WORKSHOPS - SUMMER 2008

Deadline for Applications is January 31, 2008

* denotes the organizer responsible for participant diversity in the workshop

May 25 – June 15
Gravitational Wave Astronomy

Organizers:

With a large number of currently operating and planned gravitational wave detectors covering a wide range of frequencies from nHz to kHz, gravitational wave astronomy is poised to become one of the most exciting fields of physics and astronomy in the 21st century. This workshop on Gravitational Wave Astronomy will be particularly timely as current estimates of both the event rates and the sensitivity of advanced LIGO indicate that detection of gravitational radiation may become a reality when advanced LIGO becomes operational. This workshop will bring together astronomers, astrophysicists, and gravitational wave scientists with the goal of building synergistic collaborations focused on the interpretation of gravitational wave observations as a tool of astronomical discovery and a probe of the fundamental physics of gravity. The workshop will be organized about three broad, science-focused themes that together span the science that gravitational wave observations will enable:
1. Large Scale Structure and the Early Universe
(e.g., gravitational-wave background and massive black hole coalescences in galactic centers)
2. Dynamical Systems
(e.g., stellar- and intermediate-mass black holes in dense stellar systems)
3. Compact Object Physics
(e.g., core-collapse supernovae, white dwarfs, neutron stars and black holes in binaries)

May 25 – June 22
Complexity, Disorder, and Algorithms

Organizers:

Complex and non-uniform systems are ubiquituous in physics, mathematics, and computer science and understanding them poses difficult challenges. Experimental challenges include understanding real glassy materials and complex communication networks. Theoretical challenges include exploring complexity classes and approximation theory in computer science, universality classes in physics, and rigorous results for random structures in mathematics. In practice, computational approaches are important for understanding complex, disordered systems (both classical and quantum), but these methods often rely on solving hard problems in computer science. Insights from computer science can clarify what is computationally feasible and how best to proceed. Conversely, much progress has recently been made using ideas from statistical physics to find good approximation schemes and understand phase transitions in hard optimization problems in computer science. This workshop will bring together physicists, mathematicians, and computer scientists, to collaborate on problems related to complex disordered systems and algorithmic approaches to understanding them.

June 8 – June 29
The Physics of Graphene

Organizers:

Graphene, a two-dimensional honeycomb lattice of carbon atoms, is a condensed matter realization of the two-dimensional Dirac equation in curved space. Graphene has electronic and structural properties that are unlike any other solid since it mixes properties of both hard and soft condensed matter systems. Furthermore, the properties of graphene can be controlled by the application of external electric and magnetic fields, or by changing its geometry and topology, making of graphene one of the most versatile electronic materials in nature. The problem of the interaction of Dirac fermions among themselves, with disorder, and phonons, are at the forefront of condensed matter research. This workshop will bring together researchers interested in the many different aspects of graphene physics to discuss the main problems in the field.

June 15 - July 6
Interfaces, Topological Defects and Flexible Packings: Applied Geometry in Condensed Matter

Organizers:

Geometry illuminates a diverse variety of complex systems such as multiblock polymers, liquid crystals, colloidal particles, phospholipids and foams. The purpose of this workshop is to explore the universality of geometric concepts in predicting and understanding soft systems. The workshop will stress the interdisciplinary nature of the field by bringing together experimentalists, theorists, and mathematicians with a shared interest in these problems. Because geometric analyis is a powerful tool for understanding such a large variety of systems, increasing the contact between these communities has the potential to lead to additional advances and bring to light new problems relevant to materials.

For more information, see http://people.umass.edu/csantang/geometry.html

June 22 - July 20
Supersymmetry Breaking and its Mediation in Field Theory and String Theory

Organizers:

In recent years, both particle theorists interested in beyond Standard Model physics (soon to be explored at LHC) and string theorists interested in incorporating realistic models of physics in string compactifications, have brought significant focus to the problem of constructing realistic models of SUSY breaking and its mediation to the Standard Model. From the model building side, central issues include the little hierarchy problem, possible solutions to the flavor problem, construction of models of direct mediation or single-sector models, and the cosmology of supersymmetric theories. String theorists have been more focused on generating simple or elegant examples of theories that dynamically break supersymmetry by engineering appropriate brane or flux configurations in string compactifications, and in some cases computing soft terms which are induced on Standard-like models in the same compactification geometry. The goal of the workshop is to foster fruitful interaction between workers with top down and bottom up perspectives, to understand in which cases features of UV physics may help with the concrete problems of SUSY model
building in the LHC era. Discussions of alternative possibilities for weak scale physics, including those which are motivated by ``landscape'' considerations, will also be a significant part of the workshop.

July 6 - July 27
Active Galactic Nuclei: The interplay between Supermassive Black Holes, Star Formation, and Galaxy Evolution

Organizers:

During the past decade, our understanding of the connection between Active Galactic Nuclei and their host galaxies has changed drastically. It is now established that supermassive central BHs are hosted in both active and normal galaxies, and that the black hole mass directly correlates with the mass and velocity dispersion of the bulge of the host galaxy. State-of-the-art numerical simulations link AGN activity to galaxy interactions and mergers. Once activated, AGN feedback may expel gas from the nucleus and suppress star formation. However, the detailed physical processes and their duty cycles remain largely unknown. Furthermore, the physical link between AGN, star-formation, and gas flows on either a nuclear or global scale is unknown. This workshop will bring together observationalists and theorists to compare recent observational studies with theoretical predictions on the connection between AGN, star-formation, and galaxy evolution. The workshop discussions will be geared towards initiating collaborations and projects to resolve the exciting and controversial issues in this field.

We anticipate that the first week will focus on recent multi-wavelength observational and theoretical work on the connection between star formation, merging and AGN fuelling in the nearby universe. During the second week we will discuss the nature of QSO host galaxies and the co-evolution of the host galaxy with the black hole. During the third week we will investigate the recent progress in our understanding of AGN and galaxy evolution over cosmological timescales. This third week discussion will include how the AGN environment and the black hole mass-sigma relation changes with redshift.

July 20 – August 17
LHC: Beyond the Standard Model Signals in a QCD Environment

Organizers:

With the arrival of LHC data a new era of high energy physics will commence: the LHC experiments will finally open the window to new physics at the TeV scale and shed light on electroweak symmetry breaking. Moreover, if dark matter is indeed made of weakly interacting particles we will study it at a collider and unify collider physics with cosmology. This workshop will be devoted to the discovery of new physics at the LHC; to explore the possibilities for this new physics, how to disentangle it from backgrounds, and to interpret it in a QCD environment. We will bring together experts in model building, QCD background simulation and hadron collider phenomenology.

July 27 – September 7
Frontiers in Strongly Correlated Systems

Organizers:

Antoine Georges, Ecole Polytechnique & CNRS
Olivier Parcollet, CEA Saclay
Andrew Millis*, Columbia University
Matthias Troyer, ETH Zurich
Mark Jarrell, University of Cincinnati

The many fermion problem has for decades resisted solution, but recent developments in ideas, algorithms and computational power have opened very promising new avenues. This workshop aims to connect researchers working in the new theoretical approaches and algorithms (dynamical mean field theory, density matrix renormalization group, quantum Monte Carlo, density matrix renormalization group, exact diagonalization) to scientists interested in first principles approaches (band theory and quantum chemistry) and to the phenomenologies and effective theories needed to interpret experiments both in condensed matter physics and in emerging fields such as cold atoms in optical lattices and interaction effects in nanoscale devices. It is hoped that the interplay between what can be computed and what needs to be computed will lead to new understanding and control of correlated materials.

August 10 – August 31
Evolution: From Atoms to Organisms

Organizers:

Eugene Shakhnovich, Harvard University
Eugene Koonin, National Institute of Health
Claus Wilke, University of Texas

While understanding how function and form evolve in Biology has been an intellectual quest for the last two centuries, only now are definitive answers beginning to emerge, largely due to the avalanche of data on sequences, structure, and function of genes in multiple organisms. These important developments notwithstanding, there remains a significant gap between, on the one hand, the macroscopic analysis of biological evolution describing organisms and populations evolving via Darwinian selection and genetic drift and, on the other hand, the description of life at the level of proteins, a description that is microscopically detailed but agnostic to how these properties came about in the process of natural selection. The proposed workshop aims to bring two (broadly defined) communities– of Molecular Biophysicists and Population Geneticists - closer together to develop a common language and outline joint approaches that will address this key intellectual challenge of XXI century Biology – understanding evolution on all physical scales.

August 17 – Sept. 7
Characteristics and Habitability of Super Earths

Organizers:

Frederic Rasio*, Northwestern University
Eric Ford, University of Florida
Lisa Kaltenegger, Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Sara Seager, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Over 240 extrasolar planets are known to orbit nearby stars. Close to fifteen of these are low-mass exoplanets with minimum masses ranging from 5 to 20 Earth masses. These "super Earths" are the first known exoplanets that likely consist substantially of rock, making them analogs of the terrestrial planets that support life in our solar system. A substantial number of super Earths are expected to be discovered in the next year by ground-based radial velocity planet searches for rocky planets and with the COROT Space Telescope that aims to find transiting super Earths. The summer of 2008 will therefore be a critical time to study and explain the super Earth's dynamical and physical characteristics as they relate to planet habitability. For example, half of the super Earths have eccentricities between 0.1 and 0.2. What causes this eccentricity? How much resulting tidal energy is generated and how much of it
reaches the planet's surface? Do the super Earths have atmospheres or have their atmospheres been evaporated by the parent star? Can we observe their atmospheres, and what atmospheric compositions would be indicative of life? Our workshop will focus on these issues and, more generally, on the astrophysics and astrbiology of extrasolar earth- like planets.