WPC Theoretical Physics Symposium 2018

7 Nov 2018, 09:00 → 9 Nov 2018, 17:30 Europe/Berlin

Auditorium CSSB, bldg. 15 (DESY Hamburg)

The three day Theoretical Physics Symposium of the Wolfgang-Pauli-Centre (WPC) aims at bringing together theorists from different areas, including particle physics, cosmology, mathematical physics, condensed matter theory, atomic and molecular physics, cold atoms etc. This year's topics are:

• String Theory and Mathematics
• String Theory and our Universe
• Dualities and Quantum Information

The Symposium features the award ceremony for the Hamburg prize for Theoretical Physics 2018 which is awarded to Prof. Hirosi Ooguri (Caltech, IPMU Tokyo) in an award ceremony at the Planetarium on Nov 7, 2018. The Symposium is supported by the Joachim Herz Stiftung.

 

Invited speakers include

• Tomoyuki Arakawa (Kyoto U)
• Christopher Beem (U of Oxford)
• Miranda Cheng (U of Amsterdam)
• Ignacio Cirac (MPI for Quantum Optics, Garching)
• Tobias Ekholm (Uppsala U)
• Albrecht Klemm (U of Bonn)
• Dieter Luest (LMU Munich)
• Masaki Oshikawa (U of Tokyo)
• Shinsei Ryu (U of  Chicago)
• Sakura Schafer-Nameki (U of Oxford)
• Gary Shiu (U of  Wisconsin)
• Washington Taylor (MIT)
• Senthil Todadri (MIT)
• Irene Valenzuela (Utrecht U)
• Michael Walter (U of Amsterdam)
• Timo Weigand (CERN)

 

Local organizing committee

Gleb Arutyunov, Volker Schomerus, Joerg Teschner, Alexander Westphal

 

 

Wednesday 7 November

1 Chiral algebras of class S and symplectic varieties

Speaker: Tomoyuki Arakawa

Slides WPC.pdf

Video https://webcast.desy.de/?p=8122

10:00 Coffee break

2 The superconformal bootstrap

Speaker: Christopher Beem

Slides 2018_WPC_Symposium_presentation.pdf

Video https://webcast.desy.de/?p=8124

3 Moonshine

Speaker: Miranda Cheng

Slides 18HamburgCHENG.pdf

Video https://webcast.desy.de/?p=8062

12:30 Lunch

4 Tensor Networks in Low and High Energy Physics

Speaker: Ignacio Cirac

Slides HamburgTN.pdf HamburgTN.pptx

Video https://webcast.desy.de/?p=8129

15:00 Coffee break

5 Anomaly and symmetry-protected critical phases

Speaker: Masaki Oshikawa

Slides Symmetry-Protection_Hamburg-Nov2018.pdf

Video https://webcast.desy.de/?p=8131

6 Departure to the Planetarium Hamburg

19:00 Award ceremony & reception

Thursday 8 November

7 Quantum entanglement in many-body systems

Speaker: Shinsei Ryu

Slides Talk1_SRyu.pdf

Video https://webcast.desy.de/?p=8134

10:00 Coffee break

8 Quantum information and holography

Speaker: Michael Walter

Slides qubitholo_desy.pdf

Video https://webcast.desy.de/?p=8136

9 Topology, duality, and quantum criticality

Speaker: Senthil Todadri

Slides Talk3_STodadri.pdf

Video https://webcast.desy.de/?p=8138

12:30 Lunch

10 Skein module valued open Gromov-Witten invariants and large N duality

From the perspective of topological string, holomorphic curves in a Calabi-Yau 3-fold ending on a Lagrangian deforms the Chern-Simons theory on the Lagrangian. Mathematically this can be interpreted as open Gromov-Witten invariants with values in the skein module of the Lagrangian. We discuss this definition and show how it combined with a specific deformation of the complex structure known as stretching gives a rather direct proof of large N duality for knots in the three sphere.

Speaker: Tobias Eckholm

Slides Talk4_TEkholm.pdf

Video https://webcast.desy.de/?p=8140

15:00 Coffee break

11 Periods and quasiperiods of modular forms and D-brane masses of the quintic

We consider one complex structure parameter mirror families $W$ of Calabi-Yau 3-folds with Picard-Fuchs equations of hypergeometric type. By mirror symmetry the even D-brane masses of the orginal Calabi-Yau $M$ can be identified with four periods w.r.t. to an integral symplectic basis of $H_3(W,Z)$ at the point of maximal unipotent monodromy. It was discovered by Chad Schoen in 1986 that the singular fibre of the quintic at the conifold point gives rise to a Hecke eigen form of weight four $f_4$ on $\Gamma_0(25)$ whose Fourier coefficients $a_p$ are determined by counting solutions in that fibre over the finite field $\mathbb{F}_{p^k}$. The D-brane masses at the conifold are given by the transition matrix $T_{mc}$ between the integral symplectic basis and a Frobenius basis at the conifold. We predict and verify to very high precision that the entries of $T_{mc}$ relevant for the D2 and D4 brane masses are given by the two periods (or L-values) of $f_4$. These values also determine the behaviour of the Weil-Petersson metric and its curvature at the conifold. Moreover we describe a notion of quasi periods and find that the two quasi period of $f_4$ appear in $T_{mc}$. We extend the analysis to the other hypergeometric one parameter 3-folds and comment on simpler applications to local Calabi-Yau 3-folds and polarized K3 surfaces.

Speaker: Albrecht Klemm

Slides AH2018Klemm1.pdf

Video https://webcast.desy.de/?p=8142

Friday 9 November

12 Lessons from six dimensions for geometry, the string landscape/swampland, and the nature of matter

The geometrical formulation of string theory through "F-theory" provides a nonperturbative framework that connects geometry with the physics of gauge theories and matter fields coupled to supergravity. In six dimensions, this has led to new insights into the global structure of the "landscape" of supergravity theories and string theory vacua, has provided new mathematical results on Calabi-Yau geometries and mirror symmetry, and shows that certain gauge groups and matter content are "generic" in physical theories, and that while some exotic matter structures can be fine tuned in string theory, most gauge groups and matter representations cannot arise in string vacua. This talk describes many of these developments and some of their implications for four dimensional physics, the standard model and dark matter.

Speaker: Washington Taylor

Slides WT-Hamburg.pdf

Video https://webcast.desy.de/?p=8144

10:00 Coffee break

13 Gauge theory from Geometry

Speaker: Sakura Schäfer-Nameki

Slides Schafer-Nameki-WPC-Hamburg-2018.pdf

Video https://webcast.desy.de/?p=8146

14 Quantum Gravity and the Swampland

Speaker: Gary Shiu

Slides DESY_2018_higher_resolution.pdf

Video https://webcast.desy.de/?p=8148

12:30 Lunch

15 Swampland Constraints on High Energy Physics

Speaker: Irene Valenzuela

Slides talk_valenzuela.pdf

Video https://webcast.desy.de/?p=8150

15:00 Coffee break

16 A Stringy Test of the Weak Gravity Conjecture

Speaker: Timo Weigand

Slides weigand.pdf

Video https://webcast.desy.de/?p=8152

17 W-supergravity

Speaker: Dieter Luest

Slides Hamburg2018.pdf

Video https://webcast.desy.de/?p=8126