Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC)

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Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium Jul 07, 2010

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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 Jun 23, 2010

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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 Jun 09, 2010

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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.

Arnold Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium May 26, 2010

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A network of ground-based interferometric gravitational wave detectors (LIGO/VIRGO/GEO/...) is currently taking data near its planned sensitivity. Coalescing black hole binaries are among the most promising, and most exciting, gravitational wave sources for these detectors. The talk will review the theoretical and experimental challenges that must be met in order to successfully detect gravitational waves from coalescing black hole binaries, and to be able to reliably measure the physical parameters of the source (masses, spins, ...).

Arnold Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium May 19, 2010

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The next generation of surveys, e.g. the Dark Energy Survey, PanSTARRS, LSST, Euclid and others, aim to study the nature of Dark Energy and alternatives. The talk will discuss how the Dark Energy paradigm evolved over the past 20 years, and the cosmic probes which will help us to test it. In particular the surveys rely on accurate of photometric redshifts for the determination of cosmological quantities such as Dark Energy parameters and neutrino masses. The talk will describe photometric redshift methods and their impact on analysing galaxy clustering and weak lensing data and on the derived cosmological parameters.

Arnold Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium May 06, 2010

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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 Apr 23, 2010

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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.

Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium Feb 03, 2010

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Are there plausible extensions of the Standard Model that could lead to early discoveries at the LHC? To address this general question on a concrete example, I will consider a class of minimal models with an extra massive neutral gauge boson Z'. I will first review different theoretical motivations for extending the SM gauge group with an extra U(1) factor, possibly broken near the TeV scale. I will then discuss the interplay between the bounds from electroweak precision tests and direct searches at the Tevatron, to identify the early LHC discovery potential. I will finally comment on the peculiar features of models where the Z' couples non-universally to lepton flavors and of string models with intersecting or magnetized branes.

Arnold Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium Dec 02, 2009

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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 Nov 18, 2009

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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.

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