# Events Archive

Hamilton Colloquium Series, Roland Bauerschmidt, University of Cambridge"Different Perspectives in Statistical Physics" Jadwin A-10
Thu, Dec 1, 2022, 4:00 pm5:00 pm

The use of different perspectives on a problem is a very powerful principle in statistical physics, and has been especially important in mathematical physics. I will illustrate this theme with old and recent applications. These include the interpretation of QFTs at imaginary time as statistical fields, the relation of statistical fields to…

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A free lecture open to the public.
Hamilton Colloquium Series, Leonardo Rastelli, Stony Brook University, "Positivity Constraints on Theory Space", Jadwin A-10
Tue, Nov 8, 2022, 4:00 pm5:00 pm

The bootstrap program leverages symmetry and positivity to carve out the space of consistent quantum theories. In this talk I will highlight some of its recent successes, ranging from the numerical solution of statistical models at criticality to universal constraints on quantum gravity.

Recording of Talk:…

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A free lecture open to the public.
Hamilton Colloquium Series, James Peebles, Princeton University, "Thoughts About Physical Cosmology: Past, Present, and Future," McDonnell A-02
Thu, Oct 27, 2022, 4:00 pm5:00 pm
Speaker
Hamilton Colloquium Series, Harold Hwang, Stanford University, "Superconductivity in Infinite-Layer Nickelates", Jadwin A-10
Thu, Oct 6, 2022, 4:00 pm5:00 pm

Finding unconventional superconductors in proximity to various strongly correlated electronic phases has been a recurring theme in materials as diverse as heavy fermion compounds, cuprates, pnictides, and twisted bilayer graphene. The recent discovery of superconductivity in layered nickelates1 was motivated by looking for an analog of the…

Speaker
A free lecture open to the public.
Hamilton Colloquium Series, Clifford V. Johnson, "Wigner Meets ’t Hooft Near the Black Hole Horizon". Postponed
Thu, Apr 28, 2022, 4:00 pm4:00 pm

There has been exciting recent progress in the study of the quantum nature of black holes through the use of certain exactly solvable models. This work shows how to realize, in concrete terms, various long-held expectations about quantum gravity, such as the transition from describing physics in terms of smooth spacetimes to a description in…

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Hamilton Colloquium Series, Marc Kamionkowski, Johns Hopkins University, "News from Cosmic Dark Sectors"
Wed, Apr 27, 2022, 4:00 pm4:00 pm

Cosmologists are proud of the standard cosmological model that has been developed to account for a wealth of disparate features of the Universe. The model requires, though, that we postulate the existence of some collisionless dark matter and also dark energy, a negative-pressure substance. The nature of both of these dark constituents is a…

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Hamilton Colloquium Series, Salvatore Torquato, Princeton University, "Hyperuniform States of Matter"
Thu, Apr 14, 2022, 4:00 pm4:00 pm

The study of hyperuniform states of matter is an emerging multidisciplinary field, influencing and linking developments across the physical sciences, mathematics and biology. The hyperuniformity concept generalizes the traditional notion of long-range order to include not only all crystals and quasicrystals,…

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Hamilton Colloquium Series, Netta Engelhardt, MIT, "The Black Hole Information Paradox in the Age of Holographic Entanglement Entropy"
Thu, Mar 31, 2022, 4:00 pm4:00 pm

The black hole information paradox — whether information escapes an evaporating black hole or not — remains one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of theoretical physics. The apparent conflict between validity of semiclassical gravity at low energies and unitarity of quantum mechanics has long been expected…

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Hamilton Colloquium Series, Dmitry Abanin, University of Geneva, "Non-equilibrium matter through the prism of quantum entanglement"
Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 4:00 pm4:00 pm

Remarkable experimental advances enabled creation of  highly tunable and controllable quantum systems of ultracold atoms, trapped ions, and superconducting quantum bits. These platforms proved to be uniquely suited for probing non-equilibrium properties of interacting quantum systems. Based on the intuition…

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Hamilton Colloquium Series, Frans Pretorius, Princeton University, "Gravitational Wave Astrophysics: A Status Report"
Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 4:00 pm4:00 pm

I will review the state of the field of gravitational wave astrophysics, framing the challenges, current observations, and future prospects within the context of the predictions of Einstein's theory of general relativity.

Recording of Prof. Pretorius' Talk: http:/…

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Hamilton Colloquium Series, Subir Sachdev, Harvard University, "Planckian Metals and Black Holes"
Thu, Nov 11, 2021, 4:00 pm4:00 pm

Many modern materials feature a “Planckian metal”: a phase of electronic quantum matter without quasiparticle excitations, and relaxation in a time of order Planck's constant divided by the absolute temperature. The semiclassical theory of black holes predicts thermodynamic properties which are difficult to…

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Hamilton Colloquium Series, Eliot Quataert, Princeton University, “Neutron Star Mergers, Gravitational Waves and the Origin of the Elements”
Thu, Nov 4, 2021, 4:00 pm4:00 pm

The discovery of compact object mergers by LIGO has opened up a new window into the Universe’s most exotic objects, neutron stars and black holes. Maximizing the scientific return of this new window requires connecting gravitational wave detections to the wealth of electromagnetic data on similar sources. I…

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Hamilton Colloquium Series, Howard Stone, Princeton University, "Classical fluid mechanics confronts modern research questions: Virus transport, a novel similarity solution, and an N-body problem"
Thu, Oct 7, 2021, 4:00 pm4:00 pm

I will provide a brief overview of recent projects in my group where we identify new analytical and physical features of flows common to modern research questions. First, I will share some of our work (experimental and numerical) on fluid dynamics themes related to virus transmission by speech, which has…

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Hamilton Colloquium Series, Cumrun Vafa, Harvard University, "The String Landscape and the Swampland"
Thu, Nov 19, 2020, 12:15 pm12:15 pm

String theory landscape of vacua point to new consistency conditions that a quantum gravitational system must satisfy.  There are only a small number of quantum field theories that satisfy these conditions and all the rest belong to the `Swampland' which cannot be consistently coupled to gravity.  In this talk I review some of these conditions…

Speaker
A free lecture open to the public.
Hamilton Colloquium Series, Charles M Marcus, NBI, "The Search for Fractional Statistics"
Thu, Nov 12, 2020, 12:00 pm12:00 pm

Panel discussion with Duncan Haldane (Princeton), Michael Manfra (Purdue) and Gwendal Feve (ENS)

The possibility of particles with fractional statistics intermediate between those of fermions and bosons in two dimensional systems was raised as early as 1976 in theoretical work by…

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A free lecture open to the public.
Hamilton Colloquium Series, Monika Schleier-Smith, Stanford University, "Choreographing Quantum Spin Dynamics with Light"
Thu, Nov 5, 2020, 12:00 pm12:00 pm

The power of quantum information lies in its capacity to be non-local, encoded in correlations among two, three, or many entangled particles.  Yet our ability to produce, understand, and exploit such correlations is hampered by the fact that the interactions between particles and ordinarily local.   I will report on…

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A free lecture open to the public.
Hamilton Colloquium Series, Andrei Beloborodov, Columbia University, "Explosive Neutron Stars"
Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 12:00 pm12:00 pm

Neutron stars are by far the strongest known magnets in the universe. Some of them (called magnetars) generate explosions by suddenly dissipating magnetic energy with a rate up to $10^{47}$ erg/s. These magnetic explosions emit giant gamma-ray flares observed in our and neighboring galaxies. Similar explosions in…

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A free lecture open to the public.
Hamilton Colloquium Series, Jenny Greene, Princeton University, "Exploring Supermassive Black Holes"
Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 12:15 pm12:15 pm

Panel Discussion with Suvi Gezari, Brian Metzger and Marta Volonteri

This panel discussion accompanies the conference “Exploring Supermassive Black Holes”. We (Suvi Gezari, Jenny Greene, Brian Metzger, Marta Volonteri) will discuss the critical stages in the life…

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A free lecture open to the public.
Hamilton Colloquium Series, Leonid Mirny, MIT, "Physics of Your Chromosomes" via Zoom
Thu, Oct 1, 2020, 12:00 pm12:00 pm

DNA of the human genome is 2 meters long and is folded into chromosomes that fit in a 10-micron cellular nucleus. I will discuss physical principles that govern folding of long DNA molecules, including phase separation, topological effects in polymer systems, and non-equilibrium phenomena. Recent studies have shown…

Speaker
A free lecture open to the public.
Hamilton Colloquium Series, Luis Fernando Alday, Oxford University, "Quantum Scattering Amplitudes in AdS/CFT"
Thu, Feb 20, 2020, 4:00 pm4:00 pm

The AdS/CFT correspondence maps correlators of local operators in a conformal field theory to scattering amplitudes in a gravitational/string theory on curved space-time. The study of such amplitudes is incredibly hard and has mostly been done in a certain classical limit. We show how modern analytic bootstrap techniques allow us to go much…

Speaker
A free lecture open to the public.