IPMU Focus Week

Condensed Matter Physics Meets High Energy Physics

hosted by the Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (IPMU),

in cooperation with the Institute for Solid State Physics (ISSP).

February 8 - 12, 2010, in the main auditorium of IPMU

It will be the first international conference held at the new IPMU building

on the Kashiwa campus of the University of Tokyo. (Access to IPMU)

Program is available here.

Schedule is available here.

Organizers (*: co-chairs)

Hideo Aoki* (Department of Physics, University of Tokyo),

Hirosi Ooguri* (Caltech & IPMU, University of Tokyo),

Masaki Oshikawa (ISSP, University of Tokyo),

Shinsei Ryu (University of California at Berkeley),

Tadashi Takayanagi (IPMU, University of Tokyo).

Invited Speakers Eduardo Fradkin (UIUC), Satoshi Fujimoto (Kyoto), Alexei Kitaev (Caltech), Nicholas Read (Yale), Xiao-Gang Wen (MIT), Shoucheng Zhang (Stanford).

Sean Hartnoll (Harvard), Shamit Kachru (UCSB), Hong Liu (MIT), Shiraz Minwalla (Tata Inst.), Volker Schomerus (DESY), Dam Son (U. Washington).

Purpose of the Focus Week: Beautiful ideas developed by theorists in one area of physics often have unexpected applications in others. Quantum field theory is an outstanding example. As the basic language of both condensed matter physics and high energy physics, it has provided fertile ground for interactions of the two areas of physics, and common techniques using renormalization, symmetry, topology and integrability have been developed. Recently, the AdS/CFT correspondence has opened a new interface between condensed matter physics and quantum gravity. The present workshop will bring together the two communities to share ideas, identify common problems and develop new techniques to solve them. We are planning various arrangements to enhance interactions of condensed matter physicists and high energy physicists, including tutorial lectures and ample time for informal exchanges. Topics will include quantum criticality, quantum liquid, topological order, integrable systems, graphene, relativistic and non-relativistic conformal field theories and their holographic descriptions.

PDF version of this poster is available here.