WPC Theoretical Physics Symposium 2023

8 Nov 2023, 08:30 → 10 Nov 2023, 22:00 Europe/Berlin

Auditorium CSSB (bldg. 15) (DESY Hamburg)

The Wolfgang Pauli Centre for Theoretical Physics, a joint forum of the Universität Hamburg and DESY, organizes a three-day symposium on theoretical physics, which brings together leading international experts from different areas of physics, particularly mathematical physics, high energy physics, quantum field theory, and string theory.

This year’s focus topics are: 

• Non-perturbative effects from condensed matter to particle physics
• String theory, black holes, and quantum information
• Topological quantum field theory and invariants

 

Apart from the in-person participation (only or registered participants), there will be the possibility to connect remotely and listen to the individual talks.

Together with the symposium, the award ceremony for the Hamburg Prize for Theoretical Physics 2023 which is awarded to Professor Emeritus Edward Witten, Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, will take place at the Planetarium Hamburg on November 8th, 2023. The event is fully booked and registration is not possible anymore (23 October 2023).   

 

Travel Fellowships for Graduate Students
The Wolfgang Pauli Centre for Theoretical Physics encourages the participation of graduate students in the Symposium and therefore awards travel grants funded by the Joachim Herz Stiftung. Interested students should provide

• a brief curriculum vitae (max. 2 pages), 
• a brief description of the current research project (max. 1/2 page), and, 
• a letter of motivation why they want to attend the symposium (max. 1/2 page).

Please send your application with these documents in one single pdf file until 15th October 2023 to

wpc-coordination@desy.de

The applicants will be notified shortly after the deadline. 

 

Confirmed Speakers

Mina Aganagic (UC Berkeley)

Alexander Altland (U of Cologne)

Mirjam Cvetic (U of Pennsylvania)
Netta Engelhardt (MIT)
Pavel Etingof (MIT)
Giovanni Felder (ETH Zuerich)
Stefan Hollands (U of Leipzig)
Daniel Jafferis (Harvard U)
David Jordan (U of Edinburgh)
Roberto Longo (U of Rome II)
Beatrix Muehlmann (McGill Univ.)
Hirosi Ooguri (Caltech & KIPMU)
Sam Raskin (Yale U)

Gautam Satishchandran (Princeton U)

Graeme Segal (U of Oxford)
Alexander Strohmaier (U of Leeds)
Catharina Stroppel (U of Bonn)
Clifford Taubes [virtual] (Harvard U)
Joerg Teschner (DESY and U of Hamburg)
Cumrun Vafa (Harvard U)

Edward Witten (IAS Princeton)
Xiao-Gang Wen (MIT)

 

Local organizing committee

Elli Pomoni, Volker Schomerus, Christoph Schweigert, Timo Weigand

 

The Symposium is supported by the Joachim Herz Stiftung.

 

 

DESYRoute_WPCSymposium.jpg

Poster_WPCSymposium2023.pdf

Wednesday 8 November

08:30 → 09:00 Registration

09:00 → 09:15 Opening and Welcome

09:15 → 09:55 Fundamental Lessons From String Theory

Speaker: Cumrun Vafa (Harvard U)

Talk_Vafa.pdf

Video recording

09:55 → 10:35 Higher Symmetries in (Non-)Compact String Models

Speaker: Mirjam Cvetic (U of Pennsylvania)

Talk_Cvetic.pdf

Video recording

10:35 → 11:05 Coffee break

11:05 → 11:45 Quantum field theory and the nature of space-time

Speaker: Graeme Segal (U of Oxford)

Talk_Segal.pdf

Video recording

11:45 → 12:25 Topological order and long range entanglement - emergence of topological quantum field theory and non-Abelian statistics

Speaker: Xiao-Gang Wen (MIT)

Talk_Wen.pdf

Video recording

12:25 → 14:00 Lunch

14:00 → 14:40 Late time quantum chaos in two-dimensional holography

Speaker: Alexander Altland (U of Cologne)

Talk_Altland.pdf

Video recording

14:40 → 15:20 Complexity Coarse-Graining in Quantum Gravity

Speaker: Netta Engelhardt (MIT)

Talk_Engelhardt.pdf

Video recording

15:20 → 15:50 Coffee break

17:20 → 18:20 Shuttle bus from DESY CSSB to the Planetarium (only for registered partcipants, fully booked)

From 5:20 pm on there are three busses of the company Reisering Hamburg waiting in front of the CSSB building 15. Departure will be at 5:30 pm.

19:00 → 22:00 Award Ceremony: Hamburg Prize for Theoretical Physics 2023 (only for registered participants, fully booked)

This event requires an extra registration, but it is by now fully booked, so please only signed up participants join us on that evening. Sorry for the ones who could not register anymore.

Thursday 9 November

09:00 → 09:40 Symmetry Resolution in Conformal Field Theory

Speaker: Hirosi Ooguri (Caltech & KIPMU)

Talk_Ooguri.pdf

Video recording

09:40 → 10:20 The Virasoro Minimal String

I will introduce a critical string theory in two dimensions and explain that this theory, viewed as two-dimensional quantum gravity on the worldsheet, admits an equivalent holographic description in terms of a double-scaled matrix integral. The worldsheet theory consists of Liouville CFT with central charge c>25 coupled to timelike Liouville CFT with central charge 26-c. The dual matrix integral has as its leading density of eigenvalues the universal Cardy density of primary states in a two-dimensional CFT of central charge c, which motivates the name of the theory. This duality holds for any value of the continuous parameter c and reduces to the well-known JT gravity/matrix integral duality in the large central charge limit, thus providing a precise stringy realization of JT gravity. This talk is based on work with Scott Collier, Lorenz Eberhardt, and Victor Rodriguez.

Speaker: Beatrix Muehlmann (McGill Univ.)

Talk_Muehlmann.pdf

Video recording

10:20 → 10:50 Coffee break (with group photo)

10:50 → 11:30 A tensor model for 3d gravity

Speaker: Daniel Jafferis (Harvard U)

Talk_Jafferis.pdf

Video recording

11:30 → 12:10 Homological Link invariants from Floer Theory

Speaker: Mina Aganagic (UC Berkeley)

Talk_Aganagic.pdf

Video recording

12:10 → 13:40 Lunch

13:40 → 14:20 Anyonic Chains and von Neumann algebras

Anyonic spin chains can be seen as lattice models where topological excitations are built in from the start. I will explain an intimate relationship between such models based unitary modular tensor categories, and the theory of von Neumann sub-factors. In particular, I will introduce a notion of (vertical) defects, which are shown to be governed by an algebraic structure isomorphic to that appearing in 1+1 rational conformal field theories, as developed by Fuchs et. al and by Kawahigashi et. al -- despite the fact that anyonic chains are defined on finite lattices and may lead to gapped Hamiltonians in the scaling
limit. The talk is pedagogical and I emphasize structures that have not appeared previously in the physics literature.

Speaker: Stefan Hollands (U of Leipzig)

Talk_Hollands.pdf

Video recording

14:20 → 15:00 Generalized Black Hole Entropy is von Neumann Entropy

Speaker: Gautam Satishchandran (Princeton U)

Talk_Satishchandran.pdf

Video recording

15:00 → 15:40 Signal communication and modular theory

Speaker: Roberto Longo (U of Rome II)

Talk_Longo.pdf

Video recording

15:40 → 16:10 Coffee break

16:10 → 16:50 Unique continuation, inverse problems, and QFT

Speaker: Alexander Strohmaier (U of Leeds)

Talk_Strohmaier.pdf

Video recording

16:50 → 17:30 A Background-Independent Algebra in Quantum Gravity

Speaker: Edward Witten (IAS Princeton)

Talk_Witten.pdf

Video recording

Friday 10 November

09:00 → 09:40 Analytic Langlands correspondence over R

Speaker: Pavel Etingof (MIT)

Talk_Etingof.pdf

Video recording

09:40 → 10:20 Whittaker coefficients and the Hitchin section

Speaker: Sam Raskin (Yale U)

Talk_Raskin.pdf

Video recording

10:20 → 10:50 Coffee break

10:50 → 11:30 Quantum Analytic Langlands Correspondence

Speaker: Joerg Teschner (DESY and U of Hamburg)

Talk_Teschner.pdf

Video recording

11:30 → 12:10 Hypergeometric integrals, hook formulas, and Whittaker vectors

The classical hook-length formula in combinatorics relates the number
of standard Young tableaux with given shape to the product of
hook-lengths of the Young diagram. A generalization to skew Young
diagrams is due to Naruse, who obtains it as a limit of a multivariate
generalization arising from equivariant Schubert calculus.

We show that these combinatorial objects appear in a relation between
multidimensional hypergeometric integrals motivated by 3D mirror
symmetry and in the diagonalization of the action of the centre of
U(gl_n) on the space of Whittaker vectors in the tensor product of
dual Verma modules with fundamental modules.

The talk is based on joint work with Andrey Smirnov, Vitaly Tarasov
and Alexander Varchenko.

Speaker: Giovanni Felder (ETH Zuerich)

Talk_Felder.pdf

Video recording

12:10 → 12:50 Langlands duality in quantum topology

Speaker: David Jordan (U of Edinburgh)

Talk_Jordan.pdf

Video recording

12:50 → 14:30 Lunch

14:30 → 15:10 Topological aspects of Laplace eigenfunctions on the round 2-sphere (defects, anomalies, paradoxes) [virtual]

Speaker: Clifford Taubes (Harvard U)

Talk_Taubes.pdf

Video recording

15:10 → 15:50 Convolution algebras related to Khovanov homology

Speaker: Catharina Stroppel (U of Bonn)

Talk_Stroppel.pdf

Video recording

15:50 → 16:00 Closing

Video recording

16:00 → 16:30 Coffee