Talks

Newton\'s first law of motion - and the very meaning of inertia - has been described as either completely obvious (D\'Alembert) or a \'logician\'s nightmare\' (ex-editor of the American Journal of Physics). Sometimes the simplest things in physics are the most subtle. The first law will be described in historical context, explaining a connection with the ancient Greeks’ distinction between natural and violent motion and with Descartes\' natural philosophy. You will also learn why it still requires careful handling and what it tells us about time in physics. \'Time and Motion\', Harvey Brown, time, motion, relative, Copernicus, Ptolemy, Galileo, Copernicanism, Descartes, inertia, Newton, standard of time, Fitzgerald, duration, inertial frame

Boundary conformal field theory finds applications not only to high energy physics but also to condensed matter systems containing quantum impurities, whose world lines can sometimes be modelled as boundaries of 2-dimensional space-time. This technique leads to exact predictions for the low temperature behaviour of gated semi-conductor quantum dot devices which have been recently confirmed experimentally. I will give a non-technical overview of both the theory and the experiments.

If low-scale supersymmetry exists in nature, then it it will be very likely that a number of superpartners will be discovered at the LHC. It is also very likely, however, that much of the supersymmetric spectrum will go unobserved, leaving many important holes in our understanding of the TeV scale. Direct and indirect astrophysical probes of neutralino dark matter can enable for some of these holes to be filled. By studying the interactions of the lightest neutralino, in many models, a much more complete understanding of supersymmetry can be achieved than is possible by using hadron colliders alone.

We discuss motivations, observational constraints and consequences of modifying the fundamental laws of gravity at large distances. Such modifications of gravity can be the reason for the observed late-time acceleration of the Universe, and can be differentiated from conventional dark energy via precision cosmology. The inevitable additional polarizations of graviton lead to observably large perihelion precession of the Lunar and Martian orbits. These theories also have potentially observable consequences at LHC .

I will discuss various different ways of quantifying the differences between two quantum observables (POVMs). Each of these approaches gives rise to a notion of approximately measuring one observable by means of measuring some other observable. This will be illustrated in the case of position and momentum by studying the question which POVMs on phase space can reasonably be said to represent a joint approximate determination of these observables. A new, universally valid trade-off relation for the associated inaccuracies will be rigorously formulated. I will sketch the proof which is an adaptation of some interesting techniques and properties of covariant phase space observables used recently by R Werner in a related project. Recommended reading (optional): quant-ph/0405184 (R Werner), quant-ph/0609185 (PB et al), and also for further background information quant-ph/0309091 (M Hall), quant-ph/0310070 (M Ozawa), quant-ph/9803051 (DM Appleby).

Weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) are excellent candidates for cold dark matter. After the first millisecond, WIMPs have decoupled from standard model matter, both chemically and kinetically, they enter the free streaming regime and the formation of cosmic structure begins. Another 40 million years pass before the typical first structures enter the nonlinear regime and collapse to the first WIMPy halos. Therefore, it has been assumed that structure formation is insensitive to the WIMP field theory and can be neglected. However, this leads to a monotonically increasing power of structure formation on small scales and some kind of regularization procedure would be required to make the hierarchical picture of structure formation well defined. It will be shown that nonequilibrium processes give rise to a physical regularization of hierarchical structure formation. This has important consequences for indirect and direct dark matter searches which are sensitive to sub-galactic and sub-milli-parsec scales. Furthermore, due the existence of a physical regulator, the problem of structure formation can consistently be solved using N-body simulations.