High Energy Theory seminar: "Anomaly inflow, geometric engineering, and holography"
Federico Bonetti (Johns Hopkins University)
A large class of 4d SCFTs can be engineered by wrapping a stack of M5-branes on a compact space, possibly with defects. ‘t Hooft anomalies are crucial observables for such theories, which often do not…
Condensed and Living Matter Seminar: "Universality at infinite temperature"
Romain Vasseur (University of Massachusetts)
In this talk, I will argue that the concepts of quantum criticality and universality can emerge at very high energy, corresponding to infinite effective temperatures. I will focus on isolated many-body…
Condensed and Living Matter Seminar: "Guiding Principles for Engineering Quantum Matter far from Equilibrium"
Martin Claassen (Flatiron Institute)
One of the most fascinating aspects of non-equilibrium physics is that a macroscopic quantum system pushed out of equilibrium can exhibit markedly different dynamics when probed on different time scales…
Astronomy seminar: "Beyond optical depth: Future determination of ionization history from the CMB"
Duncan Watts (Johns Hopkins)
Cosmic microwave background (CMB) photons are partially polarized, both by free electrons around recombination, and by free electrons from reionization. The free electron fraction as a…
Condensed and Living Matter Seminar: "Collective functionality in intelligent active matter: Bridging multi-scale biology with the physics of solids, fluids and information"
Arnold Mathijssen (Stanford University)
Biological systems flourish through collective functionality, by self-assembling into cells, tissues, flocks and parliaments. Understanding this multi-scale organization also lies at the heart of modern engineering…
Mathematical Biology seminar: "Localized Patterns in Bulk-Membrane Coupled Models "
Daniel Gomez (University of British Columbia)
Turing instabilities in reaction diffusion systems describe potential mechanisms for pattern formation in qualitative models of microbiological processes. A recent direction of research has been to…
Mathematical Biology seminar: "PDE Models of Multilevel Selection: The Evolution of Cooperation and the Shadow of Individual Selection"
Daniel Cooney (Princeton University)
Here we consider a game theoretic model of multilevel selection in which individuals compete based on their payoff and groups also compete based on the average payoff of group members. Our focus is on the…
Condensed and Living Matter Seminar: "Magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene at charge neutrality: interactions and disorder"
Alex Thomson (California Institute of Technology)
Stacking two graphene layers twisted by the ‘magic angle’ 1.1º generates flat energy bands, which in turn catalyzes various strongly correlated phenomena depending on filling and sample…
Mathematical Biology seminar: "Analysis of Moving Interfaces in Incompressible Flows"
Eduardo Garcia-Juarez (University of Pennsylvania)
Interfaces that evolve with a fluid flow abound in nature and engineering. They are subject to intense research in many different fields, from meteorology to medical sciences or the…
Physics and Astronomy Colloquium: "Exploring beyond the Standard Model with Lattice QCD"
Amy Nicholson (University of North Carolina)
While the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics has been enormously successful in describing the world around us, there still remain many important and unanswered questions requiring…