Latest Distinguished speakers Podcast Episodes
Advances and Challenges in Solving the Two-Body Problem in General Relativity
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - April 24, 2024 19:50 - 1 hour - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsSince 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 det...
From Emergent Gravity to Dark Energy and Dark Matter
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - April 24, 2024 15:48 - 1 hour - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsThe 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 th...
Can a quantum computer solve optimization problems more Efficiently than a classical computer?
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - April 24, 2024 15:48 - 1 hour - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsIn 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) ...
Extreme Light and Quantum Fields
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - April 24, 2024 15:48 - 1 hour - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratings2015 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 questi...
From Bell's theorem to Quantum Networks
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - April 24, 2024 15:48 - 1 hour - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsThe 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...
A Closer Look at Black Holes
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - April 24, 2024 15:48 - 1 hour - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsSeveral 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 tida...
Ergodicity, Entanglement and Many-Body Quantum Dynamics in Localization
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - April 24, 2024 15:48 - 1 hour - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsDo 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 p...
Application of Reflection Positivity: Graphene and Other Examples
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - April 24, 2024 15:48 - 1 hour - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsReflection 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 ...
Arnold Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - April 24, 2024 15:48 - 1 hour - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsThe 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 part...
Exact, Broken and Approximate Symmetries
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - April 24, 2024 15:48 - 56 minutes - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsSommerfeld Theory Colloquium
Anomalous metals
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - April 24, 2024 15:48 - 1 hour - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsThe 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 dr...
Black holes as harbingers of new gravitational physics
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - April 24, 2024 15:48 - 1 hour - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsThe 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 informa...
Black Holes, Quantum Information, and Unification
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - April 24, 2024 15:48 - 1 hour - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsThe 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 ...
Branes, Islands, and Massive Gravitons
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - April 24, 2024 15:48 - 1 hour - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsQuantum 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...
Fantastic periods and where to find them
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - April 24, 2024 15:48 - 1 hour - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsAfter 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 exist...
Cascade of phase transitions near Quantum Critical Point
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - April 24, 2024 15:48 - 1 hour - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsIn 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 disco...
Chemically Active Wetting
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - April 24, 2024 15:48 - 1 hour - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsWetting 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 bi...
Chiral symmetry breaking, emergent Higgs mechanism, and critical matter
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - April 24, 2024 15:48 - 1 hour - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsThe 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 base...
Conjectures on Quantum Gravity and their Realisation in String Theory
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - April 24, 2024 15:48 - 1 hour - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsA 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 h...
Contacting the moon
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - April 24, 2024 15:48 - 1 hour - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsThe 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 secti...
Cosmological Symmetry Breaking as Origin of the Hot Early Universe
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - April 24, 2024 15:48 - 1 hour - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsThe 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 ...
Cosmology with Type Ia Supernovae: where do we stand today?
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - April 24, 2024 15:48 - 1 hour - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsThe 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 th...
Critical Acceleration
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - April 24, 2024 15:48 - 1 hour - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsIn 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 curre...
Deciphering the Beginning
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - April 24, 2024 15:48 - 1 hour - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsThe 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 backg...
Effects of Dark Matter linear in Interaction Strength
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - April 24, 2024 15:48 - 46 minutes - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsLow-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 a...
Effects of electronic correlations in BaOsO3 and tetragonal CuO
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - April 24, 2024 15:48 - 1 hour - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsStrongly 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 ...
Einstein and Quantum Mechanics: It's Not What You Think
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - April 24, 2024 15:48 - 1 hour - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsEinstein 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 i...
Emergence of geometry and meaning, through gauge and strings dynamics
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - April 24, 2024 15:48 - 1 hour - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsI 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).
Emergent cosmology from quantum gravity: the universe as a quantum condensate
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - April 24, 2024 15:48 - 1 hour - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsThe 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 o...
Entanglement in complex quantum systems: From quantum information to many-body systems and back
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - April 24, 2024 15:48 - 1 hour - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsSommerfeld Theory Colloquium
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