Events Archive

Donald R. Hamilton Colloquium

Hamilton Colloquium Series - Slava Rychkov, CERN, and ENS-Paris, “Non-Hamiltonian approach to conformal quantum field theory – 40 years later”

Thu, Nov 6, 2014, 4:30 pm to 6:00 pm

Most takes on quantum field theory start from microscopics, fundamental degrees of freedom, a Lagrangian. Conformal field theory is an exception—it focuses on the algebra of local operators and avoids any reference to the Lagrangian. This leads to a method for doing practical CFT calculations—the conformal bootstrap.

Hamilton Colloquium Series - Michael Gordin, Dept. of History, Princeton, “Einstein in Bohemia: Not-So-General Relativity, 1911-1912”

Thu, Oct 16, 2014, 4:30 pm to 6:00 pm

In the spring of 1911, Albert Einstein moved from Zurich to the German University in Prague, taking up his first appointment as a full professor. Heavily on his mind was a project to extend the special theory of relativity (1905) to a general theory of relativity, building from his 1907 inspiration on the equivalence of inertial and...

Hamilton Colloquium Series- Leslie Rosenberg, University of Washington, "Searching for Dark-Matter Axions"

Thu, Oct 9, 2014, 4:30 pm to 6:00 pm

The axion is a hypothetical elementary particle whose existence would explain the baffling absence of CP violation in strong interactions. Axions also happen to be a compelling dark-matter candidate. Even if dark-matter axions were to comprise the overwhelming majority of mass in the universe, they would be extraordinarily difficult to detect...

Hamilton Colloquium Series- David Huse, Princeton University, "Quantum thermalization, many-body Anderson localization, and the entanglement frontier"

Thu, Oct 2, 2014, 4:30 pm to 6:00 pm

Progress in physics and quantum information science motivates much recent study of the behavior of extensively-entangled many-body quantum systems fully isolated from their environment, and thus undergoing unitary time evolution. What does it mean for such a system to go to thermal equilibrium?

Hamilton Colloquium Series - Thomas Gregor, Princeton, "Precision and reproducibility in development"

Thu, Sep 18, 2014, 4:30 pm to 6:00 pm

Identical body plans across a species result from precise and reproducible embryonic development. However, the environment for developmental processes can be quite variable, and crucial signals inside the embryo are carried by so few molecules that we might expect development to be noisy. It is thus unclear how precision is achieved along the...

Hamilton Colloquium Series - Matthew P.A. Fisher, UC-Santa Barbara, "Quantum Tapestries"

Thu, May 1, 2014, 4:30 pm to 6:00 pm

Within each of nature’s crystals is an exotic quantum world of electrons weaving to and fro. Each crystal has its own unique tapestry, as varied as the crystals themselves. In some crystals the electrons weave an orderly quilt. Within others, the electrons are seemingly entwined in a entangled web of quantum motion.

Hamilton Colloquium Series - Yayu Wang, Tsinghua University, "Quantum Anomalous Hall Effect in Topological Insulators"

Thu, Apr 17, 2014, 4:30 pm to 6:00 pm

The anomalous Hall effect was discovered more than 130 years ago in a ferromagnet, where a Hall resistance exists even in the absence of an external magnetic field. The quantized version of the anomalous Hall effect has attracted much interest since the discovery of quantum Hall effect in the 1980s.

Hamilton Colloquium Series - Mikhail Lukin, Harvard University, "Quantum Dynamics of Strongly Interacting Systems"

Thu, Apr 10, 2014, 4:30 pm to 6:00 pm

We will discuss recent developments at a new scientific interface involving quantum many-body dynamics of strongly interacting systems. Combining advances in several sub-fields of physical science, this research is aimed at realizing new states of matter that can exist far from equilibrium, and exploring novel science and applications of such...

Hamilton Colloquium Series - Matthias Troyer, ETH Zurich: "Validating Quantum Devices"

Thu, Mar 27, 2014, 4:30 pm to 6:00 pm

About a century after the development of quantum mechanics we have now reached an exciting time where non-trivial devices that make use of quantum effects can be built.

Hamilton Colloquium Series - Michael Peskin, Stanford U.: "Beyond the Higgs Boson: Further questions and expectations for the Large Hadron Collider"

Thu, Mar 6, 2014, 4:30 pm to 6:00 pm

The biggest recent news from particle physics is the discovery at the CERN Large Hadron Collider of a new particle with many properties of the long-sought Higgs Boson. The Higgs Boson had been predicted by the unified theory of weak and electromagnetic interactions. This discovery thus seems to fill a recognized gap in our understanding.

Hamilton Colloquium Series - Stanislas Leibler, The Rockefeller University, and IAS: "Ethology and Ecology of Simple Microbial Systems"

Thu, Feb 27, 2014, 4:30 pm to 6:00 pm

I will describe two recent experiments on simple microbial systems. In particular, in these experiments an effort has been made to develop a statistical description of the dynamics on different time scales, ranging from minutes to months.

Hamilton Colloquium Series - Jun Ye, University of Colorado: "Ultracold Molecules - New Frontiers in Quantum and Chemical Physics"

Thu, Feb 20, 2014, 4:30 pm to 6:00 pm

Molecules cooled to ultralow temperatures provide fundamental new insights to molecular interaction dynamics in the quantum regime.

Hamilton Colloquium Series - Gabriel Orebi Gann, UC-Berkeley: "Here Be Dragons: Mysteries of the Neutrino" - Updated

Fri, Feb 14, 2014, 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm

Neutrinos are one of the most fascinating particles that occur in nature: hundreds of millions of times smaller than the proton, the neutrino was once thought to be massless and to travel at the speed of light.

Hamilton Colloquium Series - Philip W. Anderson, Princeton University: "The Discovery of the Anderson-Higgs Mechanism"

Thu, Feb 6, 2014, 4:30 pm to 6:00 pm

Landau introduced the idea of the ground state of a condensed matter system as a “vacuum” and of the elementary excitations as “quasiparticles” moving in this vacuum. He and Tisza noted that spontaneous orderings such as magnetism could be thought of as spontaneous symmetry-breaking of this vacuum, and based theories of phase transitions on this...

Hamilton Colloquium Series - Emilia Morosan, Rice University: "Exotic superconductivity at the itinerant-to-local moment crossover"

Thu, Dec 5, 2013, 4:30 pm to 5:30 pm

The conventional wisdom that magnetism and superconductivity are immiscible has been losing ground for more than 25 years, in favor of the concept of magnetism-mediated superconductivity. Not only are magnetic interactions required for electron pairing in the famous Cu oxides and the Fe pnictides, but they seem to be the key ingredient for high...

Hamilton Colloquium Series - Joseph Polchinski, KITP, University of California-Santa Barbara: "The Black Hole Information Paradox: Alive and Kicking"

Thu, Nov 21, 2013, 4:30 pm to 5:30 pm

Thought experiments have played an important role in figuring out the laws of physics. For the unification of quantum mechanics and gravity, where the phenomena take place in extreme regimes, they are even more crucial.

Hamilton Colloquium Series - Cristiano Galbiati, Princeton University: "What about dark matter?"

Thu, Nov 14, 2013, 4:30 pm to 5:30 pm

I will discuss the status of direct dark matter searches and the prospects for the DarkSide program.

Hamilton Colloquium Series - Sarah Eno, University of Maryland: "The LHC: Beyond the Standard Model"

Thu, Nov 7, 2013, 4:30 pm to 5:30 pm

The Higgs was postulated, during the 1970s, to be the source of electroweak symmetry breaking in the standard model. For my entire professional career, the search for the Higgs boson has been the highest priority goal for the field of experimental high energy physics.

Hamilton Colloquium Series - Shiraz Minwalla, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research - Mumbai, India: "The Fluid Gravity Correspondence"

Thu, Oct 24, 2013, 4:30 pm to 5:30 pm

I will demonstrate that a class of solutions to Einstein’s equations with a negative cosmological constant in $d+1$ dimensions are in one-to-one correspondence with solutions of the equations of hydrodynamics (relativistic generalizations of the Navier Stokes equations) in $d$ dimensions.

Hamilton Colloquium Series - Risa Wechsler, Kavli Institute, Stanford University: "Dark Matter Insights from Cosmological Structure Formation"

Thu, Oct 17, 2013, 4:30 pm to 5:30 pm

There is now overwhelming evidence that more than eighty percent of the mass in the Universe is dark matter. This provides a clear indication for the existence of a particle or particles beyond the standard model, but we have yet to determine the nature of this particle.

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