Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC)

Latest Episodes:

Arnold Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium Jun 10, 2026

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The "Inverse Ising Problem" refers to finding the parameters (the Jij's and the hi's) in an Ising model given the first and second moments (the magnetizations mi and the correlation functions cij). This is of considerable interest in machine learning and data analysis whenever the data set and the number of variables is large, but the values taken by the variables can be taken to be "high" and "low". The maximum entropy distributions with given first and second moments then has the Ising form where the hi's and Jij's are Lagrange parameters. Several perturbative methods to solve the inverse Ising problem approximately have been proposed in the last few years. I will give a survey of the situation, with a focus on what we have know about the applicability of these methods to data such as gene expression and recordings from many neurons, where an underlying exact description is surely not of the Ising form. This is work with John Hertz and Yasser Roudi (Frontiers Comp Neuroscience, 2009) and work in progress.

Arnold Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium Jun 10, 2026

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Based on a calculation of the shear viscosity η and the entropy density s of certain strongly coupled field theories via the AdS/CFT-correspondence, Kovtun, Son and Starinets conjectured that their ratio is bounded below by the universal number ħ/4πkB, a bound that appears to hold for all existing fluids. The substances that come closest to being perfect in the sense of a minimum value of η/s are the quark gluon plasma and ultracold atoms at infinite scattering length, the so called unitary Fermi gas. The talk provides an introduction to the origin and interpretation of this bound from a simple physics perspective. Moreover, quantitative results for η/s are presented in the normal phase of the unitary Fermi gas. They are consistent with the Kovtun, Son and Starinets bound and are also in good agreement with experiments.

Arnold Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium Jun 10, 2026

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In this talk I present a simple derivation of an old result of Kochen and Specker, which is apparently unrelated to the famous work of Bell on hidden variables, but is presumably equally important. Kochen and Specker showed in 1967 that quantum mechanics cannot be embedded into a classical stochastic theory, provided the quantum theoretical probability distributions are repro- duced and one additional highly desirable property is satisfied. This showed in a striking manner what were the difficulties in implementing the Einstein programme of a `complete' version of quantum mechanics.

Arnold Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium Jun 10, 2026

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In this talk I will describe the light-front formulation of maxi- mally supersymmetric theories. This is a formalism where only the physical degrees of freedom is used. This means that the SuperPoincaré invariance is non-linearly realized, a fact we use to build the models. In this formalism the N=4 Yang-Mills and the N=8 Supergravity are treated in a very similar fashion and the close relationship between them is obvious. I will also show that the exceptional symmetry E_7(7) is very naturally connec- ted to the N=8 SuperPoincaré algebra. This formalism is an al- ternative to the ordinary covariant formalisms and is very use- ful to investigate the UV properties of these models.

Arnold Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium Jun 10, 2026

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To illuminate how electroweak symmetry breaking shapes the physical world, we investigate what the world would be like in the absence of electroweak symmetry breaking at the usual scale, whether by the conventional Higgs mechanism or by any of its alternatives, including dynamical symmetry breaking and higher-dimensional formulations. Many interesting charac- teristics of the models stem from the fact that the effective strength of the weak interactions is much closer to that of the residual strong interactions than in the real world. The Higgs- free models not only provide informative contrasts to the real world, but also lead us to consider intriguing issues in the application of field theory to the real world.

Arnold Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium Jun 10, 2026

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Majorana fermions are spatially localized superpositions of electron and hole excitations in the middle of a superconducting energy gap. These unusual particles have been predicted to occur at the interface between a magnetic and superconducting electrode, in contact with a topological insulator (such as a Bi crystal or a HgTe quantum well). A single qubit can be encoded nonlocally in a pair of spatially separated Majorana fermions. Such Majorana qubits are in demand as building blocks of a topological quantum computer, but direct experimental tests of the nonlocality remain elusive. We propose a method to probe the nonlocality by means of crossed Andreev reflection, which is the injection of an electron into one bound state followed by the emission of a hole by the other bound state. The resulting splitting of a Cooper pair by the Majorana qubit produces a pair of excitations that are maximally entangled in the momentum (rather than the spin) degree of freedom, and might be used as "flying qubits" in quantum information processing.

Quantum Cryptography and Computational Thinking Jun 10, 2026

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One of the great insights of cryptography and computational complexity is the notion of computationally-bounded algorithms, which allow us to reason about properties that would otherwise be impossible to achieve. Could these ideas also be relevant to quantum information and quantum mechanics? In this talk, we discuss how computational thinking changes the landscape of quantum cryptography: What primitives can we construct, how definitions change, and what are the outstanding open problems. If time permits, we will also discuss new foundational questions on quantum information, motivated by cryptographic applications.

Decoding Primordial Fluctuations Jun 03, 2026

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All the information we will ever obtain from the early universe is imprinted in the spatial correlations of primordial fluctuations at the hot Big Bang. I will explain how an influx of ideas from various areas of fundamental physics is providing us with new conceptual and practical tools to decode the physics of these primordial fluctuations. A thorough understanding of the fluctuations will give us insight into particle physics at high energies and may provide a window into the nature of spacetime itself.

High-precision gravitational wave physics from worldline quantum field theory May 27, 2026

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The gravitational two-body problem has been fundamental to physics since Newton's time. With the advent of gravitational wave astronomy and the anticipated third generation of gravitational wave detectors in the 2030s, there is an increasing need for high-precision predictions from Einstein's theory of gravity regarding the encounters of black holes and neutron stars in our universe. Fascinatingly, perturbative quantum field theory methods developed for high-precision predictions of elementary particle scattering at the LHC have proven remarkably efficient for this classical physics problem. This unexpected connection has led to inspiring synergies between collider and gravitational wave physics. In my talk, I will present our approach using a worldline quantum field theory inspired by string theory, which has emerged as the most efficient tool for quantifying the scattering of spinning black holes. We have achieved highest-precision perturbative results for the scattering angle, radiated energy, and recoil of such black hole encounters at the fifth order in Newton's gravitational coupling G. Our four-loop calculations have revealed a new class of mathematical functions related to Calabi-Yau manifolds, previously studied only in mathematics and string theory compactifications, appearing for the first time in a physical context: The radiated energy in gravitational waves at NNNNLO perturbation theory.

The Denario Project: Deep knowledge AI agents for scientific discovery Feb 04, 2026

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We present Denario, an AI multi-agent system designed to be a scientific research assistant. Denario can perform many different tasks, such as generating ideas, checking the literature, developing research plans, writing and executing code, making plots, and writing a scientific paper. Denario is built as a modular system, and therefore, can perform either very specific tasks, such as generating an idea, or carrying out end-to-end scientific analysis using cmbagent as a deep-research backend. In this talk, we describe Denario and its modules in detail and illustrate its capabilities by presenting multiple AI-generated papers generated by it. These papers cover many scientific disciplines, such as astrophysics, biology, biophysics, biomedical informatics, chemistry, material science, mathematical physics, medicine, and planetary science. Denario can also perform research combining ideas from different disciplines, and we illustrate it by showing a paper that applies methods from quantum physics and machine learning with astrophysical data. We publicly release the code at https://github.com/AstroPilot-AI/Denario. A Denario demo can also be run directly on the web at https://huggingface.co/spaces/astropilot-ai/Denario, and the full app is deployed on the cloud.