The 8th workshop on high energy physics phenomenology (WHEPP-8) was held at the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, India during January 5–16, 2004. One of the four working groups, group III was dedicated to QCD and heavy ion physics (HIC). The present manuscript gives a summary of the activities of group III during the workshop (see also [1] for completeness). The activities of group III were focused to understand the collective behaviours of the system formed after the collisions of two nuclei at ultra-relativistic energies from the interactions of the elementary degrees of freedom, i.e. quarks and gluons, governed by non-abelian gauge theory, i.e. QCD. This was initiated by two plenary talks on experimental overview of heavy ion collisions and lattice QCD and several working group talks and discussions.

We study the physical features of a class of exact solutions for cold compact anisotropic stars. The effect of pressure anisotropy on the maximum mass and surface red-shift is analysed in the Vaidya–Tikekar model. It is shown that maximum compactness, red-shift and mass increase in the presence of anisotropic pressures; numerical values are generated which are in agreement with observation.

Development of chemical and biochemical sensors is the current need of the society. In this report, we present our investigation on the development of a label-free fibre-optic biosensor based on evanescent wave absorbance to detect the presence of analytes such as bacteria, virus and some clinically important proteins. A simple UV-LED (280 nm) and photodetector combination along with a fibre probe was used for developing cost-effective, user-friendly and field applicable device. To improve the sensitivity of the detection technique, the probe design was modified and the U-bent probe was fabricated by simple procedure. Further, to overcome the problems for using UV light source in the fibre, the localized surface plasmon resonance of noble metal nanoparticles at visible wavelength was exploited as a sensing medium for the biochemical reactions. Our systematic studies in this regard presented in this communication may bring the excitement for developing the waterborne pathogen detection device for house-hold as well as field applications.

Polyethersulphone (PES) was modified to improve the hydrophilicity of its surface, which in turn helps in improving its adhesive property. The modified PES surface was characterized by contact angle measurement, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), atomic force microscopy (AFM) and Vicker’s microhardness measurement. The contact angles of the modified PES reduces from $49^{\circ}$ to $10^{\circ}$ for water. The surface free energy (SFE) calculated from measured contact angles increases from 66.3 to 79.5 mJ/m² with the increase in plasma treatment time. The increase in SFE after plasma treatment is attributed to the functionalization of the polymer surface with hydrophilic groups. The XPS analysis shows that the ratio of O/C increases from 0.177 to 0.277 for modified PES polymer. AFM shows that the average surface roughness increases from 6.9 nm to 23.7 nm due to the increase in plasma treatment time. The microhardness of the film also increases with plasma treatment.

This review reports on plasma response to transient high voltage pulses in a low pressure unmagnetized plasma. Mainly, the experiments are reviewed, when a disc electrode (metallic and dielectric) is biased pulsed negative or positive. The main aim is to review the electron loss in plasmas and particle balance during the negative pulse electrode biasing, when the applied pulse width is less than the ion plasma period. Though the applied pulse width is less than the ion plasma period, ion rarefaction waves are excited. The solitary electron holes are reviewed for positive pulsed bias to the electrode. Also the excitation of waves (solitary electron and ion holes) is reviewed for a metallic electrode covered by a dielectric material. The wave excitation during and after the pulse withdrawal, excitation and propagation characteristics of various electrostatic plasma waves are reviewed here.

With an aim to understand the effects of breakup and transfer channels on elastic scattering and fusion cross-sections in the $^{7}{\text{Li}} + ^{27}{\text{Al}}$ reaction, simultaneous measurement of elastic scattering angular distributions and fusion cross-sections have been carried out at various energies ($E_{\text{lab}} = 8.0–16.0$ MeV) around the Coulomb barrier. Optical model (OM) analysis of the elastic scattering data does not show any threshold anomaly or breakup threshold anomaly behaviour in the energy dependence of the real and imaginary parts of the OM potential. Fusion cross-section at each bombarding energy is extracted from the measured $\alpha$-particle evaporation energy spectra at backward angles by comparing with the statistical model prediction. Results on fusion cross-sections from the present measurements along with data from the literature have been compared with the coupled-channels predictions. Detailed coupled-channels calculations have been carried out to study the effect of coupling of breakup, inelastic and transfer, channels on elastic scattering and fusion. The effect of $1n$-stripping transfer coupling was found to be significant compared to that of the projectile breakup couplings in the present system.