The 2nd PANDA Symposium on Multimessager Astronomy - Jets and Shocks in the Universe

The first PANDA Symposium was a great success, leading astrophysicists from foreign countries attended, as well as astrophysicists from China. The Symposium was the outstanding international forum for discussion of various topics related to “Products of Astrophysical Outflows”, and addressed some of the most exciting research frontiers of high energy astrophysics. It provided many opportunities for Chinese researchers and advanced students to become acquainted with leaders in these fields and to present their own research results to an international audience. The Second PANDA Symposium will focus on multi-messenger Astronomy. Multi-messenger Astronomy combines detections of electromagnetic signals from astrophysical sources with high energy neutrinos, cosmic ray (particle) astrophysics and gravitational waves. This new era of Astrophysics is ushered in by current and planned facilities in space and on the ground. This decade has a plethora of observatories covering an unprecedented breadth in the electromagnetic spectrum: Fermi, Swift, XMM, Chandra, Hubble, Herschel, and Spitzer); Astro-H, NuSTAR, AstroSAT, HXMT and SVOM will be launched in the near future. From the ground, radio observatories are being enhanced and upgraded (eVLA, eVLBI); ALMA and LOFAR will provide superb results in sub-mm and low radio-frequency astronomy. Pan-STARRS - the Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System - is a wide-field imaging facility being developed in Hawaii. The Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) has produced an onslaught of data for new sources. Cherenkov telescopes (HESS, MAGIC, and VERITAS) have opened a new window on particle acceleration; in the future CTA, LAWCA, HAWC and LHAASO will enhance and surpass these capabilities. The Pierre Auger Observatory is an international cosmic ray observatory designed to detect ultra-high-energy cosmic rays; it is the largest ultra-high energy cosmic ray detector in the world. The Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) and Virgo (the French-Italian interferometric detector) have been collecting data since 2007, which are currently being analyzed. Finally, neutrino observatories have been built on almost every continent including Antarctica (ANTARES, ICECUBE, NESTOR, Gran Sasso, and Super Kamiokande, to name a few). The combination of all these astrophysical tools provides a very powerful arsenal for the modern era astrophysicist. The synergetic exploitation of ground-based and satellite observatories uniquely enhances the potential for discoveries in transient and persistent sources in the Universe. These observations are poised to address fundamental physics and astronomy questions, such as: What is the nature of Cosmic Ray acceleration mechanisms? What are the mechanisms that produce jets and shocks in the Universe? where are the neutrinos in supernova explosions? Which are the progenitors of Gamma-Ray Bursts and Magnetars?