Latest Distinguished speakers Podcast Episodes
Multispherical shapes, constant-mean-curvature surfaces, and the endoplasmic reticulum
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - May 15, 2024 15:36 - 1 hour - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsThe 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] ...
Exact, Broken and Approximate Symmetries
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - May 15, 2024 15:36 - 56 minutes - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsSommerfeld Theory Colloquium
Extreme Light and Quantum Fields
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - May 15, 2024 15:36 - 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...
Fantastic periods and where to find them
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - May 15, 2024 15:36 - 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...
From Bell's theorem to Quantum Networks
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - May 15, 2024 15:36 - 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...
From Emergent Gravity to Dark Energy and Dark Matter
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - May 15, 2024 15:36 - 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...
From materials science to basic physics
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - May 15, 2024 15:36 - 1 hour - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsCondensed 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 playgrou...
Functional renormalization group approach to correlated fermion systems
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - May 15, 2024 15:36 - 1 hour - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsThe 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 ...
Gauge Theories and Non-Commutative Geometry
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - May 15, 2024 15:36 - 1 hour - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsWe 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...
Gone with the wind: The demise of protoplanetary discs and the birth of planets
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - May 15, 2024 15:36 - 1 hour - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsProtoplanetary 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 ...
Harmony of Scattering Amplitudes and Form Factors
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - May 15, 2024 15:36 - 1 hour - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsIn 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 obsc...
Higher Spin --- CFT duality
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - May 15, 2024 15:36 - 1 hour - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsThe 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 mo...
Higher-Spin Gravity and Higher Spin Black Holes in Three Dimensions
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - May 15, 2024 15:36 - 1 hour - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsThree-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 possesse...
High order correlation and what we can learn about the solution for many body problems from experiment
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - May 15, 2024 15:36 - 1 hour - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsThe 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...
How a physical system can be turned into a self-learning machine
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - May 15, 2024 15:36 - 1 hour - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsMachine 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. Wi...
How Much Structure Is Needed for Huge Quantum Speedups?
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - May 15, 2024 15:36 - 1 hour - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsSommerfeld Theory Colloquium
Hunting for the stochastic gravitational-wave background: Implications for astrophysics, high energy physics, and theories of gravity
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - May 15, 2024 15:36 - 1 hour - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsI 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)...
Identifying the Time Scales in Electron-Positron Production from Ultra-Strong Electric Fields
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - May 15, 2024 15:36 - 1 hour - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsElectron-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 ...
Influence of the fermionic exchange symmetry in the 1-particle picture
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - May 15, 2024 15:36 - 1 hour - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsIn 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 satur...
Interplay between mechanics and chemistry in living systems
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - May 15, 2024 15:36 - 1 hour - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsLiving 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 fo...
Is Dark Matter made of Primordial Black Holes? JWST might tell!
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - May 15, 2024 15:36 - 57 minutes - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsSommerfeld Theory Colloquium
Ising’s Challenge and the Conformal Bootstrap
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - May 15, 2024 15:36 - 1 hour - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsThroughout 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 ...
Lattice gauge theory insights
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - May 15, 2024 15:36 - 1 hour - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsVarious 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.
Lattice QCD in Regensburg
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - May 15, 2024 15:36 - 1 hour - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsIn 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 ...
Limits of strong CP
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - May 15, 2024 15:36 - 1 hour - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsQuantum 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 ...
Neutrino Paradigm and Large Hadron Collider
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - May 15, 2024 15:36 - 1 hour - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsThe 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 interactio...
Lorentz Violation, Gravity, Dissipation and Holography
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - May 15, 2024 15:36 - 1 hour - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsLorentz 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 ...
Modeling microbial diversity
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - May 15, 2024 15:36 - 1 hour - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsMetagenomics 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 physica...
Modern aspects of quantum physics and topology
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - May 15, 2024 15:36 - 1 hour - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsTopology 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 ...
Multi-scale fluctuations in non-equilibrium systems
Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC) - May 15, 2024 15:36 - 1 hour - Video ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsUnderstanding 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 scal...
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