Physicists are encouraged
to apply as individual researchers to work
on their own projects for up to five weeks
at any time during the summer. We provide
a serene atmosphere to complete work. The
individual researcher may also choose to
attend any workshop meetings or chat with
other scientists in residence in addition
to working on his or her own research.
Click here for more
information.
Working groups of between two and six
physicists are encouraged. Click here for more
information.
May 30
- June 13 Transport and
Mixing of Tracers in Geophysics and
Astrophysics
Organizers: Ryan Abernathy, Columbia
University Paul Kushner, University of
Toronto Albion Lawrence, Brandeis
University *Heloise Meheut, CRNS,
Observatoire de la Cote d'Azur
The transport and
mixing of tracers and particulates by
fluids is a highly complex, multiscale
problem that is central to many key
questions in geophysics and astrophysics.
As examples: dust and precipitation are
key to the formation, structure, and
evolution of the earth and planetary
systems, as well as stellar environments;
pollutants and reacting chemicals in
the atmosphere and oceans are important
for local and global environments; and
biological tracers such as phytoplankton
play complex roles in the carbon cycle, a
key climatic process. Furthermore, tracers
provide a Lagrangian description of fluid
flow that lend significant theoretical and
observational insights into the
circulation of the atmosphere and oceans.
This workshop aims to bring together the
earth science, astrophysics, theoretical
physics, and applied mathematics
communities to develop techniques for
studying transport and mixing in both
geophysical and astrophysical contexts.
May
30 - June 20 Galactic
Archaeology with Fundamental Stellar
Parameters: Synthesizing the Power
of Accurate Ages with Distances,
Chemistry, and Kinematics
Organizers: Kathryne Daniel, Bryn
Mawr College Keith Hawkins, University of
Texas at Austin
**Sarah Loebman, University of
California Davis Marc Pinsonneault, Ohio State
University *Justin Read, University of
Surrey
The Gaia satellite
mission has revealed that the Milky
Way’s (MW) stellar disk is in a complex,
disequilibrium state. Stellar
chemistry can be used to reconstruct the
evolution and formation of our Galaxy,
but true Galactic Archaeology requires
accurate stellar ages for individual
stars that, for large statistical
samples, have only recently become
attainable. With new,
state-of-the-art data from the Kepler,
K2, and Transiting Exoplanet Survey
Satellite (TESS) missions now available,
we have entered a golden age for
precision stellar age determination. By
combining the phase space positions of
stars from Gaia with accurate ages for
individual stars, we will be able to
dissect our Galaxy in unprecedented
detail. To fully realize the promise of
these new data we must bring together
expertise in time domain astronomy,
astrometry, stellar evolution, galactic
dynamics, galaxy formation and
cosmology. Focal themes for this
workshop will include:
Applications of
mapping 6D phase space, chemistry
and ages of individual MW stars for
understanding galaxy evolution
The power and
limitations of time-domain astronomy
for accurate stellar age
determination through stellar
rotation and asteroseismology
Chemo-dynamical
evolution of MW-like galaxies
Tests of the
standard cosmological model and
constraints on the nature of dark
matter.
June 6 - 27 Biology, Biophysics and Epidemiology of
COVID-19 and other Pandemics
Organizers: Gyan Bhanot, Rutgers University Michael Biehl, University of
Groningen Charles De Lisi, Boston University Sebastian Doniach, Stanford
University
We are in the
midst of a pandemic caused by the
Sars-Cov-2 virus, which first appeared
in Wuhan, China in December 2019 and has
since spread around the world, igniting a global
pandemic, and causing worldwide
suffering and death. The disease caused
by this virus, called Covid-19, ranges
in severity from asymptomatic infection
to flu-like symptoms, to viral
pneumonia, to acute respiratory distress
syndrome (ARDS), and sometimes, to
death. There has been a
worldwide response from biologists,
chemists, biophysicists, virologists,
epidemiologists, and medical researchers
to understand the dynamics and
epidemiology of transmission,
disease progression, the
immune response from infection, and the
wide variation in disease severity.
There is also a great deal of work being
done to find optimum treatments for
patients, particularly those with severe
disease, to find ways to control the
spread of the virus, and to develop an
effective vaccine. The workshop will
include leading researchers from all
these areas. The hope is that by
bringing together experts from these
diverse communities, there will be an
exchange of ideas about the current
pandemic, a discussion of lessons
learned from past pandemics and
discussions of how to deal with future
pandemics. The workshop will also
provide a platform for biophysicists
working on this pandemic to interact
with the wider community of researchers
studying this and other pandemics, with
the goal of fostering collaborations. We
have begun to create a forum for
discussions on this topic via a webinar
series sponsored by the American
Physical Society. Please visit this
link to join this community.
June
13 - July 4 Black Hole
Formation, Accretion, and Outflows
Through Cosmic Time
Organizers: Susanne Aalto, Chalmers
University of Technology Peter Maksym, Center for
Astrophysics, Harvard and Smithsonian *Jessie Runnoe, Vanderbilt
University Tyrone Woods, NRC Herzberg
Astronomy & Astrophysics
It is impossible to
understand cosmic evolution without also
understanding the physics of how
supermassive black holes either accrete
matter or reject it in the form of
outflows, and what impact those
have. The physical processes that
occur on the scale of a few gravitational
radii are therefore far-reaching: the
formation of winds by an active galactic
nucleus impact spatial scales spanning
over 13 orders of magnitude. This
workshop will address the open questions
regarding the interconnected astrophysical
phenomena relevant on this range of
scales. Specifically:
How do massive black holes
form? What are the detailed
physical processes and relative
importance of light (population III
stars) and heavy (direct collapse)
seeds and how can we distinguish
observationally between these
channels?
How do massive black holes
grow? How do time-domain
observations and recent spatially
resolved results from e.g., the Event
Horizon Telescope and GRAVITY
constrain accretion theory? What
are the implications for finding
supermassive black hole binaries and
multi-messenger astrophysics?
How do massive black holes generate
powerful outflows? How are winds
driven and how do multi-wavelength
observations constrain this process?
How are MBH growth and star
formation entwined over cosmic
time? On what scales do
AGN-driven winds impact gas in the
host galaxy? How does AGN
feedback's role in galaxy evolution
change over cosmic time?
The major topics of this workshop
encompass a wide variety of physics that
will bring together a multi-disciplinary
group with common interests.
Discussion will emphasize the role of new
observational facilities studying the
distant universe (JWST), time domain and
synoptic facilities (SDSS-V, LSST,
eROSITA) and the local universe in detail
(EHT and the GRAVITY instrument on the
Very Large Telescope) in answering these
questions.
June
20 - July 11
New Directions for Quantum Dynamics in
Topological, Disordered, and Correlated
Systems
Organizers: Anushya Chandran, Boston
University Marcel Franz, University of
British Columbia *Tamar Pereg-Barnea, McGill
University Smitha Vishveshwara, University of
Illinois Urbana Champaign
Quantum dynamics has
developed over the past decade into a
major field of research, spanning the
condensed matter, quantum optical, and
high-energy theory communities. During
this period, there have been many
breakthroughs; for example, on many-body
localization and its associated long-lived
quantum memory in disordered systems, on
novel topological orders that are only
possible in periodically driven systems,
on realizing and manipulating interacting
Majorana modes for quantum computation,
and the development of strong bounds on
chaos in correlated quantum systems. This
workshop aims to push the dynamical
frontier in all these settings, paying
special attention to the interplay of
dissipation, topology and constraints, and
new experimental platforms for simulating
quantum dynamics.
Organizers: Peter Armitage, Johns
Hopkins University Silke Buehler-Paschen, Vienna
University of Technology Jennifer Cano, Stony Brook
University *Qimiao Si, Rice University
The topological paradigm
enriches quantum phases and their
transitions in systems that span the
spectrum of weak to strong correlations.
In recent years, there have been
considerable new developments regarding
the topological phases of non-interacting
electrons; among these are Weyl and Dirac
fermions, space group symmetry
classifications, experiments on their
electromagnetic responses, higher order
topological insulators, and the
experimental discovery of an
antiferromagnetic topological insulator.
In parallel, rapid progress on both
theoretical and experimental fronts has
taken place in the exploration of
electronic topology in strongly correlated
systems; this includes the discovery of
Kondo-driven Weyl semimetals, as well as
the search for signatures of topological
states in Kondo insulators and
spin-orbit-coupled 5d electron systems.
For the most part, however, the two
directions have been developing with very
limited crosstalk.
This workshop aims to unite the two
communities by highlighting the emerging
unifying themes of electronic topology
across the correlation spectrum. The
topics of the workshop will include:
the effect of correlations on
non-interacting symmetry-protected
semimetals
weakly interacting topological
phases caused by interaction-driven
broken symmetries
topological states driven by strong
correlations
the role of space group symmetry for
electronic topology of strongly
correlated systems
entirely new topological states of
matter that have no weakly interacting
counterparts
unifying themes for electronic
topology in disparate materials
settings
Experimentalists and
theorists interested in these and related
topics are encouraged to apply.
Organizers: Kimberly Boddy, Johns Hopkins
Univeristy Katherine Freese, University of
Texas at Austin Mariangela Lisanti, Princeton
University *Benjamin Safdi, University of
Michigan Tien-Tien Yu, University of Oregon
While dark matter is
known to comprise most of the matter in
the Universe, its microscopic nature
remains unknown. The search for dark
matter is entering a new era, with
traditional direct detection, collider,
and indirect detection searches having
produced increasingly strong constraints
on some of the most well-motivated dark
matter models. As a result of these
constraints, the dark matter community is
beginning to explore beyond the
traditional search techniques and
models. This workshop will focus on
new ideas in the search for particle dark
matter, covering a wide range of novel
astrophysical tests and direct detection
techniques. By bringing together
model-builders, observers, simulators,
experimentalists, and phenomenologists,
this interdisciplinary gathering will
provide a forum to exchange ideas towards
the common goal of discovering particle
dark matter.
August 1 - 22 Bootstrapping String Theory
Organizers: Rajesh Gopakumar, International
Centre for Theoretical Physics Eric Perlmutter, IPhT, CEA Saclay Silviu Pufu, Princeton University David Simmons-Duffin, Caltech
It has been long known
that conformal field theories (CFTs)
appear in string theory in two ways:
firstly, two-dimensional CFTs describe the
worldsheet dynamics of fundamental
strings; and secondly, through the AdS/CFT
correspondence, CFTs provide dual
holographic descriptions of string theory
defined on target spaces with negative
cosmological constant. The past several
years have seen major advances in
strongly-interacting CFT through the
development of numerical and analytical
bootstrap techniques that rely on symmetry
and consistency conditions. In this
workshop, we seek to take stock of these
recent developments and investigate
whether they can shed light on open
questions in string theory and quantum
gravity. A central theme will be to
formulate rigorous criteria obeyed by CFTs
with string theory duals, and to rephrase
these criteria as bootstrap problems that
can be solved. Moreover, developments in
the bootstrap and the simultaneous
progress in formal string theory have not
been synthesized using a common, modern
language, and this workshop presents a
prime opportunity to do so. These themes
will be explored by way of the following
topics: 2d CFT in string theory; effective
field theories in AdS and their
holographic duals; CFT correlators and
string theory scattering amplitudes;
Lorentzian approaches to CFT; and the
interplay between swampland constraints on
quantum gravity and bootstrap
principles.
Organizers: *Victor Galitski, University of
Maryland Aharon Kapitulnik, Stanford
University Leonid Levitov, MIT **Monika Schleier-Smith, Stanford
University Brian Swingle, University of
Maryland
Hydrodynamics
is one of the oldest fields in physics,
which combines illustrious history of
discoveries with a long list of unsolved
fundamental problems such as the theory of
turbulence and general properties of
Navier–Stokes equations. While
hydrodynamics is usually associated with
the classical macro world, it has recently
become clear that electron liquids in a
variety of quantum materials behave much
like fluids and admit a hydrodynamic
description. Recent experiments in
graphene, Weyl semimetals, and other
materials have demonstrated hydrodynamic
electron transport. A closely related
class of material are so-called “bad
metals,” which are
strongly-correlated electron systems
that manifestly violate bounds dictated by
the textbook theory of metals. These
experimental discoveries go hand in hand
with the flurry of recent theoretical
interest in “quantum hydrodynamics” and a
closely-related field of “many-body
quantum chaos.” There have been intriguing
developments in this direction, due to a
concerted effort of theorists from a
variety of fields, from condensed matter
to quantum information to general
relativity and string theory. Our
program intends to bring together a broad
community of experts interested in the
hydrodynamic regime of transport of
electron materials and more generally in
hydrodynamic description of transport,
heat transport, and information dynamics
of quantum matter. The workshop
intends to share the challenges and recent
progress on the solid-state, cold atom,
and quantum information frontiers, and to
synthesize a common vision for the broad
field of quantum hydrodynamics and
many-body quantum chaos.
Organizers: Tao Han, University of
Pittsburgh Marilena LoVerde, Stony
Brook University *Pedro Machado, Fermilab Cedric Weiland, University of
Pittsburgh
Neutrino physics is at
a turning point. Several oscillation
experiments are being commissioned with
three main purposes: carrying out a bona
fide precision neutrino physics program;
exploring astrophysical neutrino sources;
and clarifying once and for all
long-standing short baseline neutrino
anomalies. Moreover, the LHC is entering
its high luminosity stage, probing yet
unexplored physics related to the
generation of neutrino masses and mixing.
Besides, there will be considerable
experimental progress in searches for rare
processes, involving the violation of
lepton number and lepton flavor, which may
further enlighten the physics behind
neutrino mass and its nature. Finally,
future cosmological observations will be
sensitive to the absolute value of
neutrino masses, testing the three
neutrino paradigm in a way complementary
to the aforementioned experiments. The
goal of the proposed program is to put
together this diverse community in order
to advance our understanding of the
neutrino sector while keeping up with
experimental developments in the near
future. Topics that will be discussed in
the workshop include the following:
oscillation physics; beyond standard
neutrino physics and BSM physics at
neutrino experiments; neutrinos at the
LHC; violation of lepton number and
flavor; and cosmological and astrophysical
neutrinos.
September 5 - 19
New Discoveries in the Era of
High-Resolution, Low-Noise CMB Experiments
Organizers: Simone Ferraro, Lawrence
Berkeley National Laboratory Matthew Johnson, York University Moritz Munchmeyer, Perimeter
Institute Neelima Sehgal, Stony Brook
University
The cosmic microwave
background (CMB) has been an
extraordinarily powerful tool,
establishing the standard cosmological
model and uncovering hints for physics
beyond it. An exciting new frontier in CMB
science lies in the high-resolution,
low-noise regime that future experiments
such as the Simons Observatory, CMB-S4,
and CMB-HD are targeting. In this regime
entirely new sources of temperature and
polarization anisotropies, the secondary
CMB, associated with e.g. the Sunyaev
Zel'dovich effect and gravitational
lensing, become accessible. Precise
measurements of the secondary CMB in
concert with upcoming large galaxy
redshift surveys have the potential to
provide a transformational new
understanding of dark matter, baryonic
feedback, reionization, dark energy,
primordial non-gaussianity, modifications
of general relativity, and inflationary
cosmology. This workshop will bring
together experts in theoretical and
observational cosmology in order to
explore the potential for making new
discoveries using future observations of
the secondary CMB anisotropies. In
particular, we propose to tackle questions
such as: Do we have a comprehensive
theoretical understanding of the secondary
CMB, including all potentially detectable
effects? What are the best strategies for
extracting cosmological information from
the secondary CMB, including
cross-correlations with other datasets?
What are the most challenging foregrounds
and systematics that future experiments
will contend with, and how can they be
mitigated? We hope that this workshop will
catalyze not only practical developments
relevant to the analysis of imminent data,
but also blue sky thinking about how
cosmology might be done differently with
the secondary CMB.
