Conference/School

The asymptotic safety paradigm is currently emerging as a highly promising idea for Beyond-Standard-Model physics with key progress in asymptotically safe quantum gravity and asymptotically safe matter models. The last years have seen not only the development of asymptotically safe gravity-matter models but also the discovery of asymptotically safe beyond Standard Model matter models that are under control in perturbation theory. New exciting avenues in (astro) particle physics are now waiting to be explored. For example although the nature of dark matter is a long-standing riddle it is a fact that experimental searches have so far not provided any direct clues but have instead come up with ever more stringent constraints on theoretically preferred regions of parameter space for dark-matter-models. Thus the key to unraveling this riddle could be a new theoretical paradigm to guide model builders. This workshop aims at exploring whether asymptotic safety can be a candidate for this new paradigm. We aim to bring together experts on phenomenological models and quantum gravity to probe both the theoretical viability and empirical signatures of asymptotically safe extensions of the standard model that include gravity. To facilitate a highly productive meeting that can trigger new collaborations each talk will be followed up by 15-20 minutes discussion time. Further each day of the workshop will feature a dedicated discussion session. Participants will be encouraged to contribute questions for the discussion both before as well as during the workshop. The last day of the workshop will conclude with a roadmap discussion during which all participants will be given the opportunity to propose concrete suggestions for follow-up work that might lead into future joint projects.

What can you do with a Physics degree?  Plenty although the reality is that most people being trained in physics at the undergraduate graduate or even postdoctoral levels aren't aware of the broad spectrum of opportunities available to them.  The problem solving skills necessary to succeed in physics are sought after in a wide range of technology financial and industrial sectors. This day will bring together current students and postdocs in theoretical physics with former students who have found great success in a wide range of different areas from startups to big companies finance and even bestselling novels.  Many of them were affiliated with Perimeter Institute and chose their career paths over opportunities in academia.  Through a combination of talks and panel sessions this day will showcase the many career possibilities available to young physicists steps they can take to explore these options and how to avoid the inevitable pitfalls. Lunch will be provided and there will ample opportunities to ask questions and network.

Black hole superradiance is a fascinating process in general relativity and a unique window on ultralight particles beyond the standard model. Bosons -- such as axions and dark photons -- with Compton wavelengths comparable to size of astrophysical black holes grow exponentially to form large clouds spinning down the black hole in the process and produce monochromatic continuous gravitational wave radiation. In the era of gravitational wave astronomy and increasingly sensitive observations of astrophysical black holes and their properties superradiance of new light particles is a promising avenue to search for new physics in regimes inaccessible to terrestrial experiments. This workshop will bring together theorists data analysts and observers in particle physics gravitational wave astronomy strong gravity and high energy astrophysics to explore the signatures of black hole superradiance and to study the current and future possibilities of searching for new particles with black holes.

Our universe is of astonishing simplicity: almost all physical observations can in principle be described by a few theories that have short mathematical descriptions. But there is a field of computer science which quantifies simplicity namely algorithmic information theory (AIT). In this workshop we will discuss emerging connections between AIT and physics some of which have recently shown up in fields like quantum information theory and thermodynamics. In particular AIT and physics share one goal: namely to predict future observations given previous data. In fact there exists a gold standard of prediction in AIT called Solomonoff induction which is also applied in artificial intelligence. This motivates us to look at a broader question: what is the role of induction in physics? For example can quantum states be understood as Bayesian states of belief? Can physics be understood as a computation in some sense? What is the role of the observer i.e. the agent that is supposed to perform the predictions? These and related topics will be discussed by a diverse group of researchers from different disciplines.

Foil theories sometimes called mathematically rigorous science fiction describe ways the world could have been were it not quantum mechanical. Our understanding of quantum theory has been deepened by contrasting it with these alternatives. So far observers in foil theories have only been modeled implicitly for example via the recorded probabilities of observing events. Even when multi-agent settings are considered these agents tend to be compatible in the classical sense that they could always compare their observations. Scenarios where agents and their memories are themselves modeled as physical systems within the theory (and could in particular measure each other as in Wigner's friend experiment) have not yet been considered. In this workshop we will investigate which foil theories allow for the existence of explicit observers and whether they allow for paradoxes in multi-agent settings such as those found in quantum theory. We will also investigate which interpretations of quantum theory would equally well interpret the foil theories and which interpretations are truly quantum. We will gain a deeper understanding of how this can happen by discussing appropriate definitions observers in these theories and seeing how such observers learn about their environment.

Scientific inquiry in the 21st century is beset with inefficiencies: a flood of papers not read theories not tested and experiments not repeated; a narrow research agenda driven by a handful of high-impact journals; a publishing industry that turns public funding into private profit; the exclusion of many scientists particularly in developing countries from cutting-edge research; and countless projects that are not completed for lack of skilled collaborators. These are all symptoms of a major communication bottleneck within the scientific community; the channels we rely on to share our ideas and findings especially peer-reviewed journal articles and conference proceedings are inadequate to the scale and scope of modern science. The practice of open research doing science on a public platform that facilitates collaboration feedback and the spread of ideas addresses these concerns. Open-source science lowers barriers to entry catalyzing new discoveries. It fosters the real-time sharing of ideas across the globe favoring cooperative endeavor and complementarity of thought rather than wasteful competition. It reduces the influence of publishing monopolies enabling a new credit attribution model based on contributions made rather than references accrued. Overall it democratizes science while creating a new standard of prestige: quality of work instead of quantity of output. This workshop will bring together a diverse group of researchers from fields as diverse as physics biology computer science and sociology committed to open-source science. Together we will review the lessons learnt from various pioneering initiatives such as the Polymath project and Data for Democracy. We will discuss the opportunity to build a new tool similar to the software development platform GitHub to enable online collaborative science. We will consider the challenges associated with the adoption of such a tool by our peers and discuss ways to overcome them. Finally we will sketch a roadmap for the actual development of that tool.

Over the past three decades, the idea of a path integral over geometries, describing gravity in various dimensions, has become increasingly central to many areas of theoretical physics, including string and M-theory, holography and quantum aspects of black holes and cosmology.

In each of these areas, the path integral is frequently invoked as a formal device although, as practitioners will admit, except in very special cases the basic formula remains undefined. Typically, classical saddle points are discussed, whether real or complex, but the required integrals are left unperformed.

This state of affairs is untenable because it leaves the theory on a shaky footing and hence does not permit a sound comparison of theoretical predictions with observations. The time has come to critically reassess the foundational ideas of the path integral for gravity, including its definition, evaluation and interpretation; to identify problems with
existing uses and claims based on it, and to seek improvements. The workshop will focus on the continuum theory and its semiclassical limit, with applications to cosmology, black holes and holography. In particular, the notion of a “Euclidean path integral” for a “wavefunction of the universe” will be addressed.

To this effect we intend to revisit discussion of “quantum geometrodynamics” from the path integral viewpoint and to pursue various applications. The developments in this direction that took place in the late 1970's and early 1980's were not incorporated in subsequent efforts, where the emphasis shifted to using a classical background with quantum fluctuations superimposed on it, a split which although useful in particular approximations can hardly be imagined to lie at the  foundation of the theory. The revival of the discussion of the foundation of the path integral for gravity is made timely, we believe, by the introduction of new global methods such as Picard-Lefschetz theory.

The format of the workshop will be unusual. For the first three days, the mornings will begin with a longer, introductory lecture by each of the three organisers, setting out some of the foundational issues. This will be followed by shorter lectures by the participants, tackling the same foundational questions. The morning lectures, held in the Bob room, will be open to all Perimeter residents and visitors. They will be recorded and made available for viewing on PIRSA. Afternoons will be devoted to friendly and informal discussions, with participants invited to offer short contributions which follow up or develop points raised in the mornings, within a relaxed and highly conducive environment. Participation in these afternoon discussion sessions, as well as social events associated with the workshop, will be limited to registered workshop participants. The last two days of the workshop will be an opportunity for participants to continue discussions on topics which emerge as of greatest general interest, as well as to follow up in smaller groups on technical points or new ideas.

The past decade has witnessed significant breakthroughs in understanding the quantum nature of black holes, with insights coming from quantum information theory, numerical relativity, and string theory.  At the same time, astrophysical and gravitational wave observations can now provide an unprecedented window into the phenomenology of black hole horizons.  This workshop seeks to bring together leading experts in these fields to explore new theoretical and observational opportunities and synergies that could improve our physical understanding of quantum black holes.

In the last few years there has been a resurgence of interest in small scale high sensitivity experiments that look for new forces and new particles beyond the Standard Model. They promise to expand our understanding of the Cosmos and possibly explain mysteries such as Dark matter in a way that is complementary to colliders and other large scale experiments. There is a number of different physics motivations and approaches currently being explored in many on-going and newly proposed experiments and they often share common experimental techniques.Many workshops in this field focus on the theory motivations behind these experiments without emphasis on the details of the experimental techniques that enable precision measurements. There is also substantial experimental expertise across many fields, often outside of fundamental physics community, that can be relevant to ongoing and proposed experiments.Thus, we decided to organize the workshop around some of the common experimental techniques. We hope it will be educational for both experimentalists and theorists and lead to discussions on the best way forward. We would like to bring together experimentalists with different expertise in the hope that it will lead to new ideas through interdisciplinary interactions. For theorists, we expect it to provide better appreciation of the challenges and opportunities in improving the sensitivity of precision measurement experiments.

The Kitaev quantum double models are a family of topologically ordered spin models originally proposed to exploit the novel condensed matter phenomenology of topological phases for fault-tolerant quantum computation. Their physics is inherited from topological quantum field theories, while their underlying mathematical structure is based on a class of Hopf algebras. This structure is also seen across diverse fields of physics, and so allows connections to be made between the Kitaev models and topics as varied as quantum gauge theory and modified strong complementarity. This workshop will explore this shared mathematical structure and in so doing develop the connections between the fields of mathematical physics, quantum gravity, quantum information, condensed matter and quantum foundations.