On 19-21 December 2016, the IAEA organises a technical meeting on 'Uncertainty Assessment and Benchmark Experiments for Atomic and Molecular Data for Fusion Applications' at its headquarters in Vienna, Austria. The 3-day meeting will feature invited and contributed oral presentations, a poster session and discussion sessions. For more information, please refer to this website.

Aim

The meeting is meant to advance data-oriented research on Atomic and Molecular processes and properties that are important for plasma simulations and plasma diagnostics for fusion energy development and other plasma applications. The discussion topics are as follows:

• Prioritization of atomic and molecular data needs for fusion applications.
• Experimental methods and systems to benchmark theoretical atomic and molecular collision data.
• Target uncertainties of atomic and molecular collision data for fusion applications.
• Uncertainty quantification methods for theoretical atomic and molecular data.
• Network of atomic and molecular physicists doing benchmark experiments and computations.

Among other things the meeting will identify the most important data needs for fusion applications, decide what can be done to benchmark those data and formulate a plan of action among experimental and theoretical physicists to carry out this benchmarking and perform the associated uncertainty assessment. Questions to be addressed include:

• How can benchmarking measurements be organized taking into account the most recent developments in the experimental as well as theoretical areas?
• How can detailed measurements of the reaction dynamics, as benchmarks for theory, help to improve reliability of theoretical calculations for a given collision system?

The discussions should lead to specific proposals for measurements to set new benchmarks for prioritized data. These measurements will obviously be very difficult in some cases, but they will set the standard. Along with the discussions about new benchmark experiments there will be discussions and proposals about suitable theoretical methods to compute these data, and how and by whom this can be done. The calculations should be accompanied by a full discussion of the inherent uncertainties.