Journal of Low Temperature Physics Special Issue Dedicated to Frank Pobell Volume 146, Numbers 5/6, March 2007

Preface:

For more than a decade, Prof. Frank Pobell has worked as an editor for the Journal of Low Temperature Physics. He has, along with Horst Meyer (Duke University, USA) and recently Neil Sullivan (University of Florida, USA), advanced the Journal of Low Temperature Physics to a highly regarded magazine and the worldwide leading publication medium in low temperature and high magnetic field physics. Due to his imminent retirement, Frank Pobell has recently handed on the baton to Mikko Paalanen (Helsinki University of Technology, Finland) who has taken over as an editor as of September 2005.
During the 24th International Conference on Low Temperature Physics (LT24) in Orlando, the undersigned and Horst Meyer have discussed the idea to thank Frank Pobell for his dedication to the JLTP with a special issue. Publishing special issues has emerged as an effective concept for JLTP to honour outstanding members of the community. It has been applied at various occasions. We have therefore invited colleagues and companions of his scientific locations at Munich, Cornell, Jülich, Bayreuth and Dresden to contribute articles to the "Special Issue to honour Frank Pobell for his dedication for the Journal of Low Temperature Physics as an editor".
Frank Pobell dedicated his scientific live to the physics of matter under extreme conditions. Most of us got to know him because of his quest for ultra-low temperatures. With his groups in Jülich and Bayreuth, he achieved several records of the lowest equilibrium temperature. The last record, T = 1.5 µK, which has been reached through the adiabatic demagnetization of Platinum is valid since a decade. He built up several nuclear demagnetization refrigerators which enabled outstanding investigations of solids and quantum fluids down to lowest temperatures. He attended to nuclear-spin ordering phenomena, superconductors, magnetic superconductors, magnets, spin glasses, liquid and solid 3He and 4He. Frank Pobell shared his cooling machines and experimental techniques with the international community. His institute in Bayreuth had the status of an EU user facility during the 3rd and 4th research framework programme of the European Community.
Frank Pobell was acting as an editor for JLTP even in the recent years, when he was the director of Forschungszentrum Rossendorf, a large research centre in Dresden, as well as the president of the Leibniz Society, one of the four large science communities of Germany. During that time, Frank Pobell also emphasized the importance of physics in high magnetic fields, in particular in a field range, B > 50 T, not available to the wide science community, so far. In consequence, he accompanied by four other research institutes in Dresden, successfully applied for the German high magnetic field project, the Hochfeld-Magnetlabor Dresden (HLD), a user facility for experiments in very high pulsed magnetic fields up to 100 T which will go into operation in mid 2007. Until 2005, Frank Pobell also headed the build-up team of the HLD.
One of us (TH) had the opportunity both to be a member of his µK laboratory in Bayreuth and to participate in the construction of pulsed field installations at HLD. "As one of his former students, I am very grateful to Frank Pobell who has taught us much more than only low-temperature physics." Acting as guest editors for this issue, we got an impression on the amount of work which is necessary to keep that journal a vivid publication medium for the international low-temperature science community.
Thomas Herrmannsdoerfer, Hochfeld-Magnetlabor Dresden (HLD), Germany
Eckhard Krotscheck, Johannes Kepler Univ. Linz, Austria