Winter Conferences

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

Organizers:

Adam Brown, Google DeepMind & Stanford
Ethan Dyer, Anthropic
Dmitry Krotov, IBM Research & Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Eva Silverstein, Stanford University

Some of the world’s most ambitious and consequential experiments are taking place not in particle accelerators or space telescopes but in silicon, training ginormous neural networks. The results have been transformative, yet much of the progress has been driven by empirical advances, with theoretical understanding struggling to keep pace. This meeting will explore how the tools and insights of theoretical physics can deepen our understanding of modern artificial intelligence. We will bring together physicists and computer scientists, with a shared goal of illuminating the principles underlying successful machine learning methods—and ultimately guiding the development of better architectures and algorithms.

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

Organizers:

Ibrahima Bah, Johns Hopkins University
Dan Freed, Harvard University
Sakura Schafer-Nameki, University of Oxford
Constantin Teleman, University of California Berkeley

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

Organizers:

Desika Narayanan, University of Florida
Erica Nelson, University of Colorado Boulder
Pascal Oesch, University of Geneva
Alexandra Pope, University of Massachusetts Amherst

In 2026, it will have been 10 years since the last major conference at the ACP about galaxy formation during the first billion years of the Universe’s history. In this interval, the emergence of JWST and ALMA have shifted the knowledge-space from relatively mature galaxies some 1 billion years after the Big Bang to the emergence of the first, nearly chemically pristine galaxies likely undergoing their first bursts of star formation a full 700 Myr earlier. The result from these observations is a complete upending of our understanding of the formation of the first galaxies in the Universe. Because of this, we will host a conference at the ACP one decade later, to critically examine 5 emerging challenges in the Epoch of First Light. The major goal of this workshop is to accelerate the community toward finding answers to each of the following 5 outstanding puzzles:

• Why are galaxies producing such copious numbers of ultraviolet photons at early times?
• What is the physical nature of Little Red Dots?
• How does dust grow from nearly dust-free systems to 10^7 Msun in just 500 Myr?
• What drives the first quenching episodes in the Universe?
• What is the solution to the photon budget crisis during the Epoch of Reionization?

Organizers:

Markus Basan, Harvard University
Jens Elgeti, Forschungszentrum Jülich
Avik Mukherjee, Harvard University

The cytoplasm is now recognized as a complex, dynamic, and actively regulated environment. Recent discoveries have revealed profound links between the physical properties of the cytoplasm and fundamental biological processes, making this an exceptionally timely and important area of investigation. This conference aims to unite physicists and biologists at the forefront of this rapidly evolving field to foster the exchange of data, ideas, and emerging concepts.

Themes include but are not limited to:

• The role of phase transitions in self-organization and signaling.
• Regulation of cellular biomass density.
• The connection between membrane potential and mechanics.
• The effect of mechanical forces on the nucleus.
• Self-organization and regulation of the cytoskeleton.
• Physiology of the cell and tissues
• Homeostatic regulation and signal transduction.

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.