Astronomy Seminar: Towards precision measurements of dark matter

Sukanya Chakrabarti (Rochester Institute of Technology/IAS)

For more than a century now, our inference of the mass distributions (including dark matter) in galaxies have been based on modeling the positions and velocities of stars, i.e., using kinematic analyses,…

High Energy Seminar: Automorphic Spectra and the Conformal Bootstrap

Sridip Pal (Institute for Advanced Study)

We point out that the spectral geometry of hyperbolic manifolds provides a remarkably precise model of the modern conformal bootstrap. As an application, we use conformal bootstrap techniques to derive…

Thesis Defense: "Cosmology and Astrophysics from small scales"

Shivam Pandey (University of Pennsylvania)

Committee members: Bhuvnesh Jain, Mark Devlin, Ravi Sheth (Chair), Elisabeth Krause (from University of Arizona) and Jonathan Heckman

 

HET Seminar: Renormalization Group Flow as Optimal Transport

Jordan Cotler (Harvard)

We establish that Polchinski's equation for exact renormalization group flow is equivalent to the optimal transport gradient flow of a relative entropy.  This provides a…

Condensed and Living Matter Seminar: "Topological Defects in Smectic Liquid Crystals: Applied Measured Foliations"

Randy Kamien (University of Pennsylvania)

Smectic liquid crystals are layered systems that abound in nature.  I will introduce these materials and show how the long-lived, topologically protected

…

Astronomy Seminar: Andromeda as a Stepping Stone to the Local Volume: Chemodynamics of Extragalactic Streams and Shells

Massive galaxies like the Milky Way and Andromeda (M31) form in part from the accretion of less massive galaxies. The chemical and dynamical properties of disrupted galaxies, in the form of streams and…

Physics and Astronomy Colloquium: "The synergy of biophysics and active materials"

Arnold Mathijssen (University of Pennsylvania)

Understanding the physics of living systems allows us to design new materials that are active and adaptive, akin to cells and tissues. Conversely, these active matter systems can reveal…

High Energy seminar: "Harnessing S-duality in N=4 SYM and in gravity"

Scott Collier (Princeton University)

I will describe an approach to extracting the physical consequences of S-duality of four-dimensional N = 4 super Yang-Mills (SYM) and its string theory dual based on SL(2,Z) spectral theory. I will…

Astronomy Seminar: "Understanding the Cosmological Evolution of Galaxies with Intensity Mapping"

Jason Sun (Caltech)

The intensity mapping (IM) technique has been devised as a powerful tool to investigate the large scale structure and galaxies, alternative and complementary to the more traditional means relying on…

Condensed and Living Matter Seminar: "How flows shape life"

Karen Alim (Technical University of Munich)

Vascular networks constantly reorganize to optimize function. Some veins grow, others shrink and disappear. How can a local adaptation mechanism account for the plethora of vein dynamics observed? Here,…