HFM 2003, demonstrating that highly frustrated magnetism is a rapidly growing area for research in condensed matter physics. The HFM 2006 conference consisted of four plenary talks by H Takagi, F Mila, P Mendels and B D Gaulin, 18 invited presentations and about 120 poster presentations from all areas of frustrated magnetism. In the evening on the 18th of August, a special session about 'the kagome story' was given by M. Mekata, where participants learned about the history of early-day research on frustrated magnetism and the origin of the word 'kagome' (see the picture below). Kagome lattice from a Japanese traditional woven bamboo basket.During the conference period, many stimulating discussions were held both inside and outside the conference room. The subjects covered in the conference included:Quantum frustrated magnetism and spin liquids Novel ordering of geometrically frustrated magnetsItinerant frustrated systems and novel superconductivitySpin glasses and random magnetsFrustration effect on the coupling to lattice, orbital and charge degrees of freedomExotic phenomena induced by macroscopic degeneracyField effect on frustrated magnetism etc. This special issue of Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter is devoted to the proceedings of the HFM 2006 conference. The aim of these proceedings is to provide a scientific record of some of the topics that were presented at the conference. It contains 91 articles from the presentations given at the conference. All articles have been refereed by experts in the field. I am sure that the reader will enjoy these contributions and learn a lot from them.In view of the rapid growth of the field, it has been decided at the conference that the next HFM conference will be held in two years, in 2008, in the city of Braunshweig, Germany.References Gingras M (ed) 2000 Can. J. Phys. 79 1283-1597 Stewart R (ed) 2004 J. Phys.:Condens. Matter 16 S553-S922 Group photograph Finally, on behalf of the HFM 2006 Organizing Committee, I wish to deeply thank all the people who generously helped us in organizing and running the HFM 2006 conference. Committee Members International Advisory Committee Y Ajiro,Japan A Harrison, Great Britain S Bramwell, Great Britain R Kremer, Germany C Broholm, United States C Lacroix, France I Campbell, France F Mila, Switzerland B Gaulin, Canada A Ramirez, United States M Gingras, Canada K Ueda, Japan Organizing Committee Hikaru Kawamura (Osaka, chairman) Hitoshi Ohta (Kobe, secretary) Satoru Maegawa (Kyoto, program) Zenji Hiroi (Tokyo, publication) Hirokazu Tsunetsugu (Kyoto, program and publication) Toshifumi Taniguchi (Osaka, local) Susumu Okubo (Kobe, homepage) Hajime Yoshino (Osaka, local) Organising committee: from left to right, H Yoshino, S Okubo, S Maegawa, H Kawamura, H Ohta, Z Hiroi, T Taniguchi, H Tsunetsugu. |
