Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC)

Gravity as a Quantum Computer Nov 07, 2024

Our search for a quantum theory of gravity is aided by a unique and perplexing feature of the classical theory: General Relativity already knows" about its own quantum states (the entropy of a black hole), and about those of all matter (via the covariant entropy bound). The results we are able to extract from classical gravity are inherently nonperturbative and increasingly sophisticated. Recent breakthroughs include a derivation of the entropy of Hawking radiation, a computation of the exact integer number of states of some black holes, and the construction of gravitational holograms in our universe using techniques from single-shot quantum communication protocols.

From Quantum Scattering Amplitudes to Gravitational Wave Observables Nov 07, 2024

Gravitational waves open a new window into our universe. In this colloquium we discuss particle theorists' perspective on calculations directly relevant for gravitational-wave emission from compact objects, which is rooted in quantum field theory and builds on the idea that gravitational interactions are mediated by spin-2 particles. After reviewing some of the remarkable advances in our understanding of scattering amplitudes and in our ability to evaluate them, we show how these ideas produce state of the art results in weak-field fully-relativistic calculations for gravitational wave observables, including for the astrophysical binary black hole inspiral problem.

Dark bubbles and black shells - the darkest corners of the universe in a new light Nov 07, 2024

Understanding dark energy and black holes remain a great challenge to fundamental physics. In this talk I will review the difficulties and explore some new and speculative approaches.

Thinking positively: the numerical quantum mechanical bootstrap Nov 06, 2024

I will describe recent developments on the (numerical) computation of energy levels of various systems by the quantum mechanical bootstrap. The main way the bootstrap works is by using constraints that arise from positive matrices. Part of the goal is to turn the bootstrap problem into a problem that can be solved by semi-definite programming methods. I will describe how this method leads to solutions of the spectrum of various systems and will describe some additional applications of this way of solving problems to the study of quantum spin chains.

The erasure of topological defects and the saturation phenomenon Nov 06, 2024

Interesting erasure phenomena arise from interactions between lower-dimensional and higher-dimensional objects and impact cosmology and fundamental physics. In the first part of the colloquium, I will examine the case for topological defects, revealing insights into the interactions of magnetic monopoles, cosmic strings, and domain walls. For objects like cosmic or QCD flux strings, encounters with domain walls or D-branes result in erasure through coherence loss during collisions, introducing a new string break-up mechanism. The collisions between magnetic monopoles and domain walls in an SU(2) gauge theory lead to monopole erasure, which is pivotal in post-inflationary phase transitions and potentially solves the cosmological monopole problem. Simulations show that strings or monopoles cannot penetrate domain walls. Entropy-based arguments highlight the significance of the erasure phenomena that can produce correlated gravitational waves and electromagnetic radiation, impacting cosmology and astrophysics. The second part of the colloquium focuses on the saturation of unitarity and the emergence of Saturons. These self-sustained objects, which reach the maximal entropy allowed by unitarity, resemble black holes. I discuss a "black hole-saturon" correspondence in a renormalizable SU(N) invariant theory. Despite lacking gravity, saturons show features like an information horizon, Bekenstein-Hawking entropy, thermal evaporation, and a characteristic information retrieval time. This correspondence has significant implications for black hole physics and saturated systems. We will examine recent results on saturon mergers, vortices in black holes, and primordial black holes, offering new perspectives on fundamental theory and observations.

Can we tame the electronic Schrödinger equation? Nov 06, 2024

One of the major problems of computational chemistry is the ab initio prediction of energies and properties of molecules. The electronic Schrödinger equations provides the in-principle solution, but because of intrinsic difficulties associated with the singular and long-ranged Coulomb interaction, this remains an extremely challenging task numerically. Here we outline a formalism called transcorrelation which provides a route out of the difficulties, whilst itself creating new problems (which have stumped the community for decades). We outline our work of the past few years in tackling these new problems, and show that the formalism has the potential to transform our ability to solve the Schrödinger problem in a general manner. In particular, by eliminating the Coulomb singularities, we show we can achieve both basis-set converged results, as well as thermodynamic limit results, with far fewer resources and less sophisticated many-body theories. Prospects to extend this methodology in the context of quantum computing will also be mentioned.

The massless limit of massive gauge fields Nov 06, 2024

One of the simplest ways to make gauge fields massive is to add them a mass "by hand". Intuitively, one could expect that the corresponding massless theory would then be easy to recover. Yet, conventional methods indicate that such a limit is singular. In this talk, we will explore the massless limits of several massive gauge theories. We will identify the source of the apparent discontinuities and show that they are, in fact, simply an artifact of the perturbative approach. Then, we will discuss the consequences of this study on the relations between different gauge fields. Finally, we will conclude with a comment on the latest insights about these theories and their prospects.

Applications of Machine Learning and Neural Networks to Quantum Systems Nov 06, 2024

Learning algorithms using deep neural networks are currently having a major impact on basic sciences. The physics of complex quantum systems is no exception, with multiple applications that constitute a new field of research. Examples include the representation and optimization of wave functions of quantum systems with large numbers of degrees of freedom (neural quantum states), the determination of wave functions from measurements (quantum tomography), and applications to the electronic structure of materials, such as the determination of more precise density functionals or the learning of force fields to accelerate molecular dynamics simulations. I will survey some of these applications, with an emphasis on neural quantum states.

Loop Blow-up Inflation Nov 06, 2024

I will discuss recent progress in the study of cosmological applications of string compactifications with stabilised moduli, focusing in particular on inflation, reheating and dark energy.

Advances and Challenges in Solving the Two-Body Problem in General Relativity Nov 06, 2024

Since the discovery of the first binary black-hole merger in 2015, analytical and numerical solutions to the relativistic two-body problem have been essential for the detection and interpretation of more than 100 gravitational-wave signals from compact-object binaries. Future experiments will detect black holes at cosmic dawn, probe the nature of gravity and reveal the composition of neutron stars with exquisite precision. Theoretical advances (of up to two orders of magnitude in the precision with which we can predict relativistic dynamics) are needed to turn gravitational-wave astronomy into precision laboratories of astrophysics, cosmology, and gravity. In this talk, I will discuss recent advances in modeling the two-body dynamics and gravitational radiation, review the science that accurate waveform models have enabled with LIGO-Virgo gravitational-wave observations, and highlight the theoretical challenges that lie ahead to fully exploit the discovery potential of increasingly sensitive detectors on the ground, such as the Einstein Telescope and Cosmic Explorer, and in space, such as the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA).

Ising’s Challenge and the Conformal Bootstrap Nov 06, 2024

Throughout the century that has passed since Ernst Ising submitted his PhD thesis in 1924, the Ising (-Lenz) model has provided an incredibly fruitful challenge that gave rise to entirely new branches of physics and mathematics. In this colloquium I will focus on the conformal bootstrap program which was designed by Polyakov in 1974 as a mathematical method to access non-perturbative aspects of critical systems/fixed points of the renormalization groups. In the light of holography, such systems are also relevant for the study of quantum gravity. In my presentation I will review some of the milestone achievements of the modern conformal bootstrap and outline current frontiers. The advances will be benchmarked mostly within the context of the 3D Ising model.

Resurgence and non-perturbative physics Nov 06, 2024

Perturbation theory remains one of the main tools in physics, in particular in quantum theories. However, most perturbative series diverge factorially, and it is not obvious how to extract information from them. Their divergence also suggests that, in order to obtain accurate results, one might need additional non-perturbative information. The theory of resurgence has been proposed as a general framework to address these issues. In this talk I will give an introduction to this theory and will illustrate it with applications -old and new- in quantum mechanics, quantum field theory and string theory.

What is String Theory? Nov 06, 2024

String theory is around 50 years old and for much of that time it has been proclaimed as a quantum theory of gravity unified with all forces and matter. However, we still don’t know its fundamental formulation, although we do now know it is not just a theory of strings. Nonetheless, it has led to many new and surprising insights, with concepts that were once seen as absolute now seen as dependent on the “duality frame". In this talk I survey some of these insights and discuss their implications for physics and the fundamental formulation of string theory.

Effects of electronic correlations in BaOsO3 and tetragonal CuO Nov 06, 2024

Strongly correlated electron systems, i.e. systems where the interaction between electrons cannot be treated as an effective potential, are an extremely fascinating, but also very challenging topic in modern solid state physics. The challenge arises in parts due to the simultaneous importance of non-local kinetic and local correlation effects, which make it important to treat both at equal footing. For this reason Dynamical Mean Field Theory (DMFT) has in the last decades become the state of the art method for electronic structure caluclations of strongly correlated electrons as it includes local correlation effects exactly, but also respects kinetic effects in terms of an embedding approach. In this talk, we will first motivate our interest in strongly correlated materials by giving an example regarding the fascinating properties that these materials can exhibit. This will be followed by an intuitive introduction to DMFT. Finally we present results from our DMFT studies of two strongly correlated systems: BaOsO3 [1] and tetragonal CuO (t-CuO) [2]. [1] MB, Jernej Mravlje, Martin Grundner, Ulrich Schollwoeck, and Manuel Zingl, Phys. Rev. B. 103, 165133 (2021) [2] MB, B. Bacq-Labreuil, M. Grundner, S. Biermann, U. Schollwoeck, S. Paeckel, and B. Lenz, SciPost Phys., 14, 010 (2023)

Identifying the Time Scales in Electron-Positron Production from Ultra-Strong Electric Fields Nov 06, 2024

Electron-positron pair production in ultra-strong electric fields, the Sauter-Schwinger effect, is a long-standing theoretical prediction. In this talk the Sauter-Schwinger effect will be introduced and the related field-strength and energy scales as well as the possibility to verify this effect in upcoming multi-petawatt laser facilities will be discussed. The Dirac-Heisenberg-Wigner formalism provides a fully Poincaré-covariant, non-perturbative phase space description of the Sauter-Schwinger effect, and therefore its key quantities will be introduced. Some respective numerical results will be shown and discussed. An interpretation of a particle distribution at finite (non-asymptotic) times will be provided via a Gedankenexperiment. This in turn enables one to isolate and, therefore, identify the relevant time scales of particle formation. The resulting generic aspects for particle creation in quantum physics beyond perturbation theory will be elucidated.

The protein doctors: how chaperons repair damaged proteins Nov 06, 2024

The life of a protein, from birth till death, is complex and challenging. At times, because of stresses or bad luck, it might take the wrong conformation and start aggregating. This process is intrinsic to the physics of proteins, and life has had to cope with it since its early days. The solution devised by evolution comes in the form of chaperone protein, a broad class of machines, present in all organisms on Earth, that repair conformationally damaged proteins, making them functional again, at an energy cost. In this talk I will provide a view of our present understanding of the molecular mechanism of function of Hsp70, possibly the most central of all chaperones, and of its consequences on proteins.

The Underlying Scaling Laws and Universal Statistical Structure of Complex Datasets Nov 06, 2024

We study universal traits which emerge both in real-world complex datasets, as well as in artificially generated ones. Our approach is to analogize data to a physical system and employ tools from statistical physics and Random Matrix Theory (RMT) to reveal their underlying structure. We focus on the feature-feature covariance matrix, analyzing both its local and global eigenvalue statistics. Our main observations are: (i) The power-law scalings that the bulk of its eigenvalues exhibit are vastly different for uncorrelated random data compared to real-world data, (ii) this scaling behavior can be completely recovered by introducing long range correlations in a simple way to the synthetic data, (iii) both generated and real-world datasets lie in the same universality class from the RMT perspective, as chaotic rather than integrable systems, (iv) the expected RMT statistical behavior already manifests for empirical covariance matrices at dataset sizes significantly smaller than those conventionally used for real-world training, and can be related to the number of samples required to approximate the population power-law scaling behavior, (v) the Shannon entropy is correlated with local RMT structure and eigenvalues scaling, and substantially smaller in strongly correlated datasets compared to uncorrelated synthetic data, and requires fewer samples to reach the distribution entropy. These findings can have numerous implications to the characterization of the complexity of data sets, including differentiating synthetically generated from natural data, quantifying noise, developing better data pruning methods and classifying effective learning models utilizing these scaling laws.

The Nobel Prizes in Physics in 1932/33: Heisenberg, Schrödinger and Dirac Nov 06, 2024

The Nobel Prize in Physics in 1930 was awarded to Raman for the discovery of the effect named after him. The next time physics prizes were announced was in November 1933, which makes this the longest peace-time gap in the history of the Nobel Prize in Physics. Considering that the 1932 year’s prize was awarded in 1933 to Heisenberg and the 1933 year’s prize to Schrödinger and Dirac for their contributions to the new quantum mechanics, this gap is the more puzzling. I will describe, based on archive material, the struggle facing the Nobel Committee during those years, and how it eventually arrived at a name combination comprising three of the greatest physicists of the twentieth century. I will also describe briefly the three Nobel Prizes concerning quantum mechanics that followed later, in 1945, 1954 and 2022.

Modern aspects of quantum physics and topology Nov 06, 2024

Topology is one of the most recent branches of mathematics and has entered fully into the most modern aspects of theoretical physics: quantum computation. In this colloquium an elementary approach to the role of topology in quantum physics and its implications for exotic states of quantum matter is provided. Topology helps to solve the essential problem of quantum computation: to battle its fragility in order to benefit from its enormous potential possibilities. After showing topological color codes and their experimental realization, future challenges are addressed by fracton models involving the discovery of new quantum phases of matter beyond the well-known topological phases that were recognized with the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2016.

Positivity constraints on theory space Nov 06, 2024

The bootstrap program leverages symmetry and positivity to carve out the space of consistent quantum theories. In this talk I will highlight some of its recent successes, ranging from the numerical solution of statistical models at criticality to universal constraints on quantum gravity.

Anomalous metals Nov 06, 2024

The observation of metallic ground states in a variety of two-dimensional electronic systems poses a fundamental challenge for the theory of electron fluids. I will analyze evidence for the existence of a regime, which we call the “anomalous metal regime," in diverse 2D superconducting systems driven through a quantum superconductor to metal transition by tuning physical parameters such as the magnetic field, the gate voltage in the case of systems with a MOSFET geometry, or the degree of disorder. The principal phenomenological observation is that in the anomalous metal, as a function of decreasing temperature, the resistivity first drops as if the system were approaching a superconducting ground state, but then saturates at low temperatures to a value that can be orders of magnitude smaller than the Drude value. The anomalous metal also shows a giant positive magneto-resistance. This behavior is observed in a broad range of parameters. I will exhibit, by theoretical solution of a model of superconducting grains embedded in a metallic matrix, that as a matter of principle such anomalous metallic behavior can occur in the neighborhood of a quantum superconductor-metal transition. However, I will also argue that the robustness and ubiquitous nature of the observed phenomena are difficult to reconcile with any existing theoretical treatment and speculate about the character of a more fundamental theoretical framework.

Multispherical shapes, constant-mean-curvature surfaces, and the endoplasmic reticulum Nov 06, 2024

The cells of our body are divided up into separate subcompartments by fluid membranes with a thickness of only a few nanometers. Even though these membranes provide robust barriers for the exchange of molecules between different compartments, they can easily remodel their shape and topology. [1] A particularly interesting example of shape remodeling is the formation of multispherical shapes which represent constant- mean-curvature surfaceswith two values of the mean curvature. [2] The individual spheres are connected by membrane necks which are crucial for topology remodeling by membrane fission and fusion. Multispherical shapes can attain many distinct patterns with multispherical junctions. The latter geometry is reminiscent of the endoplasmic reticulum, a fascinating organelle that forms a large network of membrane nanotubes connected by three-way junctions. [1] R. Lipowsky. Remodeling of Membrane Shape and Topology by Curvature Elasticity and Membrane Tension. Adv. Biology 6, 2101020 (2022) [2] R. Lipowsky. Multispherical shapes of vesicles highlight the curvature elasticityof biomembranes. Adv. Colloid Interface Sci. 301, 102613 (2022)

New developments in supermembrane theory Nov 06, 2024

The (unique) maximally extended D=11 supermembrane theory stands out as a candidate for the non-perturbative unification of superstring theory. In this talk I will review some basic features, in particular the light-cone gauge reformulation of the theory as the N-->\infty limit of the maximally supersymmetric SU(N) matrix model, and present new evidence for the existence of the N-->\infty limit, using a path integral formulation. I will also touch on several open issues, such as the construction of supermembrane vertex operators.

Multi-scale fluctuations in non-equilibrium systems Nov 06, 2024

Understanding how fluctuations propagate across spatial scales is central to our understanding of inanimate matter from turbulence to critical phenomena. In contrast to these systems, many non-equilibrium systems are organised into a spatial hierarchy of nested processes on different spatial scales, including biological and robotic systems. In this talk, I will discuss physical principles underlying the propagation of fluctuations in these multi-scale systems. I will also show how manipulating probability fluxes across spatial scales is used to perform biological signal processing.

Interplay between mechanics and chemistry in living systems Nov 06, 2024

Living systems interact with their environment by exerting mechanical forces and exchanging chemical substances. By fueling nonequilibrium reactions and driven molecular transport, cells dynamically create internal protein patterns (symmetry breaking) which, in turn, control cell mechanics and force generation. Here, we discuss some examples and consequences of such a mechanochemical coupling, ranging from proteins that cooperatively bind and bend membranes, to protein patterns that elicit nonspecific cargo transport via driven diffusive fluxes on planar membranes. Finally, on much larger scales, we discuss how active cells can control tissue shape via their broken symmetry and, specifically, through their orientation.

Deciphering the Beginning Nov 06, 2024

The cosmic microwave background contains a wealth of information about cosmology as well as high energy physics. It tells us about the composition and geometry of the universe, the properties of neutrinos, dark matter, and even the conditions in our universe long before the cosmic microwave background was emitted. After a general introduction, I will turn to the search for primordial gravitational waves with CMB observations and gravitational wave observatories.

Emergence of geometry and meaning, through gauge and strings dynamics Nov 06, 2024

I will discuss the statistical physics of random growth processes which, on the one hand, model the non-perturbative gauge dynamics, emergence of space geometry in string theory on the other, yet could also model the evolution of language(s).

Fantastic periods and where to find them Nov 06, 2024

After a short introduction to the swampland program and the challenges one faces in explicit tests of some conjectures, this talk will focus on the computation of periods and their application to the swampland program. A detailed understanding of periods allows to answer questions about the existence of solutions or the finiteness of the string landscape, as well as explicit constructions of models. Moreover, applications of periods outside of string compactifications are discussed, such as the computation of Feynman integrals, the tameness of QFTs and the appearance of periods in many other physical systems.

The mathematics behind Feynman integrals Nov 06, 2024

Feynman integrals are indispensable for precision calculations, not only for high-energy particle physics experiments, but also for example for QED precision experiments at lower energies or precision studies in gravitational wave physics. In recent years there has been a significant progress in our abilities to compute Feynman integrals, revealing a rich and fascinating mathematical structure, relating Feynman integrals to (algebraic) geometry. In this talk I will review these recent developments.

Chemically Active Wetting Nov 06, 2024

Wetting of liquid phases, such as water drops condensing at the surface of plant leaves, is ubiquitous in our daily life. Interestingly, the physics of wetting also plays a crucial role in our cells. Droplets composed of proteins can wet specific target sites in living cells and locally enrich biomolecules for specific chemical processes. Many droplet-forming proteins can also bind to membrane surfaces. Binding in cells is often chemically active since it is maintained away from equilibrium by supplying energy and matter. This non-equilibrium setting suggests a plethora of physical phenomena of soft condensed phases at biological interfaces. To investigate such phenomena, we derive the non-equilibrium thermodynamic theory of active wetting. By means of this theory, we show that active binding significantly alters the wetting behavior leading to non-equilibrium steady states with condensate shapes reminiscent of a fried egg or a mushroom. We further show that condensate shapes can switch upon changing the strength of active binding. The origin of such anomalous condensate shapes can be explained by an electrostatic analogy, where binding sinks and sources correspond to electrostatic dipoles along the triple line. This analogy suggests a general analogy between chemically active systems and electrodynamics.

The asymptotic structure of gravity at spatial infinity (D=4 and D>4) Nov 06, 2024

The asymptotic structure of gravity in the asymptotically flat case will be described in four and higher spacetime dimensions by making central use of the Hamiltonian formalism. Special emphasis will be paid to the case D=5. How the relevant infinite-dimensional asymptotic symmetry group (BMS group) emerges at spatial infinity will be explained. Non-linear structures which appear in five (and higher) spacetime dimensions will be discussed.

How a physical system can be turned into a self-learning machine Nov 06, 2024

Machine learning using artificial neural networks is revolutionizing many areas of science and technology. This increases the urgency for exploring alternatives to artificial neural networks running on digital hardware. These alternatives might eventually be faster and/or more power-efficient. With this in mind, we ask the question whether one can identify a general principle that would enable a nonlinear physical system to become a self-learning machine - i.e. a physical information-processing device where internal degrees of freedom self-adjust by physical interactions to learn a desired input-output relation. In this talk, I will present our recent idea on how this might be achieved for arbitrary time-reversal-invariant Hamiltonian systems. I will introduce the principle of 'Hamiltonian Echo Backpropagation', and demonstrate how efficient learning could be possible in a wide class of physical systems. See: Self-learning Machines based on Hamiltonian Echo Backpropagation, Victor Lopez-Pastor, Florian Marquardt, arXiv 2103.04992 (2021)

How Much Structure Is Needed for Huge Quantum Speedups? Nov 06, 2024

Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium

Symmetry in quantum gravity Nov 06, 2024

It has long been expected that the symmetry structure of quantum gravity is highly constrained. In particular it has been conjectured that global symmetries do not exist, and also that there must exist objects carrying all possible gauge charges. Until recently however there has been no systematic way of deriving such statements. In this talk I'll explain how these two conjectures can be derived in the special case of quantum gravity with negative cosmological constant, and also argue they are true more generally in any theory of quantum gravity where the evaporation of black holes is a unitary process. Along the way I'll clarify what is really meant by ``global'' and ``gauge'' symmetries, consider possible implications of these conjectures for particle physics, and present a new formula counting how many microstates of a black hole transform in each representation of a finite gauge group.

What can we compute with quantum devices? Nov 06, 2024

Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium

The "Flavor" of Particle Physics Nov 06, 2024

Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium

Is Dark Matter made of Primordial Black Holes? JWST might tell! Nov 06, 2024

Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium

Entanglement in complex quantum systems: From quantum information to many-body systems and back Nov 06, 2024

Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium

Self-organization and self-assembly in biologically inspired non-equilibrium systems Nov 06, 2024

Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium

From Bell's theorem to Quantum Networks Nov 06, 2024

The question, whether a local, realistic theory can be a valid description of nature led to Bell's formulation of a clear cut experimental test. In spite of the many measurements performed and the numerous violation of Bell's inequality, all these tests relied on assumptions opening loopholes for local realistic theories. We present experiments which attempted to close as many as possible loopholes during the recent years, and what still might be left to do. In the experiment, as Bell's inequality limits preshared knowledge about possible measurement results, it can be used on the one hand to now confirm random numbers deduced from measurement results or the security of the devices used for quantum key distribution. On the other hand we can use the techniques developed for this experiment as the basic link for future quantum networks distributing entanglement efficiently over larger distances.

Limits of strong CP Nov 06, 2024

Quantum mechanical potentials with multiple classically degenerate minima lead to spectra that are determined by the pertaining tunneling amplitudes. For the strong interactions, these classical minima correspond to configurations of a given Chern-Simons number. The tunneling amplitudes are then given by instanton transitions, and the associated gauge invariant eigenstates are the theta-vacua. Under charge-parity (CP) reversal theta changes its sign, and so it is believed that CP-violating observables such as the electric dipole moment of the neutron or the decay of the eta-prime meson into two pions are proportional to theta. Here we argue that this is not the case. This conclusion is based on the assumption that the path integral is dominated by saddle points of finite action and fluctuations around these. In spacetimes of infinite volume, this leads to the requirement of vanishing physical fields at the boundaries. For the gauge fields, this implies topological quantization corresponding to homotopy classes for all integers. We consequently calculate quark correlations by first taking the spacetime volume to infinity and then summing over the sectors. This leads to an absence of CP violation in the quark correlations, in contrast to the conventional way of taking the limits the other way around. While there is an infinite number of homotopy classes in the strong interactions, there is only a finite number of classical vacua for quantum mechanical systems. For the latter the order of taking time to infinity and summing over the transitions is therefore immaterial.

Quantum simulators for fundamental physics Nov 06, 2024

The dynamics of the early universe and black holes are fundamental reflections of the interplay between general relativity and quantum fields. The essential physical processes occur in situations that are difficult to observe and impossible to experiment with: when gravitational interactions are strong, quantum effects are important, and theoretical predictions for these regimes are based on major extrapolations of laboratory-tested physics. We will discuss the possibility to study these processes in experiments by employing analogue classical/quantum simulators. Their high degree of tunability, in terms of dynamics, effective geometry, and field theoretical description, allows one to emulate a wide range of elusive physical phenomena in a controlled laboratory setting. We will discuss recent developments in this area of research.

Hunting for the stochastic gravitational-wave background: Implications for astrophysics, high energy physics, and theories of gravity Nov 06, 2024

I will first define the stochastic gravitational-wave background (SGWB) and highlight the method we are using to detect it in the presence of correlated magnetic noise. I will then discuss astrophysical (compact binary coalescences) and cosmological (cosmic strings, first-order phase transitions) sources and report on the current constraints imposed from a non-detection during the last observing run of the LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA collaboration. I will also address the question of a simultaneous estimation of astrophysical and cosmological SGWB. Then I will present a search for circularly polarised SGWB and its relation to early universe cosmology. Finally, I will discuss how the SGWB can provide tests for gravity theories, including quantum gravity proposals.

Topological Phase Transitions in Population Dynamics Nov 06, 2024

Topological phases were discovered in condensed matter physics and recently extended to classical physics such as topological mechanical metamaterials. Their study and realization in soft-matter and biological systems has only started to develop. In this talk we discuss how topological phases may determine the behavior of nonlinear dynamical systems that arise, for example, in population dynamics. We have shown that topological phases can be realized with the anti-symmetric Lotka-Volterra equation (ALVE). The ALVE is a paradigmatic model system in population dynamics and governs, for example, the evolutionary dynamics of zero-sum games, such as the rock-paper-scissors game [1], but also describes the condensation of non-interacting bosons in driven-dissipative set-ups [2]. We have shown that for the ALVE, defined on a one-dimensional chain of rock-paper-scissors cycles, robust polarization emerges at the chain’s edge [3]. The system undergoes a transition from left to right polarization as the control parameter passes through a critical value. At the critical point, solitary waves are observed. We found that the polarization states are topological phases and that this transition is indeed a topological phase transition. Remarkably, this phase transition falls into symmetry class D within the “ten-fold way” classification scheme of gapped free-fermion systems, which also applies, for example, to one-dimensional topological superconductors. Beyond the observation of topological phases in the ALVE, it might be possible to generalize the approach of our work to other dynamical systems in biological physics whose attractors are nonlinear oscillators or limit cycles. [1] J. Knebel, T. Krüger, M. F. Weber, and E. Frey, Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 168106 (2013). [2] J. Knebel, M. F. Weber, T. Krüger, and E. Frey, Nature Communications 6, 6977 (2015). [3] J. Knebel, P. M. Geiger, and E. Frey, Phys. Rev. Lett. (in press) [arXiv:2009.01780].

Searching for Cosmic Strings in New Observational Windows Nov 06, 2024

Many particle physics theories beyond the Standard Model (BSM) admit topologically stable cosmic string solutions. If Nature is described by such a theory, a network of strings will form in the early universe and persist to the present time. The strings carry energy and hence lead to characteristic signatures in many observational windows. Searching for signals of strings in the sky can lead to new constraints on BSM models. Conversely, cosmic strings may also help solve some current mysteries in astrophysics, e.g. the origin of super-massive black holes.

Particle physics: Plan B Nov 06, 2024

Particle physics is at the crossroads. The last particle firmly predicted by the Standard Model (SM) has been discovered. In recent years many of its interactions with other known particles have been experimentally studied, again confirming the SM's predictions in large detail. However, despite this impressive success, we are sure that the SM is incomplete. The Standard Model can not explain dark matter, neutrino masses, and matter-antimatter asymmetry of the Universe, and we do know what particles are responsible for these phenomena — their masses, interaction strength, life time etc. I will discuss how the synergy with Cosmology and Astrophysics can help to limit these uncertainties and discuss several concrete examples which can drastically change the situation in particle physics in the next 5-7 years.

Re-examining Cosmic Acceleration Nov 06, 2024

Type Ia supernovae are standard (isable) candles so observing them out to cosmological distances reveals the change of the Hubble parameter with redshift. Such observations have been interpreted to mean that the expansion rate of the universe is accelerating, as if driven by a Cosmological Constant. However reanalysis of the data shows that the inferred cosmic acceleration is anisotropic and aligned with the CMB dipole - so is likely an artefact due to our being untypical observers embedded in a local non-Hubble `bulk flow’. Moreover the usual kinematic interpretation of the CMB dipole is rejected at 4.9 sigma as the corresponding dipole in the distribution of distant quasars is much bigger than expected. The implications of these surprising findings will be discussed.

Branes, Islands, and Massive Gravitons Nov 06, 2024

Quantum Gravity in Anti-de Sitter space coupled to a non-gravitating bath has been the setting for novel approaches to the black-hole information paradox. Works from 2 decades ago in the context of Randall-Sundrum braneworlds makes it clear that this system necessarily describes massive gravitons: as soon as one couples AdS gravity to a bath, the graviton gets a mass. These two phenomena are intrinsically linked. We'll review old work that led to this conclusion, and present novel results that elucidate the role of the graviton mass in the determination of the Page curve for evaporating AdS black holes.

Conjectures on Quantum Gravity and their Realisation in String Theory Nov 06, 2024

A central question in fundamental physics is when an effective field theory can be consistently coupled to gravity at high energies. Over the years, various necessary conditions for this to be possible have been conjectured. String theory is a proposed framework for a quantum gravity theory and hence allows us to quantitatively test and further develop such ideas. In this colloquium I will discuss this with special emphasis on the so-called Weak Gravity Conjecture and the Swampland Distance Conjecture, or its refinement dubbed Emergent String Conjecture. Among other connections to mathematics, we will see how these proposed general principles naturally follow from the geometry of string compactifications near the boundary of moduli space and are deeply routed in string dualities. This includes situations with a minimal amount of supersymmetry in four dimensions.

Playing with the building blocks of the Universe Nov 06, 2024

The conventional models of high energy physics place the elementary particles on a fixed or slowly evolving, nearly flat, spacetime geometry. The space foam predicted for quantum theory of gravity by A.Wheeler and S.Hawking gives a very different picture of the small scale structure of spacetime, with Planck size black holes popping out of vacuum here and there. Recent discoveries in astronomy and astrophysics, the detection of gravitational waves, exploration of Sgt A* , have confirmed the existence of enormous black holes, yet quantum size black holes remain the subject of theoretical amusement. I describe a vast class of statistical mechanical models, which, on the one hand, perform exact calculations in supersymmetric field theories in various dimensions, whose thermodynamic limit, on the other hand, can be interpreted as describing fluctuating geometry, an `emergent gravity'. The configurations of these models are the arrangements of (hyper)cubes, hence the title.

Influence of the fermionic exchange symmetry in the 1-particle picture Nov 06, 2024

In a recent breakthrough, a complete set of constraints on fermionic occupation numbers, extending Pauli’s original exclusion principle, has been found. We provide an introduction into this new research field. In particular, we show that those generalized Pauli constraints are approximately saturated in various few-fermion systems, i.e. the vector of occupation numbers lies close to the boundary of the allowed region. Striking implications of this quasipinning phenomenon are revealed and discussed: These are the concept of robust quantum information, a hierarchy of natural extensions of the Hartree-Fock ansatz and the existence of an exchange force emerging from the fermionic exchange symmetry. Finally, we explain how these novel research concepts offer a universal perspective on fermionic quantum systems.

Precision at the LHC: why and how Nov 06, 2024

With Run II, the LHC experiment already reached an unprecedented level of precision compared to previous hadron colliders. The amount of data collected in Run III and the High-Luminosity run will increase quickly and dramatically. I will discuss specific challenges to theorists that must be overcome to provide predictions that have the precision necessary to match the accuracy of data. A few novel ideas to exploit this precision directly or indirectly will also be discussed.

Topological phases of matter: From classification to detection in experiments Nov 06, 2024

Condensed matter is found in a variety of phases, the vast majority of which are characterized in terms of symmetry breaking. For example, magnets spontaneously break time-reversal and spin rotation symmetries. A notable exception was provided by the discovery of the quantum Hall effects which exhibit new kinds of topological orders not associated with any symmetry breaking. One of the characterizing features of topological order is the existence of excitations with exotic properties. These so-called anyonic excitations might make topologically ordered systems ideal building blocks of fault-tolerant quantum computers. In this colloquium, I will start by giving a general introduction to the concept of topological order and then address some of the recent developments. In particular, I will introduce theoretical frameworks that allow us to classify topological phases and discuss dynamical signatures that are useful to experimentally detect them in experiments.

Quantum Gravity and the Swampland Nov 06, 2024

String theory seems to offer an enormous number of possibilities for low energy physics. The huge set of solutions is often known as the String Theory Landscape. In recent years, however, it has become clear that not all quantum field theories can be consistently coupled to gravity. Theories that cannot be ultraviolet completed in quantum gravity are said to be in the Swampland. In this talk, I'll discuss some conjectured properties of quantum gravity, evidences for them, and their applications to cosmology and particle physics.

Functional renormalization group approach to correlated fermion systems Nov 06, 2024

The functional renormalization group (RG) is an ideal tool for dealing with the diversity of energy scales and competition of instabilities in interacting fermion systems. Starting point is an exact flow equation which yields the gradual evolution from a microscopic model action to the effective low-energy action as a function of a continuously decreasing energy scale. Expanding in powers of the fields yields an exact hierarchy of flow equations for vertex functions. Truncations of this hierarchy have led to powerful new approximation schemes [1]. Applications reviewed in the colloqium include: (i) d-wave superconductivity and other instabilities in the two-dimensional Hubbard model, and (ii) transport through a barrier and resonant tunneling in a one-dimensional Luttinger liquid metal. Recently, the functional RG has been upgraded from a weak-coupling method to a computational tool for strongly interacting fermion systems [2,3]. [1] W. Metzner et al., Rev. Mod. Phys. 84, 299 (2012). [2] C. Taranto et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 196402 (2014). [3] D. Vilardi et al., Phys. Rev. B 99, 104501 (2019).

Strange effects in the neutrino oscillations Nov 06, 2024

Although the neutrino oscillations are well established phenomenon, new and unusual oscillation effects in matter are still emerging. I will describe three such effects which have applications to the solar, supernova and low energy atmospheric neutrinos: (i) Parametric resonance for neutrinos propagating in a flux of background neutrinos. (ii) Oscillation waves emitted from borders between layers in a multilayer medium, like in the Earth. (iii) The attenuation effect related to the energy uncertainty in oscillation setup.

Particle Scattering and Number Theory Nov 06, 2024

From the softest of interactions of a magnetic field with an electron, to the most violent collisions at the Large Hadron Collider, precision quantum field theory produces numbers and functions with interesting number-theoretic properties. In many examples a co-action principle holds, an invariance under a ”cosmic” Galois group. I will provide several arenas in which this principle can be seen at work, including perhaps the richest set of theoretical data, scattering amplitudes in planar N = 4 super-Yang-Mills theory.

Pulling Yourself by your Bootstraps in Quantum Field Theory Nov 06, 2024

Quantum field theory (QFT) is the universal language of theoretical physics, underlying the Standard Model of elementary particles, the physics of the early Universe and a host of condensed matter phenomena such as phase transitions and superconductivity. A great achievement of 20th-century physics was the understanding of weakly coupled quantum field theories where interactions can be treated as small perturbations of otherwise freely moving particles. Critical challenges for the 21st century include solving the problem of strong coupling and mapping the whole space of consistent QFTs. In this lecture, I will overview the bootstrap approach, the idea that theory space can be determined from the general principles of symmetry and quantum mechanics. This strategy provides a new unifying language for QFT and has allowed researchers to make predictions for physical observables even in strongly coupled theories. I will illustrate the general framework in a few examples, ranging from the concrete (boiling water) to the abstract (supersymmetric theories in various spacetime dimensions).

Space-Time-Matter: Finite Projective Geometry as a Quantum World with Elementary Particles Nov 06, 2024

A unified theory for space-time and matter might be based on finite projective geometries instead of differentiable manifolds and gauge groups. Each point is equipped with a quadratic form over a finite Galois field which define neighbors in the finite set of points. Due to the projective equivalence of all quadratic forms this world is necessarily a 4-dimensional Lorentz-invariant space-time with a gauge symmetry G(3)xG(2)xG(1) for internal points which represent elementary particle degrees of freedom. Matter appears as a geometric distortion by an inhomogeneous field of quadrics and all physical properties (spins, charges) of the standard model seem to follow from its geometric structure in a continuum limit. The finiteness inevitably induces a fermionic quantization of all matter fields and a bosonic for gauge fields. This unity of space-time and matter was already sought 1918 by Hermann Weyl in a gauge theory as an extension of Einstein’s general theory of relativity, but not found - probably because of the assumption of a continuous geometry.

R-matrix Quantization of the Ruijsenaars-Schneider Models Nov 06, 2024

I describe an algebraic scheme for quantizing the Ruijsenaars-Schneider models in the R-matrix formalism. It is based on a special parametrization of the cotangent bundle over GL(n,C). In new variables the standard symplectic structure is described by a classical (Frobenius) r-matrix and by a new dynamical r¯-matrix. Quantizing these r-matrices, I will exhibit the quantum L-operator algebra and construct its particular representation corresponding to the RuijsenaarsSchneider system. I will also indicate a couple of open problems.

Black holes as harbingers of new gravitational physics Nov 06, 2024

The apparent crisis of black holes inconsistency with foundational physical principles provides a sharp focus for the conflict between quantum mechanics and classical spacetime. Various resolutions have been proposed; a very plausible one is that small interactions can transfer sufficient information between the black hole and outgoing radiation, with a quantum enhancement from the enormous number of black hole states. Such interactions must however violate conventional notions of locality, perhaps as a symptom of the more basic subtlety of information localization in quantum gravity, and hinting at aspects of the fundamental structure of quantum gravity. An intriguing question is whether further clues can be found from new observational windows on black holes.

Black Holes, Quantum Information, and Unification Nov 06, 2024

The study of black holes has revealed a deep connection between quantum information and spacetime geometry. Its origin must lie in the quantum theory of gravity, which offers a valuable hint in our search for a unified theory. Precise formulations of this relation recently led to new insights in Quantum Field Theory, some of which have been rigorously proven. An important example is our discovery of the first universal lower bound on the local energy density. The energy near a point can be negative but it is bounded below by a quantity related to the information flowing past the point.

High order correlation and what we can learn about the solution for many body problems from experiment Nov 06, 2024

The knowledge of all correlation functions of a system is equivalent to solving the corresponding quantum many-body problem. If one can identify the relevant degrees of freedom, the knowledge of a finite set of correlation functions is in many cases sufficient to determine a sufficiently accurate solution of the corresponding field theory. Complete factorization is equivalent to identifying the relevant degrees of freedom where the Hamiltonian becomes diagonal. I will give examples how one can apply this powerful theoretical concept in experiment. A detailed study of non-translation invariant correlation functions reveals that the pre-thermalized state a system of two 1-dimensional quantum gas relaxes to after a splitting quench [1], is described by a generalized Gibbs ensemble [2]. This is verified through phase correlations up to 10th order. Interference in a pair of tunnel-coupled one-dimensional atomic super-fluids, which realize the quantum Sine-Gordon / massive Thirring models, allows us to study if, and under which conditions the higher correlation functions factorize [3]. This allowed us to characterize the essential features of the model solely from our experimental measurements: detecting the relevant quasi-particles, their interactions and the different topologically distinct vacuum-states the quasi-particles live in. The experiment thus provides a comprehensive insight into the components needed to solve a non-trivial quantum field theory. Our examples establish a general method to analyse quantum systems through experiments. It thus represents a crucial ingredient towards the implementation and verification of quantum simulators. Work performed in collaboration with E.Demler (Harvard), Th. Gasenzer und J. Berges (Heidelberg). Supported by the Wittgenstein Prize, the Austrian Science Foundation (FWF): SFB FoQuS: F40-P10 and the EU: ERC-AdG QuantumRelax [1] M. Gring et al., Science, 337, 1318 (2012); [2] T. Langen et al., Science 348 207-211 (2015). [3] T. Schweigler et al., Nature 545, 323 (2017), arXiv:1505.03126

Gauge Theories and Non-Commutative Geometry Nov 06, 2024

We shall review the attempts to extend the quantum mechanical property of non-commutativity from phase space to ordinary space. These attempts took a more precise form in the case of gauge theories for which some concrete results have been obtained. In flat space they amount to a reformulation of the theory which looks interesting but they have not given so far any novel physical results. However, the introduction of gravity gives a richer structure and may offer some new insights.

Emergent cosmology from quantum gravity: the universe as a quantum condensate Nov 06, 2024

The construction of a quantum theory of gravity remains an open problem despite decades of efforts. In time, the very perspective on this problem evolved. From quantising General Relativity, the goal is now mostly understood to be unraveling a more fundamental microstructure of spacetime, based on non-geometric building blocks, and to show how spacetime and matter emerge as effective, approximate notions. Given some candidate building blocks, the task becomes analogous to that of extracting the macroscopic, collective behaviour of the atoms of a condensed matter system, but even more challenging since we cannot use the usual spacetime intuition and no direct observational input is available to guide theory construction. Lacking a fundamental theory of quantum gravity, existing cosmological models which have proven extremely successful in accounting for the observed features of the very early universe (via CMB data) remain without a solid foundation, having to make a number of assumptions about a physical regime (close to the big bang), where the quantum nature of gravity and spacetime is expected to be relevant. This is all the LUDWIG-MAXIMILIANS-UNIVERSITÄT MÜNCHEN SEITE 2 VON 2 more unfortunate, since the very early universe is also where any proposed quantum theory of gravity has the highest chance of finding its observational test-bed. The gap needs to be bridged. In this talk I will first of all review the basic aspects of the problem of quantum gravity, and of some current approaches. I will then focus on one specific formalism for quantum gravity, so-called group field theories (strictly related to a number of other modern approaches). I will introduce its main features, trying to clarify the nature of the suggested building blocks of spacetime and their mathematical description. Next, I will outline a general strategy to extract an effective cosmological dynamics from quantum gravity, within this formalism. In this setting, the universe emerges as a quantum condensate of the fundamental “atoms of spacetime”, and cosmology is its corresponding hydrodynamics. Finally, I will summarize the recent results obtained along this research direction.

Modeling microbial diversity Nov 06, 2024

Metagenomics has revealed hundreds to thousands of microbial species coexisting in almost all microbiota. It is increasingly appreciated that microbial communities condition their own environments. To better understand the role of this environmental conditioning in promoting diversity, we physically model the population dynamics of microbes that compete for steadily supplied resources. In a model where cells require multiple nutrients, we find that population dynamics generally leads to the coexistence of different metabolic types, which satisfy an extended competitive exclusion principle. Moreover, we establish that these consortia of metabolic types act as cartels, whereby population dynamics pins down resource concentrations at values for which no other strategy can invade. Strikingly, these cartels also yield maximum biomass, constituting a microbial example of Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” leading to collective optimal usage of resources. Curiously, in a model where only total resource acquisition is considered, diversity can arbitrarily exceed that predicted by the competitive exclusion principle.

From Emergent Gravity to Dark Energy and Dark Matter Nov 06, 2024

The observed deviations from the laws of gravity of Newton and Einstein in galaxies and clusters can logically speaking be either due to the presence of unseen dark matter particles or due to a change in the way gravity works in these situations. Until recently there was little reason to doubt that general relativity correctly describes gravity in all circumstances. In the past few year insights from black hole physics and string theory have lead to a new theoretical framework in which the gravitational laws are derived from the quantum entanglement of the microscopic information that is underlying space-time. An essential ingredient in the derivation is of the Einstein equations is that the vacuum entanglement obeys an area law, a condition that is known to hold in Anti-de Sitter space due to the work of Ryu and Takayanagi. We will argue that in de Sitter space due to the positive dark energy, that the microscopic entanglement entropy also contains also a volume law contribution in addition to the area law. This volume law contribution is related to the thermal properties of de Sitter space and leads to a total entropy that precisely matches the Bekenstein-Hawking formula for the cosmological horizon. We study the effect of this extra contribution on the emergent laws of gravity, and argue that it leads to a modification compared to Einstein gravity. We provide evidence for the fact this modification explains the observed phenomena in galaxies and clusters currently attributed to dark matter.

Understanding the LIGO gravitational wave event (GW150914) Nov 06, 2024

In February 2016 the LIGO team announced the detection of gravitational waves (GW) created by the merger of two black holes. In addition to confirming a major prediction of general relativity, successful GW detection would provide a powerful new tool for astrophysics. Given their evident importance, the LIGO results and the methods which led to them deserve independent critical analysis. This talk will present the results of one such study in a manner suitable for non-specialists.

Chiral symmetry breaking, emergent Higgs mechanism, and critical matter Nov 06, 2024

The upshot of extensive studies of �uctuations in condensed matter systems is that their qualitative importance is typically con#ned to isolated critical points of continuous transitions between phases of matter. This conventional wisdom also predicts the number of low energy Goldstone modes based on the so-called “G/H” pattern of symmetry breaking. I will discuss a class of systems, some quite wellknown, that violate this standard paradigm. Namely, they exhibit a fewer than “G/H” number of low-energy modes due to an emergent Higgs mechanism. Even more spectacularly, such systems exhibit “critical” ordered phases, with universal power-law properties reminiscent of a critical point, but requiring no #ne-tuning and extending throughout the ordered phase. One exciting recently discovered state is the heliconical nematic that in addition to above phenomena also exhibits spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking.

The Physics of Active Matter Nov 06, 2024

Over the past ten years, there has been a growing interest among physicists for ‘active matter’, a codename that encompasses systems in which energy is taken from the environment to generate self-propulsion at the single particle level. Active particles, such as run-and-tumble bacteria, self-diffusiophoretic colloids or actin filaments in motility assays, are strongly out-of-equilibrium and exhibit much richer behaviours than their passive counterpart. In this talk I will review recent progresses regarding the physics of active particles. I will show how simple concepts like pressure, the force density exerted by assemblies of particles on their container, play a new role for active systems because of the lack of equation of state. I will also show how new collective phenomena emerge, from the transition to collective motion to the existence of cohesive matter without cohesive forces, that have no counterpart in thermal equilibrium.

Scattering Amplitudes from Geometry Nov 06, 2024

I will review for a general audience some recent developments in our understanding of the mathematical structure of scattering amplitudes in quantum field theory. Many of these developments involve properties that have been discovered ”experimentally”: not in actual experiments, but by carrying out a tedious calculation and then observing that the result has some remarkable hidden simplicity. I will give examples of this phenomenon, and in particular I will discuss some aspects of the geometry of the ”amplituhedron”, a geometric object that is believed to completely encode certain scattering amplitudes.

The Black Hole Information Paradox Revisited Nov 06, 2024

I describe the physics of black holes and show how the traditional approach leads to the information paradox. I will then discuss some of the proposed resolutions and the difficulties they need to overcome. I then discuss soft black hole hair and describe how it may help to resolve the information paradox. Finally, I will review the problems that still need to be overcome.

Can a quantum computer solve optimization problems more Efficiently than a classical computer? Nov 06, 2024

In this talk I will discuss connections between the physics of complex systems such as spin glasses and attempts to solve optimization problems by ”Adiabatic Quantum Computing” (AQC), a version of ”Quantum Annealing” (QA). An optimization problem is one in which one has to minimize (or maximize) an energy function in which there is competition between different terms so no single configuration of the variables minimizes each term in the energy. In statistical physics this competition is called ”frustration”. It leads to a complex energy ”landscape” with many valleys separated by barriers, so simple algorithms easily get trapped in local minima which have a higher energy than the global minimum. Many problems in science, and engineering are formulated as optimization problems. In quantum annealing one tries to avoid being trapped in a local minimum by adding quantum fluctuations so the system can tunnel to regions of lower energy. The strength of the quantum fluctuations is gradually reduced to zero during the annealing schedule. This method applies to problems with binary variables, known as qubits in the quantum case. There is considerable interest in AQC at present, in large part because a company, D-Wave, has produced an actual device, the latest version of which has about one thousand qubits. In addition, there has been considerable theoretical work mainly using computer simulations to see if there is a ”quantum speedup” compared with analogous classical algorithms in which thermal, rather than quantum, fluctuations are used to escape from local minima. In the talk I will discuss difficulties in obtaining a quantum speedup due to (i) (quantum) phase transitions that the system can undergo during the annealing schedule, and (ii) the sensitivity of the state of the system to the precise values of the interactions, i.e. chaos. A related chaotic effect is that the state of the system can change dramatically with small changes in the temperature (temperature-chaos), for thermal annealing, and the strength of the quantum fluctuations, for quantum annealing.

Effects of Dark Matter linear in Interaction Strength Nov 06, 2024

Low-mass boson dark matter particles produced after the Big Bang form a classical field and/or topological defects. Effects produced by the interaction of ordinary matter with dark matter may be first power in the underlying interaction strength rather than the second power. This may give a big advantage, since the dark matter interaction constant is extremely small. Limits on certain types of dark matter have been improved up to 15 orders of magnitude. New experiments are proposed.

Quantum Critical Points in Metals: Non-Fermi Liquids and their Field Theoretical Description Nov 06, 2024

Metals are found frequently in nature and their properties are usually very well described within Landaus Fermi liquid theory. Various strongly correlated materials exhibit strange metallic phases which do not fit into the Fermi-liquid framework, however. The theoretical description of such non-Fermi liquids remains one of the main unsolved problems in condensed matter physics. In this talk I will give an introduction to the problem and show how interesting strongly coupled field theories arise in the low energy description of such states, which are still very poorly understood. I will focus on the paradigmatic problem of a metal coupled to fluctuations of a critical Ising order parameter and discuss unexpected scaling properties at finite temperature.

Gone with the wind: The demise of protoplanetary discs and the birth of planets Nov 06, 2024

Protoplanetary discs are natural consequence of star formation. These discs hold the left-over material from star formation, which constitutes the reservoir from which new planetary systems may form. The fate of a new planetary is then intimately linked to the evolution and ﬁnal dispersal of the disk from which is born, which determines also the striking diversity observed in extra-solar planetary systems. I will brieﬂy review our understanding of disc dispersal via a photoevaporative wind in the context of planet formation, and show how both processes are ﬁnally dominated by the irradiation from their central star.

From materials science to basic physics Nov 06, 2024

Condensed matter provides us deep insights into quantum physics. Giving just two examples, wave-corpuscle duality manifests itself in spectroscopy of strongly correlated systems as coexistence of itinerant and atomic-like features, and graphene and other Dirac materials provide a natural playground to study vacuum reconstruction, Klein tunneling and other fundamental quantum relativistic phenomena. Electron-photon interaction is the key tool to understand this rich and nontrivial physics.

Revisiting the S-matrix bootstrap Nov 06, 2024

Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium

The Search for New Interactions at the LHC: The top quark Window Nov 06, 2024

New Physics searches at the LHC are mostly being performed with the aim of detecting new states. A complementary strategy is to look for new interactions, something that typically involves precise measurements. In this talk I argue how many of the current SM (and BSM) measurements in the top sector could be used to efficiently and consistently determine of the couplings of an effective field theory and in particular that of the SM at dimension 6.

Ergodicity, Entanglement and Many-Body Quantum Dynamics in Localization Nov 06, 2024

Do quantum many-body systems necessarily come to thermal equilibrium after a long enough time evolution? The conventional wisdom has long been that they do and that, in the process, any quantum information encoded in the initial state is lost irretrievably. Thus the dynamics of many-interacting particles becomes effectively classical. But these ingrained notions of thermalization and ergodicity have recently been called into question. In this talk I will discuss how ergodicity can break down in disordered quantum systems through the phenomenon of many-body localization. In contrast to thermalizing fluids, quantum correlations can persist through time evolution of the localized state even at high energy densities. Thus, investigating the many-body localization transition offers a concrete route to address fundamental unsolved questions concerning the boundary between classical and quantum physics in the macroscopic world. I will emphasize the important role that quantum entanglement plays in current attempts to understand this fascinating dynamical phase transition. Finally I will present recent progress in confronting the emerging theoretical understanding of many-body localization with experimental tests using systems of ultra-cold atoms.

Quantum Mechanics and Geometry of Spacetime Nov 06, 2024

Quantum mechanics is important for determining the geometry of spacetime. We will review the role of quantum fluctuations that determine the large scale structure of the universe. In some model universes we can give an alternative description of the physics in terms of a theory of particles that lives on its boundary. This implies that the geometry is an emergent property. Furthermore, entanglement plays a crucial role in the emergence of geometry. Large amounts of entanglement are conjectured to give rise to geometric connections, or wormholes, between distant and non-interacting systems.

Supermassive Black Holes: From Jets to the Event Horizon Nov 06, 2024

Highest resolution Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) observations will probably soon tell us more about the supermassive black hole at the Galactic Centre (Sgr A*) and the cores of active galactic nuclei (AGN). It might also help to clarify the long-standing question whether the central massive objects in AGN are instead close pairs of black holes. Mergers of supermassive black hole pairs would provide the strongest gravitational wave signals. I will present examples of how we identify potential close binary black hole candidates based on the combined analysis of high resolution radio interferometric (VLBI) observations and multi- wavelength data. I will also provide an outlook on the scientific prospects with regard to future EHT-observations.

Extreme Light and Quantum Fields Nov 06, 2024

2015 is the International Year of Light, and of its purposes is “to raise awareness of optical technologies”. One such technology, high-power lasers of the petawatt class and beyond, provides the most intense light sources created by humankind so far. The intensities and field strengths in question are in excess of 1022 W/cm2 and 1014 V/m, respectively magnitudes that correspond to concentrating the total solar radiation on a pinhead. This talk will present an overview of the uses and consequences of such extreme environments within the realm of particle physics. The relevant theory is strong-field QED, with the laser beams providing a rather peculiar electromagnetic background field. The magnitudes above are such that a nonperturbative treatment of the background becomes a necessity. Using appropriate theoretical tools, a number of phenomena will be addressed, including radiation reaction, nonlinear Thomson/Compton scattering, laserstimulated pair production and photon-photon scattering. A particular incarnation of the latter, polarisation flip forward scattering, or vacuum birefringence, will be discussed in some detail, with an outlook on a planned experiment at the European XFEL at DESY.

Turbulence without Linear Instability Nov 06, 2024

All flows show a transition from a laminar phase to a turbulent one for sufficiently high flow speeds. In many cases turbulence develops in a succession of instabilities that create flows of increasing temporal and spatial complexity (Lord Rayleigh, Sommerfeld, Heisenberg, Taylor, Landau etc), For the classroom example of pipe flow and several other flows, the linear stability analysis of the laminar profile does not reveal any instability, so that the very first point in that cascade of instabilities is absent. Over the last decade much of the mystery of the transition in pipe flow has been resolved, primarily thanks due to suitable adaptations and extensions of ideas from nonlinear dynamics. Numerical and experimental data corroborate a scenario where the appearance of new classes of fully 3d solutions and their increasing entanglement provides the key ingredients for the transition. Further studies on the spatio-temporal dynamics in the transition region, where turbulence is not space-filling, reveal intriguing similarities to the directed percolation transition in statistical mechanics.

Two-Dimensional Melting Transition: New Algorithms, New Insights Nov 06, 2024

The hard-disk model has exerted outstanding influence on computational physics and statistical mechanics. Decades ago, hard disks were the first system to be studied by Markov-chain Monte Carlo methods and by molecular dynamics. It was in hard disks, through numerical simulations, that a two-dimensional melting transition was first seen to occur even though such systems cannot develop long-range crystalline order. Analysis of the system was made difficult by the absence of powerful simulation methods. In recent years, we have developed powerful Monte Carlo algorithms for hard disks and related systems. I will in particular show how the event-chain Monte Carlo algorithm has allowed us to prove that hard disks melt with a first-order transition from the liquid to the hexatic and a continuous transition from the hexatic to the solid. I will finally describe how a new factorized Metropolis filter transforms the event-chain algorithm into a paradigm for general Monte Carlo calculations. First results with the generalized algorithm have allowed us to establish the phase diagram for two-dimensional soft disks and Yukawa particles.

Precision Measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background Nov 06, 2024

We review the current status of measurements of the spectrum, an isotropy and polarization of the CMB, and their impact on cos- mology. We show that there is still a large discovery potential in these measurements, complementing and synergic to other cosmology observations. We also describe a selection of new measurement eff�orts, including high precision measurements of CMB polarization with ground-based, stratospheric balloon and satellite experiments, focusing on the astrophysical and technological limits of these measurements.

The development of twistor geometry for the description of fundamental physics Nov 06, 2024

I will review the basic defi�nitions and ideas of the twistor program for fundamental physics, as started by Roger Penrose around 1970. I will give particular attention to certain conformally invariant struc- tures involving deformed helicities, relevant to scattering amplitudes for massless �elds. These played a role in Penrose's earliest contour integral expressions, but have more recently been rediscovered and greatly developed as an approach to regularization.

Topological Superconductivity and Unconventional pairing in Oxide Interfaces Nov 06, 2024

To pinpoint the microscopic mechanism for superconductivity has proven to be one of the most outstanding challenges in the physics of correlated quantum matter. Thus far, the most direct evidence for an electronic pairing mechanism is the observation of a new symmetry of the order-parameter, as done in the cuprate high-temperature superconductors. Like distinctions based on the symmetry of a locally defi�ned order-parameter, global, topological invariants allow for a sharp discrimination between states of matter that cannot be transformed into each other adiabatically. Here we propose an unconventional pairing state for the electron uid in two-dimensional oxide interfaces and establish a direct link to the emergence of nontrivial topological invariants. Topological superconductivity and Majorana edge states can then be used to detect the microscopic origin for superconductivity. In addition, we show that also the density wave states that compete with superconductivity sensitively depend on the nature of the pairing interaction. Our conclusion is based on the special role played by the spin-orbit coupling and the shape of the Fermi surface in SrTiO3/LaAlO3-interfaces and closely related systems.

Phenomenological and Cosmological Implications of String Theory Models Nov 06, 2024

Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium

Cosmology with Type Ia Supernovae: where do we stand today? Nov 06, 2024

The role of Type Ia supernovae in observational cosmology has evolved from being ”avant-garde” in the early 1990’s until today’s mature status of precision cosmology. Several large transient surveys have been detecting supernovae routinely, near and far, with the aim of probing what is causing the accelerated expansion of the Universe. With time, the focus has changed towards addressing the intricacies of astrophysical effects that could bias the fits of cosmological parameters, most notably the nature of dark energy. In this talk, aimed at high-energy physics theorists(!), I will try to convey the status of the field, high-lighting some progress and set-backs, based on studies of the closest Type Ia SN in modern time that exploded in the beginning of 2014 in the near-by galaxy M82.

Lattice gauge theory insights Nov 06, 2024

Various aspects of lattice gauge theory will be briefly discussed including, general principles, sources of systematic errors, dynamical fermions, QCD phenomenology, the FLAG project and, if time allows, some applications of lattice theory to other non-perturbative BSM phenomena.

Higher Spin --- CFT duality Nov 06, 2024

The conjectured relation between higher spin theories on anti de-Sitter (AdS) spaces and weakly coupled conformal �field theories is reviewed. I shall then outline the evidence in favour of a concrete duality of this kind, relating a speci�c higher spin theory on AdS3 to a family of 2d minimal model CFTs. Finally, I shall explain how this relation �ts into the framework of the familiar stringy AdS/CFT correspondence.

Searching for New Forces Using Torsion Pendula Nov 06, 2024

Equivalence principle violation, deviations from the inverse-square law of gravity, and long-range interactions between particle spins o�er powerful tests of beyond-the-standard-model physics. Using a torsion pendulum, a technique that dates to the 18th century, is still the most sensitive way to search for these signatures of new physics. I will talk about how the experiments are done and give an update on the current and future status of such torsion balance experiments in the Eot-Wash group.

A Closer Look at Black Holes Nov 06, 2024

Several new techniques are currently being employed to probe the strong gravitational fi�eld in the vicinity of black holes. Long baselineinterferometry at sub-millimeter wavelengths sets constraints on the silhouette of the black holes in the Galactic center (SgrA*) and M87. Stars which get tidally disrupted as they orbit too close to a single black hole are being discovered at cosmological distances. Electromagnetic counterparts of black hole binaries in galaxy mergers are being identifi�ed, and can be used to calibrate the rate of gravitational wave sources. Most interestingly, the recoil induced by the anisotropic emission of gravitational waves in the �nal plunge of binaries leaves unusual imprints on their host galaxies. Finally, the lecture will describe new constraints on the contribution of primordial black holes to the dark matter.

Higher-Spin Gravity and Higher Spin Black Holes in Three Dimensions Nov 06, 2024

Three-dimensional Einstein gravity has no local dynamical degree of freedom. Yet, it is far from being trivial when the cosmological constant is negative. (i) It admits black hole solutions. (ii) It easily allows for consistently interacting and tractable higher-spin extensions. (iii) It possesses remarkable asymptotic properties at infi�nity where an infi�nite-dimensional symmetry algebra emerges. These features make three-dimensional gravity a perfect "theoretical laboratory" in which to explore the conceptual issues related to (i), (ii) and (iii) in a simpler context. The talk will not only discuss three-dimensional gravity assuming no previous knowledge on the subject, but will also provide access to recent work where new results on points (i), (ii) and (iii) are developed.

Harmony of Scattering Amplitudes and Form Factors Nov 06, 2024

In this seminar I will describe some of the hidden structures recently discovered in the scattering amplitudes of elementary particles, such as those measured at the Large Hadron Collider. These structures are responsible for the mysterious simplicity of these quantities, which is completely obscured by a calculation based on textbook techniques such as Feynman diagrams. I will then move on to discuss form factors. These are slightly off-shell quantities and, similarly to amplitudes, are also much simpler than what expected based on conventional approaches. In particular I will focus on form factors of particular (half-BPS) operators in a special theory, known as N=4 super Yang-Mills, and briefly discuss some unexpected connections to scattering amplitudes in phenomenologically relevant theories.

Cascade of phase transitions near Quantum Critical Point Nov 06, 2024

In the standard picture of a quantum phase transition, a single quantum critical point separates the phases at zero temperature. Here we show that the two-dimensional case is considerably more complex. Instead of the single point separating the antiferromagnet from the normal metal, we have discovered a broad region between these two phases where the magnetic order is destroyed but certain areas of the Fermi surface are closed by a large gap. This gap reflects the formation of a novel quantum state characterized by a superposition of d-wave superconductivity and a quadrupole density wave (QDW), which builds a checkerboard pattern with a period incommensurate with that of the original spin density wave. At moderate temperatures both orders co-exist over comparatively large distances but thermal fluctuations destroy the long-range order. Below a critical temperature the fluctuations are less essential and super- conductivity becomes stable. Applying a magnetic field destroys the superconductivity but establishes QDW. In addition to these phases we obtain also a charge density wave (CDW) arising as a result of interaction of electrons with superconducting fluctuations. This phase is possible when the superconductivity is destroyed by either thermal fluctuations or a magnetic field. The results of our theory can serve as explanation of recent experiments on cuprates performed with the help of STM, NMR, hard and resonant soft X-ray scattering, sound propagation, and other techniques.

Einstein and Quantum Mechanics: It's Not What You Think Nov 06, 2024

Einstein is well known for his rejection of quantum mechanics in the form it emerged from the work of Heisenberg, Born and Schrodinger in 1926. Much less appreciated are the many seminal contributions he made to quantum theory prior to his �final scientifi�c verdict, that the theory was at best incomplete. In this talk I present an overview of Einsteins many conceptual breakthroughs and place them in historical context. I argue that Einstein, much more than Planck, introduced the concept of quantization of energy in atomic mechanics. Einstein proposed the photon, the fi�rst force-carrying particle discovered for a fundamental interaction, and put forward the notion of wave-particle duality, based on sound statistical arguments 14 years before De Broglies work. He was the fi�rst to recognize the intrinsic randomness in atomic processes, and introduced the notion of transition probabilities, embodied in the A and B coeffi�cients for atomic emission and absorption. He also preceded Born in suggesting the interpretation of wave fi�elds as probability densities for particles, photons, in the case of the electromagnetic �field. Finally, stimulated by Bose, he introduced the notion of indistinguishable particles in the quantum sense and derived the condensed phase of bosons, which is one of the fundamental states of matter at low temperatures. His work on quantum statistics in turn directly stimulated Schrodinger towards his discovery of the wave equation of quantum mechanics. It was only due to his rejection of the �final theory that he is not generally recognized as the most central �figure in this historic achievement of human civilization.

Statistical Physics and Information Theory : New Frontiers Nov 06, 2024

Since the emergence of information theory in the middle of the 20th century, this new scientific field has been deeply entangled with statistical physics, as attested from the beginning by the use of entropy to quantify information content. The talk will explore the major impact of these transdisciplinary exchanges, with a particular focus on the important new research topic called "compressed sensing". Starting from the observation that interesting signals can be compressed, and thus are sparse in some representation, compressed sensing aims at acquiring data directly in a compressed way, using then computational methods to reconstruct the original signal. It opens the way to faster, less destructive, and more e�ective signal acquisition, with possible applications in many branches of science, from magnetic resonance imaging to astronomy, tomography, or gene interaction network reconstruction. The talk will describe the spectacular progress that can be made using various statistical physics ideas, from spin glass theory to crystal nucleation.

Status of the Electroweak Standard Model Nov 06, 2024

With the discovery of the Higgs boson and the determination of its mass, the Standard Model is complete and its parameters are now known and over-constrained. I will review the status and future directions in precision electroweak physics both at high and low en- ergies. There is strong evidence that the Standard Model is correct at the level of quantum corrections, and that in the absence of major conspiracies, any new physics beyond it is either significantly heavier than the electroweak scale or very weakly coupled.

Near-Pristine Gas at High Redshifts: First Stars, Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis, and Limits on Dark Radiation Nov 06, 2024

In this seminar, I shall describe recent work by our group on iden- tifying pockets of gas at high redshift that have undergone mini- mum processing through stars. The chemical composition of such gas still bears the imprints of the first few generations of stars that formed only a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, and thereby gives us clues to the physical properties of these still mys- terious objects which heralded the so-called ‘epoch of reionisation’. Near-pristine gas at high redshift is also the astrophysical environ- ment where the primordial abundance of deuterium can be measured most precisely. I will show how determinations of the cosmic den- sity of baryons from Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis and from the Cosmic Microwave Background have now reached comparable precision, in both cases of order of a few percent. The excellent agreement be- tween these two measures at widely different cosmic epochs places interesting limits on the existence of relativistic particles beyond the standard model of physics.

Ultrahigh Energy Cosmic Rays: probe of extreme particle physics Nov 06, 2024

Remarkably, a strong candidate for Dark Matter exists within the Standard Model. Theoretical arguments suggest that QCD forces in the flavor-singlet sector may be strong enough that the H-dibaryon is a deeply-bound, compact state which is absolutely stable with a mass < 2mp. This possibility has gotten recent support from lattice QCD studies, which – although not yet at high enough resolution and sensitivity to confront the hypothesis – show a deeper binding than other states. As I will show, reasonable assumptions about the H’s mass and wave function lead to the observed dark matter density and DM-to- (3-quark) baryon ratio. I will discuss why H-DM is not excluded by the various experimental and observational limits, and discuss what its observational signatures would be.

The History behind the Brout-Englert-Mechanism and the Standard Model Nov 06, 2024

I will describe the process of how to award Nobel Prizes and then give the history behind this year’s prize.

Real Time Imaging of Thermal and Quantum Fluctuations Nov 06, 2024

Tremendous progresses have been achieved in the last decade in real- ising and manipulating stable and controllable quantum systems, and these made possible to experimentally study fundamental questions posed in the early days of quantum mechanics. We shall theoretical discuss recent cavity QED experiments on non-demolition quantum measurements. While they nicely illustrate postulates of quantum mechanics and the possibility to implement efficient quantum state manipulations, these experiments pose a few questions such as: What does it mean to observe a progressive wave function collapse in real time? How to describe it? What do we learn from them? Their analysis will allow us one hand to link these experiments to basics notions of probability or information theory, and on the other hand to touch upon notions of quantum noise. As an illustration, we shall look at quantum systems in contact with a heat bath subject to quan- tum transitions between energy levels upon absorption or emission of energy quanta. Isolating the two indispensable mechanisms in com- petition, we shall describe the main physical features of thermally activated quantum jumps.

Quantum Gravity with Anisotropic Scaling and the Multicritical Universe Nov 06, 2024

The problem of understanding how gravity fits together with other fundamental interactions of matter has been at the forefront of the- oretical research for many decades, leading to the rich framework of string theory and M-theory. In this framework, many fundamen- tal questions are being resolved, but many remain quite mysterious, suggesting that search for novel concepts may be well justified. I review the recent concept of multicritical gravity with Lifshitz-type anisotropic scaling, and its applications in areas ranging from par- ticle phenomenology beyond the standard model to non-relativistic versions of the holographic AdS/CFT correspondence.

Negative absolute temperatures for mobile particles Nov 06, 2024

Absolute temperature, that is the fundamental temperature scale in thermodynamics, is usually bound to be positive. Under special con- ditions, however, negative temperatures - where high-energy states are more occupied than low-energy states - are also possible. In this talk, I will present a negative temperature state for motional degrees of freedom: By tailoring the Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian we exper- imentally created an attractively interacting ensemble of ultracold bosons, which is stable against collapse for arbitrary atom numbers. In this negative temperature state, the quasi-momentum distribu- tion develops sharp peaks at the upper band edge, revealing thermal equilibrium and bosonic coherence over several lattice sites. Nega- tive temperatures imply negative pressures and open up new param- eter regimes for cold atoms, enabling fundamentally new many-body states and counterintuitive effects such as Carnot engines above unity efficiency. In addition, this system enabled us to study the dynam- ics of the phase transition from Mott insulator to superfluid and to experimentally investigate how fast phase coherence can spread.

Exact, Broken and Approximate Symmetries Nov 06, 2024

Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium

Planck mission: the 2013 cosmology results Nov 06, 2024

Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium

The role of duality in transport in imperfect Luttinger liquid Nov 06, 2024

A single potential impurity can drastically change a low-temperature transport of strongly interacting particles in one dimension - a sys- tem which is known as the Luttinger liquid. An arbitrary weak backscattering of fermions from the impurity totally destroys their zero-temperature current while even a very strong backscattering of bosons makes no impact on their flow. On the other hand, a more complicated impurity (like a quantum dot or a double-barrier struc- ture with a resonant level) can preserve an ideal resonant conductance of fermions, or conversely lead (in a different geometry) to an ideal (i.e. infinite) resonant resistance. I emphasize the role of a so-called duality in these transport effects. The duality was related to the integrability of the Luttinger liquid with an impurity. I will show that - surprisingly - duality survives the addition of a non-local and retarded interaction (like electron-phonon) which almost certainly destroys the integrability.

Contacting the moon Nov 06, 2024

The restricted three body problem has an intriguing dynamics. Glo- bal surfaces of section are a tool to reduce the study of the dynamics on a three dimensional energy hypersurface to the study of an area preserving map of a two dimensional surface. The existence of such a global surface of section is far from obvious. So far mostly per- turbative methods have been used to prove its existence. However, recently developed global tools originating from Gromov-Witten the- ory combined with the fact that energy hypersurfaces are of contact type can be applied to produce new global surfaces of section. In this talk I explain the restricted three body problem, the notion of a global surface of section and the new results we can obtain by bringing holomorphic curves and the contact form into play.

Out-of-equilibrium phenomena from a new perspective: an Ab-Initio approach Nov 06, 2024

Ultra-fast optical spectroscopy is a powerful tool for the observation of dynamical processes in several kind of materials. The basic time- resolved optical experiment is the so-called “pump-probe”: a first light pulse, the “pump”, resonantly triggers a photo-induced process. The subsequent system evolution can be monitored, for example, by the time–dependent transmission changes of a delayed “probe” pulse. The pump pulse photon energy, spectral width and peak intensity cre- ates a certain density of electron-hole pairs in a more or less localized region of space. After the creation of the initial carrier density the time evolution of the single-particle and many-particle excitations is now governed by a non-trivial interplay between electron-electron and electron-phonon scatterings. In this talk I will present a novel approach based on the merging of Non-Equilibrium Green’s func- tion theory and Density Functional Theory to investigate the carrier dynamics following a pump excitation. The case of bulk Silicon, a paradigmatic indirect gap semiconductor, is studied by using the Baym-Kadanoff equations. Both the electron-electron (e-e) and elec- tronphonon (e-p) self-energies are calculated fully Ab-Initio by using a semi-static GW approximation in the e-e case and a Fan self-energy in the e-p case. By using the generalized Baym-Kadanoff ansatz the two-time evolution is replaced by the only dynamics on the macro- scopic time axis. The enormous numerical difficulties connected with a real-time simulation of realistic systems is overcomed by using a completed collision approximation that further simplifies the mem- ory effects connected to the time evolution. The carrier dynamics is shown to reduce in such a way to have stringent connections to the well-known equilibrium electron-electron and electron-phonon self- energies. This link allows to use general arguments to motivate the relative balance between the e-e and e-p scattering channels on the basis of the carrier energies.

Lattice QCD in Regensburg Nov 06, 2024

In Regensburg there exists a large Lattice-QCD group (SFB/TR-55) working in many fields, ranging from the development of energy efficient super-computers to specialized Lattice studies of SU(N) gauge theories with N>3 for matching to AdS/CFT predictions. The bulk of the work is focused on hadron phenomenology [generalized parton distributions (GPDs), distribution amplitudes (DAs), transverse momentum dependent parton distributions (TMDs)] and QCD thermodynamics, especially in a magnetic background field. (Like a chemical potential a B-field affects quark and gluon degrees of freedom differently thus allowing to investigate their connection. In contrast to the chemical potential, however, it is easy to implement on the lattice. The aim of the talk is to give an overview and to possibly identify topics of mutual interest.

The next ten years of dark energy research Nov 06, 2024

In the next few years new data from ground and space will push the limit of cosmological observations to new frontiers. Combining CMB, weak lensing, redshift clustering and supernovae data, we will be able to constrain the properties of dark energy and its interactions from the background to the non-linear level. In this talk I discuss these methods and the future expected constraints on dark energy and modified gravity.

Non-equilibrium Relaxation and Aging Kinetics Nov 06, 2024

If systems characterized by slow (algebraic) relaxation are prepared in an out-of-equilibrium initial state, one can observe a "physical aging regime" in the ensuing approach to equilibrium that is governed by broken time translation invariance and non-trivial, often universal scaling laws. Dynamical systems near a critical point constitute prototypical and now well-understood examples. Indeed, measuring critical exponents in the intermediate aging rather than the asymptotic stationary temporal regime is now a standard numerical tool. In this talk, I will first apply these concepts to simple driven lattice gases that relax towards non-equilibrium stationary systems displaying generic scale invariance. The expected simple aging behavior in the two-time density auto-correlation function is verified through Monte Carlo simulations in one, two, and three dimensions. Next I shall address the continuous non-equilibrium phase transition in driven Ising lattice gases in two dimensions. Whereas the temporal scaling of the density auto-correlation function in the non-equilibrium steady state does not allow a precise measurement of the associated critical exponents, these can be accurately determined from the aging scaling of the two-time auto-correlations and the order parameter evolution following a quench to the critical point. In the second part of the talk, I will present numerical results for the non-equilibrium relaxation kinetics of interacting magnetic flux lines in disordered type-II superconductors at low temperatures and low magnetic fields, represented by means of a three-dimensional elastic line model. Investigating the vortex density and height auto-correlations as well as the flux line mean-square displacement allows us to carefully disentangle different relaxation mechanisms (e.g., vortex line fluctuations and positional relaxation), and to assess their relative impact on the kinetics of dilute vortex matter at low temperatures. We observe the emergence of genuine glassy dynamics, caused by the competing effects of vortex pinning and long-range repulsive interactions between the flux lines. We contrast the effects of random point-like pinning centers and correlated columnar defects. We also compare data from Monte Carlo simulations with results from Langevin molecular dynamics.

Cosmological Symmetry Breaking as Origin of the Hot Early Universe Nov 06, 2024

The decay of a false vacuum of unbroken B-L, the difference of baryon and lepton number, is an intriguing and testable mechanism to gen- erate the initial conditions of the hot early universe. If B-L is broken at the grand unification scale, the false vacuum phase yields hybrid inflation, ending in tachyonic preheating. The dynamics of the B-L breaking Higgs field and thermal processes produce an abundance of heavy neutrinos whose decays generate entropy, baryon asymmetry and dark matter.

Turbulence: scaling and beyond Nov 06, 2024

This lecture is aimed at a rather broad audience including under- graduates. It will discuss scaling arguments, what they can achieve (Kolmogorov’s -5/3 law, etc.) and what they miss (fractals, Etc).

Lorentz Violation, Gravity, Dissipation and Holography Nov 06, 2024

Lorentz non-invariance in quantum field theory is reconsidered as well as its interplay with gravity, string theory, diffeomorphism invariance and changing reference frames. We clarify these issues, and argue that Lorentz violation is always an environmental effect. We provide a holographic view of the breaking, and its connection to Horava- Lifshitz type of gravitational theories. We also argue that dissipation is always a signal of Lorentz violation. We provide calculations of dissipation at strong coupling.

Neutrino Paradigm and Large Hadron Collider Nov 06, 2024

The physics of elementary particles is governed by symmetries. A particular symmetry stands out: the one between left and right, called parity. Its breaking in beta decay created a bombshell more than fifty years ago, and ultimately led to the creation of the Standard Model of particle interactions, whose final crowning confirmation is to be provided by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. The Standard Model is based on the premise of parity being broken al- ways, at all energies. I argue, on the contrary, that in nature left-right symmetry is fundamental, and that at high energies of the LHC one could actually see its restoration in full glory. I show how this would probe the nature of neutrino, through the spectacular signatures of lepton number violation.

Application of Reflection Positivity: Graphene and Other Examples Nov 06, 2024

Reflection positivity is a useful tool in statistical mechanics and con- densed matter physics. A recent application is to the determination of the possible distortions of the hexagonal graphene lattice. Other applications, such as to potential theory, the flux-phase problem, Peierls instability and stripe formation, will also be given.

Novel Topologically Ordered Phases of Condensed Matter Nov 06, 2024

Much of condensed matter physics is concerned with understanding how different kinds of order emerge from interactions between a large number of simple constituents. In ordered phases such as crystals, magnets, and superfluids, the order is understood through ”symme- try breaking”: in a crystal, for example, the continuous symmetries of space under rotations and translations are not reflected in the ground state. A major discovery of the 1980s was that electrons confined to two dimensions and in a strong magnetic field exhibit a completely different, ”topological” type of order that underlies the quantum Hall effect. In the past few years, we have learned that topological order also occurs in some three-dimensional materials, dubbed ”topological in- sulators”, in zero magnetic field. Spin-orbit coupling, an intrinsic property of all solids, drives the formation of the topological state. This talk will explain what topological order means, how topologi- cal were predicted and discovered, and how they realize the ”axion electrodynamics” studied by particle physicists in the 1980s. Some possible applications of these new materials are discussed in closing.

The Many Faces of Conformal Interfaces Nov 06, 2024

Conformal interfaces are the long-distance limits of domain walls. They play a role in condensed-matter physics, and could be also rel- evant for theories of gravity. I will review some recently-developed techniques for analyzing their properties, and will discuss their pos- sible applications.

Critical Acceleration Nov 06, 2024

In collisions of ultra-intense laser-pulse with relativistic electrons as well as in ultra relativistic heavy ion collisions at RHIC and at LHC it is possible to probe critical acceleration a=mc^3/hbar. The behavior of a particle undergoing critical acceleration challenges the limits of the current understanding of basic interactions: little is known about this physics frontier; both classical and quantum physics will need further development in order to be able to address this newly accessible area of physics. The problem of critical acceleration is closely connected to strong field particle production, Mach's Principle, Unruh and Hawking radiation.

Quantum Theory and Realism - 'Esquisse d'un Programme' Nov 06, 2024

In this lecture I propose to discuss some issues concerning the founda- tions of quantum mechanics and its interplay with space-time physics. I start by clarifying the distinction between ’realistic theories’ and ’probabilistic theories’ of Nature and sketch how the latter can often be viewed as ’deformations’ of the former. I then briefly recall some of the intriguing features of atomistic Quantum Mechanics, which belongs to the second class of theories. I attempt to describe, in con- ceptual terms, what it is that Quantum Mechanics predicts about Nature when appropriate experiments are done. I try to sketch some implications of this discussion for our views of space and time. I will conclude by sketching some recent results on the ’effective quantum dynamics’ of Open Systems, in particular on ’Quantum Brownian Motion’.

Sommerfeld Lecture Series Nov 06, 2024

The central mystery in quantum matter is the general nature of mat- ter formed from fermions. The methods of many body quantum physics fail and one can only rely on the phenomenological Fermi- liquid and BCS theories. However, in heavy fermion systems and cuprates one deals with non Fermi-liquid quantum critical metals, and to understand the superconductivity one needs to understand these normal states first. Remarkably, it might well be that the mathematics of string theory is capable of describing such states of fermion matter. The AdS/CFT correspondence translates this problem into an equivalent general-relativity problem involving the propagation of classical fields in an Anti-de-Sitter space-time with a black hole in its center. This development started with the demon- stration that AdS/CFT predicts correctly the low viscosity of the quark-gluon plasma of the Brookhaven heavy ion collider. In 2007 it was realized that it could have relevance to high Tc superconductors but only last year the focus shifted to the way AdS/CFT processes fermions, creating much excitement: it appears that both emergent heavy Fermi-liquids and non Fermi-liquids can be gravitationally encoded, as well as holographic superconductors having suggestive traits in common with the real life high Tc variety.

Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium Nov 06, 2024

The Sun is a most remarkable object: it is filled with vibrantly evolv- ing magnetic fields, well-mixed hierarchically-arranged turbulent con- vective cells, and also poorly-mixed sunspots that persist with im- punity. Solar variability has direct consequences for the earth and space weather, an important reason to develop an appreciation for the physics of the solar cycle (dynamo). Direct observation of the solar subsurface is impossible due to the high degree of optical scattering by the partially ionized plasma that inhabits the near-surface layers of the Sun. The deepest part of the Sun visible to us, known as the photosphere (also the solar surface), appears as a roiling, turbulent, radiative, magnetized, convecting plasma. At first glance, it would seem therefore that subtle ques- tions relating to the subsurface constitution of the Sun seem com- pletely unanswerable and the interior properties unknowable. How- ever, analogous to geoseismology, a great deal can be gleaned about the internal structure and dynamics of the Sun by carefully observ- ing and analyzing the surface wavefield. This has been made possible over the last few decades through the development and application of techniques of helioseismology. In this talk I will outline some of the major results in this area over the last two decades and discuss some recent developments pertaining to the properties of turbulence in the deep-convection zone of the Sun.

Sommerfeld Lecture Series Nov 06, 2024

In connection with the existing and forthcoming missions dedicated to search for cosmic antimatter, the models of baryogenesis leading to an efficient creation of astronomically large antimatter objects are reviewed. It is argued that such objects may be abundant in the universe and even in the Galaxy. Their observational signatures and the prospects for discovery are discussed.

Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium Nov 06, 2024

A theory with such a mathematical beauty cannot be wrong: this was one of the main arguments in favor of string theory, which unifies all known physical theories of fundamental interactions in a single coherent description of the universe. But no one has ever observed strings, not even indirectly, neither the space of extra dimensions where they live. However, there are good reasons to believe that the ``hidden" dimensions of string theory may be much larger than what we thought in the past and they become within experimental reach in the near future, together with the strings themselves. In my talk, I will give an elementary introduction of this framework and describe the main experimental predictions.

Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium Nov 06, 2024

Localization of the eigenfunctions of quantum particles in a random potential was discovered by P.W. Anderson more than 50 years ago. In spite of its respectable maturity and rather intensive theoretical and experimental studies this field is by far not exhausted. Anderson localization was originally discovered in connection with spin relaxation and charge transport in disordered conductors. Later this phenomenon was observed for light, microwaves, sound, and more recently for cold atoms. Moreover, it became clear that the domain of applicability of the concept of localization is much broader. For example, it provides an adequate framework for discussing the transition between integrable and chaotic behavior in quantum systems. We will discuss current understanding of the Anderson localization and its manifestation in different physical situations.

Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium Nov 06, 2024

Evidence has been accumulating for several decades that many galaxies harbor central mass concentrations that may be in the form of black holes with masses between a few million to a few billion time the mass of the Sun. I will discuss measurements over the last two decades, employing adaptive optics imaging and spectroscopy on large ground-based telescopes that prove the existence of such a massive black hole in the Center of our Milky Way, beyond any reasonable doubt. These data also provide key insights into its properties and environment. Future interferometric studies of the Galactic Center black hole promise to be able to test gravity in its strong field limit. I will also briefly discuss the cosmological evolution of massive black holes.

Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium Nov 06, 2024

The Planck mission was launched successfully in May last year. I will give a summary of the scientific aims of the Planck mission and a brief overview of its current status. I will also place the Planck mission in context with ground and suborbital CMB experiments and other probes of early universe cosmology.