Collections

  In the vicinity of neutron stars and black holes, where spacetime is strongly curved, magnetic fields can power many of the violent phenomena that we observe across the entire electromagnetic spectrum, from accretion and jet launching, to magnetar flares and pulsar emission. In the last decades, our theoretical understanding of the role of magnetic fields in these extreme environments has greatly improved through numerical simulations of magnetohydrodynamical fluids and charged kinetic particles; however, many open and important questions remain. Our observational capabilities and computational resources will keep growing dramatically in the next few years, allowing us to explore high-energy astrophysics in unprecedented regimes. Improving our knowledge of how magnetic fields, matter, and gravity interact with each other is a crucial piece in the new era of multimessenger astrophysics.   This workshop will gather experts from a wide range of disciplines within physics and astrophysics to present state-of-the-art advances in theoretical models of magnetic fields and high-energy plasma in different contexts, from neutron star mergers to supermassive black holes, and from micro scales to macro scales.   This workshop is sponsored in part by the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (CITA).

 

 

Scientific Organizers: 

Luciano Combi (Perimeter Institute & U of Guelph) 

Sean Ressler (CITA) 

Bart Ripperda (CITA) 

Luis Lehner (Perimeter Institute) 

Will East (Perimeter Institute) 

Gibwa Musoke (CITA) 

Chris Thompson (CITA) 

Constructing a theory of quantum gravity, and with it a notion of quantum spacetime is one of the biggest challenges faced by modern theoretical physics. This workshop will bring together researchers from a wide range of viewpoints and give them an opportunity to exchange ideas and gain new insights.

The workshop is supported by the Simons Foundation.

::  ::  ::

Workshop Speakers

Marcela Carena (Perimeter Institute)
Astrid Eichhorn (Universität Heidelberg)
Netta Englehardt (MIT)
Johanna Erdmenger (University of Würzburg)
Gulia Gubitosi (University of Naples Federico II)
Renate Loll (Radboud University)
Jessica Muir (Perimeter Institute)
A.W. Peet (University of Toronto)
Alessia Platania (University of Copenhagen)
Jocelyn Read (California State University, Fullerton)
Kasia Rejzner (York University)
Mairi Sakellariadou (King's College London)
Sarah Shandera (Pennsylvania State University)
Sumati Surya (Raman Research Institute)
Karen Yeats (University of Waterloo)

::  ::  ::

Scientific Organizers
Bianca Dittrich (Perimeter Institute)
Sabrina Pasterski (Perimeter Institute)
Céline Zwikel (Perimeter Institute)
Sruthi Narayanan (Perimeter Institute)

This course will cover the basics of Quantum Foundations under three main headings. Part I – Novel effects in Quantum Theory. A number of interesting quantum effects will be considered. Interferometers: Mach-Zehnder interferometer, Elitzur-Vaidman bomb tester, The quantum-Zeno effect. The no cloning theorem. Quantum optics (single mode). Hong-Ou-Mandel dip. Part II - Conceptual and interpretational issues. Axioms for quantum theory for pure states: Von-Neumann measurement model. * The measurement (or reality) problem. EPR Einstein’s 1927 remarks, the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen argument. Bell’s theorem, nonlocality without inequalities. The Tirolson bound. The Kochen-Specker theorem and related work by Spekkens On the reality of the wavefunction: Epistemic versus ontic interpretations of the wavefunction and the Pusey-Barrett-Rudolph theorem proving the reality of the wave function. Gleason’s theorem. Interpretations. The landscape of interpretations of quantum theory (the Harrigen Spekkens classification). The de Broglie-Bohm interpretation, the many worlds interpretation, wave- function collapse models, the Copenhagen interpretation, and QBism. Part III - Structural issues. Reformulating quantum theory: we will look at some reformulations of quantum theory and consider the light they throw on the structure of quantum theory. These may include time symmetric quantum theory and weak measurements (Aharonov et al), quantum Bayesian networks, and the operator tensor formalism. Generalised probability theories: These are more general frameworks for probabilistic theories which admit classical and quantum as special cases. Reasonable principles for quantum theory: we will review some of the recent work on reconstructing quantum theory from simple principles. Indefinite causal structure and indefinite causal order. Finally we will conclude by looking at (i) the close link between quantum foundations and quantum information and (ii) possible future directions in quantum gravity motivated by ideas from quantum foundations. Instructor: Lucien Hardy/Bindiya Arora Students who are not part of the PSI MSc program should review enrollment and course format information here: https://perimeterinstitute.ca/graduate-courses

This course will introduce you to some of the geometrical structures underlying theoretical physics. Previous knowledge of differential geometry is not required. Topics covered in the course include: Introduction to manifolds, differential forms, symplectic manifolds, symplectic version of Noether’s theorem, integration on manifolds, fiber bundles, principal bundles and applications to gauge theory. Instructor: Mykola Semenyakin/Maite Dupuis Students who are not part of the PSI MSc program should review enrollment and course format information here: https://perimeterinstitute.ca/graduate-courses

The Standard Model of particle physics is introduced, and reviewed, from a modern effective field theory perspective. Instructor: Seyda Ipek/Gang Xu Students who are not part of the PSI MSc program should review enrollment and course format information here: https://perimeterinstitute.ca/graduate-courses

This course teaches basic numerical methods that are widely used across many fields of physics. The course is based on the Julia programming language. Topics include an introduction to Julia, linear algebra, Monte Carlo methods, differential equations, and are based on applications by researchers at Perimeter. The course will also teach principles of software engineering ensuring reproducible results Instructor: Erik Schnetter/Dustin Lang/Subhayan Students who are not part of the PSI MSc program should review enrollment and course format information here: https://perimeterinstitute.ca/graduate-courses

The main objective of this course is to discuss some advanced topics in gravitational physics and its applications to high energy physics. Necessary mathematical tools will be introduced on the way. Instructor: Ruth Gregory/Aldo Riello Students who are not part of the PSI MSc program should review enrollment and course format information here: https://perimeterinstitute.ca/graduate-courses

Pedro will lead a mini-course (no credit) at Perimeter Institute. To express your interest in attending please complete this registration form (https://forms.office.com/r/nDQ6SDxSR4) by noon on Thursday, October 3. Pedro has selected 9 papers for this mini-course. -Infrared Photons and Gravitons by Weinberg, 1965 -Determination of an Operator Algebra for the 2D Ising Model by Kadanoff and Ceva, 1971 -Confinement of Quarks by Wilson, 1974, -Phenomenological Lagrangians by Weinberg, 1979, -Gravitational Effects on and of Vacuum Decay by Coleman and De Luccia, 1980 -Classical and Quantum Gravity Effects from Planckian Energy Superstring Collisions by Amati, Ciafaloni and Veneziano, 1987 -Quantum Spin Chains and The Haldane Gap by Affleck, 1988 -The Large N Limit of SFTs and Supergravity by Maldacena, 1997 -Entanglement Entropy and Quantum Field Theory by Calabrese and Cardy, 2008 If you think there are super nice papers that are missing that could be better than some of these in a particular topic please contact Pedro directly (pvieira@perimeterinstitute.ca). The format will be: A] Pedro will give a 1h30m lecture about one of these papers on a Monday or a Friday (the Monday or Friday right after B] unless there is a holiday) B] One week later, X students give a presentation of Y minutes about important recent papers that refer/are related to that paper. At the end of this lecture we give feedback about those presentations. What is X and what is Y depends on how many students volunteer to present. Of course, people who just want to attend without presenting are also most welcome! Location: Alice Room, 3rd Floor, Perimeter Institute, 31 Caroline St N, Waterloo Recording/Zoom Details: Lectures will be recorded for PIRSA; Zoom link will be provided to registered participants. Building Access: Participants who do not have an access card for Perimeter Institute must sign in at the security desk before each session. When attending the lectures you can use the free self-serve coffee/water station on the ground floor. Meals and snacks at the on-site Black Hole Bistro are available at the full menu cost.

This course offers an introduction to general relativity (GR), focusing on the core principles of Einstein's theory of gravity. We will explore key topics such as the equivalence principle, some essential concepts in differential geometry, the Einstein-Hilbert action, and Einstein's field equations. Furthermore, we will examine practical applications of general relativity in understanding black holes, cosmology, and gravitational waves. Instructor: Ghazal Geshnizjani Students who are not part of the PSI MSc program should review enrollment and course format information here: https://perimeterinstitute.ca/graduate-courses

This course introduces the functional integral formalism, the renormalization group, and non-abelian gauge theory. Additional topics may be covered as time allows. Instructor: Francois David / Gang Xu Students who are not part of the PSI MSc program should review enrollment and course format information here: https://perimeterinstitute.ca/graduate-courses

Cloud clusters cover a wide range of scales: from the turbulent cloud cluster that we observe in the sky with our naked eyes to the gigantic organized cloud bands such as Monsoons, The Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), Cyclones,  the Madden-Julian oscillation (MJO) etc. that satellites observe. On these different scales clouds either aggregate through their own local cloud-circulation feedbacks or sometimes they are seen to ride on top of vortices linked to waves and instabilities. Although the monsoon dynamics has been studied for a long time, how monsoon convection organizes on a variety of time-scales is an unresolved enigma. This program will be organized around this unresolved scientific direction.Topics covered will include:Geophysical fluid dynamics of moist flows: Intro to GFD, Shallow Water equations, Two-layer models, Moist dynamics on equatorial beta plane, Waves and Instabilities, Idealised modeling, parameterisation of precipitation in GFD models.Physics of convectiv...

The proposed program will discuss climate dynamics and networks, with special attention to climate networks, a network paradigm for the organization and analysis of climate data. We hope to bring together researchers on both aspects.  A good fraction of talks will be talks so that researchers on each aspect will be able to familiarize themselves with the other. We will  involve a good fraction of younger researchers, so that activity in this area, which has important applications can grow in the country.The lectures will  focus on the methods and characterizers required for the analysis of climate systems, both from the point of view of analysis and predictions. This involves the study of climate dynamical systems and bifurcation behavior, network characterizers, as well as percolation based measures. We hope to have short pedagogic modules which will introduce each of these separately, and also  discuss their implications for phenomena like the El Nino and La Nina phenomena, the India...