Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC)

The Denario Project: Deep knowledge AI agents for scientific discovery

15 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

We present Denario, an AI multi-agent system designed to be a scientific research assistant. Denario can perform many different tasks, such as generat...

Structured Vacuum Fluctuations: A New Pathway to Quantum Materials Design within QEDFT

15 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

An appealing and challenging route towards engineering materials with specic properties is to find ways of designing or selectively manipulate materia...

Tensor Networks and Quantum Computers

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Tensor Network States, like matrix product or projected entangled pair states play an important role in both, quantum information theory and many-body...

Chemomechanical self-organization across scales in living systems

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

A hallmark of living systems is their ability to generate and maintain order under constant fluctuations. In cells, such order often emerges from chem...

The search for the fundamental scale of gravity

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Already within the Standard Model, we expect that the fundamental scale of gravity, the scale where gravity becomes strong, is slightly lower than the...

Cosmological singularities, quantum chaos and prime numbers

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

At a singularity the continuum description of spacetime breaks down and one can hope that the microscopic constituents will be revealed. Over 50 years...

Active feedback and functionality in model tissues

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In the development of animals, tissues self-organise starting from a single cell into lay- ers, shapes and patterns. This active mechanical process op...

Positivity constraints on theory space

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The bootstrap program leverages symmetry and positivity to carve out the space of consistent quantum theories. In this talk I will highlight some of i...

Mystery of highest energy particles in the Universe

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Ultra-High-Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECRs) are particles with energies up to $3\times 10^20 eV$, originating from unknown sources and producing extensive ...

Ecology and Perpetual Evolution in High Dimensions

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In a simple, constant environment does evolution continue forever? Does extensive diversification via small genetic and ecological differences? What a...

Activating quantum matter

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In driven open quantum matter, coherent many-body quantum dynamics, drive, and dissipation play equally significant roles. These systems span a wide r...

Primordial Black Holes After 50 Years: The Bright Side

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

This talk will overview the history of primordial black hole (PBH) research from the first papers around 50 years ago to the present time. I will firs...

Moire Systems as Quantum Simulators of Many Strongly Correlated System

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

We will review the beginning of experimental and theoretical studies of moire systems and their evolution up to present. We will show how thousands o...

Deciphering the Beginning

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The cosmic microwave background contains a wealth of information about cosmology as well as high energy physics. It tells us about the composition and...

What String Theory Teaches Us About Scattering amplitudes

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In this talk, I will explore the fascinating connections between string theory and quantum field theory, focusing on what we have learned from studyin...

Microscopic Bounds on Macroscopic Theories

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

I will discuss Effective Field Theories that can originate from microscopic unitary theories, and their relation to moment theory. I will show that ma...

Gravity as a Quantum Computer

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Our search for a quantum theory of gravity is aided by a unique and perplexing feature of the classical theory: General Relativity already knows" abo...

From Quantum Scattering Amplitudes to Gravitational Wave Observables

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Gravitational waves open a new window into our universe. In this colloquium we discuss particle theorists' perspective on calculations directly releva...

Dark bubbles and black shells - the darkest corners of the universe in a new light

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Understanding dark energy and black holes remain a great challenge to fundamental physics. In this talk I will review the difficulties and explore som...

Thinking positively: the numerical quantum mechanical bootstrap

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

I will describe recent developments on the (numerical) computation of energy levels of various systems by the quantum mechanical bootstrap. The main ...

Out-of-equilibrium phenomena from a new perspective: an Ab-Initio approach

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Ultra-fast optical spectroscopy is a powerful tool for the observation of dynamical processes in several kind of materials. The basic time- resolved o...

The erasure of topological defects and the saturation phenomenon

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Interesting erasure phenomena arise from interactions between lower-dimensional and higher-dimensional objects and impact cosmology and fundamental ph...

Can we tame the electronic Schrödinger equation?

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

One of the major problems of computational chemistry is the ab initio prediction of energies and properties of molecules. The electronic Schrödinger ...

The massless limit of massive gauge fields

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

One of the simplest ways to make gauge fields massive is to add them a mass "by hand". Intuitively, one could expect that the corresponding massless t...

Applications of Machine Learning and Neural Networks to Quantum Systems

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Learning algorithms using deep neural networks are currently having a major impact on basic sciences. The physics of complex quantum systems is no exc...

Loop Blow-up Inflation

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

I will discuss recent progress in the study of cosmological applications of string compactifications with stabilised moduli, focusing in particular on...

Emergence of geometry and meaning, through gauge and strings dynamics

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

I will discuss the statistical physics of random growth processes which, on the one hand, model the non-perturbative gauge dynamics, emergence of s...

Advances and Challenges in Solving the Two-Body Problem in General Relativity

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Since the discovery of the first binary black-hole merger in 2015, analytical and numerical solutions to the relativistic two-body problem have been e...

Ising’s Challenge and the Conformal Bootstrap

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Throughout the century that has passed since Ernst Ising submitted his PhD thesis in 1924, the Ising (-Lenz) model has provided an incredibly fruitfu...

Resurgence and non-perturbative physics

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Perturbation theory remains one of the main tools in physics, in particular in quantum theories. However, most perturbative series diverge factorially...

What is String Theory?

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

String theory is around 50 years old and for much of that time it has been proclaimed as a quantum theory of gravity unified with all forces and matte...

Effects of electronic correlations in BaOsO3 and tetragonal CuO

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Strongly correlated electron systems, i.e. systems where the interaction between electrons cannot be treated as an effective potential, are an extreme...

Identifying the Time Scales in Electron-Positron Production from Ultra-Strong Electric Fields

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Electron-positron pair production in ultra-strong electric fields, the Sauter-Schwinger effect, is a long-standing theoretical prediction. In this tal...

The protein doctors: how chaperons repair damaged proteins

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The life of a protein, from birth till death, is complex and challenging. At times, because of stresses or bad luck, it might take the wrong conformat...

The Underlying Scaling Laws and Universal Statistical Structure of Complex Datasets

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

We study universal traits which emerge both in real-world complex datasets, as well as in artificially generated ones. Our approach is to analogize da...

The Nobel Prizes in Physics in 1932/33: Heisenberg, Schrödinger and Dirac

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The Nobel Prize in Physics in 1930 was awarded to Raman for the discovery of the effect named after him. The next time physics prizes were announced w...

Modern aspects of quantum physics and topology

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Topology is one of the most recent branches of mathematics and has entered fully into the most modern aspects of theoretical physics: quantum computat...

Anomalous metals

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The observation of metallic ground states in a variety of two-dimensional electronic systems poses a fundamental challenge for the theory of electron ...

Multispherical shapes, constant-mean-curvature surfaces, and the endoplasmic reticulum

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The cells of our body are divided up into separate subcompartments by fluid membranes with a thickness of only a few nanometers. Even though these mem...

New developments in supermembrane theory

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The (unique) maximally extended D=11 supermembrane theory stands out as a candidate for the non-perturbative unification of superstring theory. In thi...

Multi-scale fluctuations in non-equilibrium systems

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Understanding how fluctuations propagate across spatial scales is central to our understanding of inanimate matter from turbulence to critical phenome...

Interplay between mechanics and chemistry in living systems

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Living systems interact with their environment by exerting mechanical forces and exchanging chemical substances. By fueling nonequilibrium reactions a...

Fantastic periods and where to find them

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

After a short introduction to the swampland program and the challenges one faces in explicit tests of some conjectures, this talk will focus on the co...

The mathematics behind Feynman integrals

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Feynman integrals are indispensable for precision calculations, not only for high-energy particle physics experiments, but also for example for QED pr...

Chemically Active Wetting

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Wetting of liquid phases, such as water drops condensing at the surface of plant leaves, is ubiquitous in our daily life. Interestingly, the physics o...

The asymptotic structure of gravity at spatial infinity (D=4 and D>4)

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The asymptotic structure of gravity in the asymptotically flat case will be described in four and higher spacetime dimensions by making central use of...

How a physical system can be turned into a self-learning machine

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Machine learning using artificial neural networks is revolutionizing many areas of science and technology. This increases the urgency for exploring al...

How Much Structure Is Needed for Huge Quantum Speedups?

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium

Symmetry in quantum gravity

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

It has long been expected that the symmetry structure of quantum gravity is highly constrained. In particular it has been conjectured that global sym...

What can we compute with quantum devices?

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium

The "Flavor" of Particle Physics

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium

Is Dark Matter made of Primordial Black Holes? JWST might tell!

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium

Entanglement in complex quantum systems: From quantum information to many-body systems and back

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium

Self-organization and self-assembly in biologically inspired non-equilibrium systems

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium

From Bell's theorem to Quantum Networks

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The question, whether a local, realistic theory can be a valid description of nature led to Bell's formulation of a clear cut experimental test. In sp...

Limits of strong CP

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Quantum mechanical potentials with multiple classically degenerate minima lead to spectra that are determined by the pertaining tunneling amplitudes. ...

Quantum simulators for fundamental physics

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The dynamics of the early universe and black holes are fundamental reflections of the interplay between general relativity and quantum fields. The ess...

Hunting for the stochastic gravitational-wave background: Implications for astrophysics, high energy physics, and theories of gravity

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

I will first define the stochastic gravitational-wave background (SGWB) and highlight the method we are using to detect it in the presence of correlat...

Topological Phase Transitions in Population Dynamics

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Topological phases were discovered in condensed matter physics and recently extended to classical physics such as topological mechanical metamaterials...

Searching for Cosmic Strings in New Observational Windows

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Many particle physics theories beyond the Standard Model (BSM) admit topologically stable cosmic string solutions. If Nature is described by such a th...

Particle physics: Plan B

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Particle physics is at the crossroads. The last particle firmly predicted by the Standard Model (SM) has been discovered. In recent years many of its ...

Re-examining Cosmic Acceleration

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Type Ia supernovae are standard (isable) candles so observing them out to cosmological distances reveals the change of the Hubble parameter with redsh...

Branes, Islands, and Massive Gravitons

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Quantum Gravity in Anti-de Sitter space coupled to a non-gravitating bath has been the setting for novel approaches to the black-hole information para...

Conjectures on Quantum Gravity and their Realisation in String Theory

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

A central question in fundamental physics is when an effective field theory can be consistently coupled to gravity at high energies. Over the years, v...

Playing with the building blocks of the Universe

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The conventional models of high energy physics place the elementary particles on a fixed or slowly evolving, nearly flat, spacetime geometry. The spac...

Influence of the fermionic exchange symmetry in the 1-particle picture

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In a recent breakthrough, a complete set of constraints on fermionic occupation numbers, extending Pauli’s original exclusion principle, has been fo...

Application of Reflection Positivity: Graphene and Other Examples

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Reflection positivity is a useful tool in statistical mechanics and con- densed matter physics. A recent application is to the determination of the po...

Precision at the LHC: why and how

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

With Run II, the LHC experiment already reached an unprecedented level of precision compared to previous hadron colliders. The amount of data collecte...

Topological phases of matter: From classification to detection in experiments

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Condensed matter is found in a variety of phases, the vast majority of which are characterized in terms of symmetry breaking. For example, magnets spo...

Quantum Gravity and the Swampland

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

String theory seems to offer an enormous number of possibilities for low energy physics. The huge set of solutions is often known as the String Theory...

Functional renormalization group approach to correlated fermion systems

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The functional renormalization group (RG) is an ideal tool for dealing with the diversity of energy scales and competition of instabilities in interac...

Strange effects in the neutrino oscillations

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Although the neutrino oscillations are well established phenomenon, new and unusual oscillation effects in matter are still emerging. I will describe ...

Particle Scattering and Number Theory

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

From the softest of interactions of a magnetic field with an electron, to the most violent collisions at the Large Hadron Collider, precision quantum ...

Pulling Yourself by your Bootstraps in Quantum Field Theory

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Quantum field theory (QFT) is the universal language of theoretical physics, underlying the Standard Model of elementary particles, the physics of the...

Space-Time-Matter: Finite Projective Geometry as a Quantum World with Elementary Particles

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

A unified theory for space-time and matter might be based on finite projective geometries instead of differentiable manifolds and gauge groups. Each p...

R-matrix Quantization of the Ruijsenaars-Schneider Models

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

I describe an algebraic scheme for quantizing the Ruijsenaars-Schneider models in the R-matrix formalism. It is based on a special parametrization of ...

Black holes as harbingers of new gravitational physics

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The apparent crisis of black holes inconsistency with foundational physical principles provides a sharp focus for the conflict between quantum mechani...

Black Holes, Quantum Information, and Unification

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The study of black holes has revealed a deep connection between quantum information and spacetime geometry. Its origin must lie in the quantum theory ...

High order correlation and what we can learn about the solution for many body problems from experiment

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The knowledge of all correlation functions of a system is equivalent to solving the corresponding quantum many-body problem. If one can identify the ...

Gauge Theories and Non-Commutative Geometry

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

We shall review the attempts to extend the quantum mechanical property of non-commutativity from phase space to ordinary space. These attempts took ...

Emergent cosmology from quantum gravity: the universe as a quantum condensate

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The construction of a quantum theory of gravity remains an open problem despite decades of efforts. In time, the very perspective on this problem ev...

Modeling microbial diversity

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Metagenomics has revealed hundreds to thousands of microbial species coexisting in almost all microbiota. It is increasingly appreciated that microb...

From Emergent Gravity to Dark Energy and Dark Matter

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The observed deviations from the laws of gravity of Newton and Einstein in galaxies and clusters can logically speaking be either due to the presenc...

Understanding the LIGO gravitational wave event (GW150914)

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In February 2016 the LIGO team announced the detection of gravitational waves (GW) created by the merger of two black holes. In addition to confirmi...

Chiral symmetry breaking, emergent Higgs mechanism, and critical matter

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The upshot of extensive studies of �uctuations in condensed matter systems is that their qualitative importance is typically con#ned to isolated cr...

The Physics of Active Matter

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Over the past ten years, there has been a growing interest among physicists for ‘active matter’, a codename that encompasses systems in which ene...

Scattering Amplitudes from Geometry

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

I will review for a general audience some recent developments in our understanding of the mathematical structure of scattering amplitudes in quantum...

The Black Hole Information Paradox Revisited

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

I describe the physics of black holes and show how the traditional approach leads to the information paradox. I will then discuss some of the propos...

Can a quantum computer solve optimization problems more Efficiently than a classical computer?

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In this talk I will discuss connections between the physics of complex systems such as spin glasses and attempts to solve optimization problems by ”...

Effects of Dark Matter linear in Interaction Strength

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Low-mass boson dark matter particles produced after the Big Bang form a classical field and/or topological defects. Effects produced by the interact...

Quantum Critical Points in Metals: Non-Fermi Liquids and their Field Theoretical Description

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Metals are found frequently in nature and their properties are usually very well described within Landaus Fermi liquid theory. Various strongly corr...

Gone with the wind: The demise of protoplanetary discs and the birth of planets

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Protoplanetary discs are natural consequence of star formation. These discs hold the left-over material from star formation, which constitutes the res...

From materials science to basic physics

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Condensed matter provides us deep insights into quantum physics. Giving just two examples, wave-corpuscle duality manifests itself in spectroscopy o...

Revisiting the S-matrix bootstrap

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium

The Search for New Interactions at the LHC: The top quark Window

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

New Physics searches at the LHC are mostly being performed with the aim of detecting new states. A complementary strategy is to look for new interac...

Ergodicity, Entanglement and Many-Body Quantum Dynamics in Localization

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Do quantum many-body systems necessarily come to thermal equilibrium after a long enough time evolution? The conventional wisdom has long been that ...

Quantum Mechanics and Geometry of Spacetime

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Quantum mechanics is important for determining the geometry of spacetime. We will review the role of quantum fluctuations that determine the large s...

Supermassive Black Holes: From Jets to the Event Horizon

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Highest resolution Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) observations will probably soon tell us more about the supermassive black hole at the Galactic Cent...

Extreme Light and Quantum Fields

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

2015 is the International Year of Light, and of its purposes is “to raise awareness of optical technologies”. One such technology, high-power la...

Turbulence without Linear Instability

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

All flows show a transition from a laminar phase to a turbulent one for sufficiently high flow speeds. In many cases turbulence develops in a successi...