The international conference on this urgent topic will be held in Russia for the third time. The success of the first workshop held in October 2015 and the second conference held in October 2017 persuaded the organizers that such meetings arranged in locations of unique Russian Observatories – Special Astrophysical Observatory of RAS (SAO RAS), Baksan Neutrino Observatory of Institute for Nuclear Research of RAS (BNO INR RAS) and the International Observatory Peak Terskol – are well needed.

The conference’s scientific program covers a wide range of problems of the modern astrophysics including that of existence of quantum-chromodynimic (QCD) phase transition and matter states at high temperatures and densities. Such conditions are likely to be achievable only in astrophysical objects – collapsars of stellar mass, the objects whose formation is related with collapse and explosion of hot and dense cores of massive stars observable as gamma-ray bursts and supernovae. Solution of such problems demands development of methods combining optical astronomical observations and experiments with neutrino telescopes, cosmic-ray recording sets and detectors of gravitational waves.

The Conference program will also include talks and discussion on the THESEUS (Transient High-Energy Sky and Early Universe Surveyor) mission concept, being developed by a large International collaboration involving also SAO and BNO. THESEUS aims at exploiting high-redshift gamma-ray bursts for getting unique clues to the Universe and, being an unprecedentedly powerful machine for the detection, accurate location and redshift determination of all types of gamma-ray bursts (long, short, high-z, under-luminous, ultra-long) and many other classes of transient sources and phenomena, at providing a substantial contribution to multi-messenger astrophysics and time-domain astronomy. Under these respects, THESEUS will show a beautiful synergy with the large observing facilities of the future, like E-ELT, TMT, SKA, CTA, ATHENA, in the electromagnetic domain, as well as with next-generation gravitational-waves (aLIGO/ aVirgo, KAGRA, ILIGO, Einstein Telescope, LISA) and neutrino detectors, thus enhancing importantly their scientific return. Moreover, it will also operate as a flexible IR and X-ray observatory, thus providing an even larger involvement of the scientific community.

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