Proceedings of the International Conference on STRONGLY COUPLED COULOMB SYSTEMS 2011, Budapest, Hungary

This special issue contains papers presented at the International Conference on Strongly Coupled Coulomb Systems (SCCS), held between 24 and 29 July 2011, in Budapest. The Budapest conference was the 12th in the series, which started in 1977: • 1977: Orleans-la-Source, France, as a NATO Advanced Study Institute on Strongly Coupled Plasmas (hosted by Marc Feix and Gabor J Kalman) • 1982: Les Houches, France (hosted by Marc Baus and Jean-Pierre Hansen) • 1986: Santa Cruz, California, USA (hosted by Forrest J Rogers and Hugh E DeWitt) • 1989: Tokyo, Japan (hosted by Setsuo Ichimaru) • 1992: Rochester, New York, USA (hosted by Hugh M Van Horn and Setsuo Ichimaru) • 1995: Binz, Germany (hosted by Wolf Dietrich Kraeft and Manfred Schlanges) • 1997: Boston, Massachusetts, USA (hosted by Gabor J Kalman) • 1999: St. Malo, France (hosted by Claude Deutsch and Bernard Jancovici) • 2002: Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA (hosted by John F Benage and Michael S Murillo) • 2005: Moscow, Russia (hosted by Vladimir E Fortov and Vladimir Vorobev) • 2008: Camerino, Italy (hosted by David Neilson and Gaetano Senatore). The name of the series was changed in 1996 from Strongly Coupled Plasmas to Strongly Coupled Coulomb Systems to reflect a wider range of topics. “Strongly Coupled Coulomb Systems” encompasses diverse many-body systems and physical conditions. The purpose of the conferences is to provide a regular international forum for the presentation and discussion of research achievements and ideas relating to a variety of plasma, liquid and condensed matter systems that are dominated by strong Coulomb interactions between their constituents. Each meeting has seen an evolution of topics and emphases that have followed new discoveries and new techniques. The field has continued to see new experimental tools and access to new strongly coupled conditions, most recently in the areas of warm matter, dusty plasmas, condensed matter, heavy ion collision physics, and ultra-cold plasmas, as reflected in the conference topics: • Dense and astrophysical plasmas • Plasmas in condensed matter • Confined and mesoscopic Coulomb systems • High energy-density plasmas in the laboratory • Classical charged systems • Developments in theoretical methods and numerical techniques One hundred colleagues came from nineteen countries and four continents to participate in the Conference. Those giving presentations were asked to contribute to this special issue to make a representative record of this exciting meeting. We thank the International Advisory Board and the Programme Committee for their support and suggestions. We thank the Local Organizing Committee and Diamond Congress Ltd. (Gabriella B´anfalvi, Attila Varga, and R´obert Hohol) for all their work. Finally we thank the conference sponsors for their very generous support: the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the Research Institute for Solid State Physics and Optics, and the KFKI Research Institute for Particle and Nuclear Physics. Zolt´an Donk´o Peter Hartmann David Neilson