From January through April each year, the Aspen Center for Physics hosts between six and eight one-week winter conferences. These single-session meetings, with typical attendance of about 80, are focused on the latest developments in the core physics areas of the Center. The details of the format vary, but most have a set of invited speakers, additional speakers drawn from the conference participants, and poster sessions that give an opportunity for all participants to present and discuss their work.
2026 Winter Conferences
Winter applications will be available in August with deadlines in September.
March 29 - April 3
Altermagnetism and Unconventional Magnetic Orders in Quantum Materials
January 4 - 9
Physics and Astrophysics of Neutrino-Dense Environments
Organizers:
George Fuller, University of California San Diego
Gail McLaughlin, North Carolina State University
David Radice, Pennsylvania State University
Sherwood Richers, University of Tennessee Knoxville
January 11 - 16
Theoretical Physics for Artificial Intelligence
Organizers:
Adam Brown, Google DeepMind & Stanford
Ethan Dyer, Anthropic
Dmitry Krotov, IBM Research & Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Eva Silverstein, Stanford University
February 1 - 6
Paving the Way to New Discoveries in Particle Physics
Organizers:
Marcela Carena, Perimeter Institute & University of Chicago/Fermilab
Greg Landsberg, Brown University
Matthias Neubert, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and MITP & Cornell University
Giulia Zanderighi, Max Planck Institute for Physics and Technical University Munich
February 8 - 13
Generalized Symmetries and Defects in QFT and Gravity
Organizers:
Ibrahima Bah, Johns Hopkins University
Dan Freed, Harvard University
Sakura Schafer-Nameki, University of Oxford
Constantin Teleman, University of California Berkeley
February 22 - 27
Fundamental Physics in Space with Quantum Sensors
Organizers:
Emily Caldwell, National Institute of Standards and Technology
Paul Hamilton, University of California Los Angeles
David Leibrandt, University of California Los Angeles
Surjeet Rajendran, Johns Hopkins University
March 1 - 6
The First Billion Years of the Universe: Five Questions in Five Days
Organizers:
Desika Narayanan, University of Florida
Erica Nelson, University of Colorado Boulder
Pascal Oesch, University of Geneva
Alexandra Pope, University of Massachusetts Amherst
March 22 - 27
Physics of the Cytoplasm: Linking Biophysics to Biological Function
Organizers:
Markus Basan, Harvard University
Jens Elgeti, Forschungszentrum Jülich
Avik Mukherjee, Harvard University
March 29 - April 3
Altermagnetism and Unconventional Magnetic Orders in Quantum Materials
Organizers:
Riccardo Comin, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Rafael Fernandes, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Karin Rabe, Rutgers University
Jeroen van den Brink, Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research
Magnetism is one of the most widely investigated quantum states of matter, as it provides a unique window into the collective microscopic behavior of electronic degrees of freedom. Proposals for novel types of magnetic order have historically triggered intense research efforts in the condensed matter physics community, from Landau’s and Néel’s proposals of antiferromagnets in the 1930s and 1940s to Anderson’s proposal of spin liquids in the 1970s. More recently, in 2022, a new framework was proposed to classify collinear magnetic phases using the mathematical tool of spin groups, which sparked a flurry of research activity on unconventional magnetic phases. Among these unconventional magnetic phases, one state has received significant attention from various communities in condensed matter physics: altermagnets. Defined by their invariance with respect to combined rotation and time reversal, one of the main appeals of altermagnetic states is that they share similar properties with both antiferromagnets (a vanishing net magnetization) and ferromagnets (a spin-split band structure). On the one hand, these properties make altermagnets promising for applications in spintronics. On the other hand, they reveal close connections to important open problems in diverse condensed matter systems. This rich connectivity between different areas of condensed matter physics and altermagnetism is accompanied by a remarkable versatility in the types of materials that realize this phase of matter. The recent surge of interest in altermagnetism and, more generally, in unconventional magnetism, makes this a timely topic for an Aspen Winter Conference. The unique format of this conference will provide an ideal opportunity to bring together this vast and diverse community to find common ground and discuss the latest progress in the field, the open problems, ongoing challenges, and new research directions. Featured topics include: new materials realization of altermagnetism; thermodynamic, transport and spectroscopic signatures of altermagnetism in candidate systems; p-wave magnets and other non-collinear unconventional magnetic phases; impact of electronic correlations in altermagnetic phases; topological phenomena enabled by unconventional magnetism; interplay between altermagnetism and superconductivity.