Physics

A fundamental result in solid-state physics asserts that a crystalline material cannot be insulating unless the number of electrons per unit cell is an integer. Statements of this nature are immensely powerful because they are sensitive only to the general structure of the system and not to the microscopic details of the interactions. Such "kinematic constraints" have been extensively generalized in contemporary times, commonly under the term "quantum anomaly”. In this colloquium, I will first review some basic aspects of anomaly constraints in many-body quantum physics. Subsequently, I will demonstrate, through several recent examples, the significant role of quantum anomaly in constraining, understanding, and even unveiling novel quantum phases of matter.

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Almost 100 years after its proposal, the neutrinos play a central role in the search for physics beyond the standard model. In this talk, I will discuss how the neutrinos in long-baseline, leptonic meson decay, or atomic transitions experiments can be used to seek and constrain a diversity of new physics phenomena that may appear in the current and future searches.