2014 SUMMER
PROGRAM
* denotes the organizer
responsible for participant diversity in
the workshop
May 25 – September
14
Individual Research
Physicists are encouraged
to apply as individual researchers to work
on their own projects for up to five weeks
at any time during the summer. We provide
a serene atmosphere to complete work. The
individual researcher may also choose to
attend any workshop meetings or chat with
other scientists in residence in addition
to working on his or her own research.
Click here for more
information.
May
25 – September 14
Working Group
Working groups of between two and six
physicists are encouraged. Click here for more
information.
May 25 - June 15
Dwarf Galaxies as
Cosmological Probes
Organizers:
Elena D'Onghia,
University of Wisconsin
Mike Boylan-Kolchin, University
of Maryland
Alyson Brooks, Rutgers
University
Marla C. Geha, Yale
University
Julio Navarro,
University of Victoria
Beth Willman, Haverford
College
Recent wide-field
surveys have revolutionized our
understanding of the Local Group of
Galaxies. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey, in
particular, has more than doubled the
number of known dwarf galaxies orbiting
the Milky Way and revealed a new
population of ultrafaint dwarf satellites.
At the same time, advances in
computational cosmology have led to
improved predictions for the properties of
the smallest dark matter halos that host
dwarf galaxies in the current paradigm of
structure formation, the Lambda Cold Dark
Matter model.
The simultaneous progress in the modeling
and observing fronts has transformed dwarf
galaxy studies into powerful probes of
both the prevailing cosmological paradigm
and of our understanding of galaxy
formation. Locally, dwarfs trace the
extreme faint end of the galaxy formation
process, while at high redshift they seem
to play an important role in the
reionization of the Universe. Making
explicit connections between the high and
low redshift Universe holds the promise of
validating or challenging the current
cosmological paradigm of structure
formation on small scales.
This Aspen Summer workshop will bring
together experts in Galactic astronomy,
cosmology and stellar astrophysics in
order to promote collaborative efforts
across theoretical, computational and
observational disciplines. By fostering
discussionsn and interactions between
theorists and observers, we aim to help to
set the scene for the exploitation of
current and future surveys, including
GAIA, and the Large Synoptic Survey
Telescope.
May 25
- June 22
Modern Trends in
Quantum Magnetism
Organizers:
Andrey Chubukov,
University of Wisconsin
Roderich Moessner, Oxford
University
Satoru Nakatsuji
University of Tokyo
Natalia Perkins, University
of Wisconsin
Oleg Tchernyshyov, Johns
Hopkins University
Much of recent progress
in modern condensed matter has been
stimulated by important advances in the
field of quantum magnetism. Notable
examples of systems in which magnetism
plays a crucial role include
transition-metal compounds and
heavy-fermion intermetallic compounds,
where strong electron correlations lead to
emerging collective properties and various
novel behaviors. The important role in the
understanding of these strongly correlated
electron systems is played by the
appearance of new low-energy spin models
and development of powerful field
theoretical approaches and advanced
computational techniques allowing to study
these models. This workshop will provide a
broad overview of the latest results in
quantum magnetism bringing together
experimental and theoretical condensed
matter physicists. During the workshop, we
plan to discuss a range of topics
including (i) Novel ground states of
matter and excitations, (ii) Frustrated
magnetism, (iii) Field theories of
itinerant magnetism, (iv) Emergent gauge
fields, and (v) Interplay of disorder and
interactions.
June
1 - June 22
Bacteria Meet Physics
II
Organizers:
Thierry Emonet, Yale
University
KC Huang, Stanford
University
David Nelson, Harvard
University
Sima Setayeshgar, Indiana
University
Ned Wingreen, Princeton
University
Rapid technical progress
and recent discoveries in molecular
biology have brought biologists
face-to-face with the importance and
challenge of understanding emergent
physical phenomena in living cells.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the
study of bacteria, where fast generation
times, tractable genetic systems, a wealth
of biochemical probes, novel imaging
approaches, and the availability of
complete genomes for hundreds of species
have allowed dramatic progress in
characterizing cellular components and
their basic interactions. However,
biologists have found that this
characterization is generally inadequate
to formulate a full understanding of
cellular processes. This “understanding
gap” points to the presence in cells of
biophysical phenomena, often subtle,
complex, and intrinsically out of
equilibrium, that emerge from the multiple
interactions of cellular components. Over
evolutionary time, cells have exploited
and interwoven these biophysical effects
to optimize the function of their systems.
For physicists, helping biologists to
understand how cells use physics is not
only a challenge but also an opportunity:
billions of years of “experiments” in
biophysics are packed into every cell.
This workshop will addressing three broad
areas where collaboration between
physicists and bacteriologists have and
continue to be highly productive: (1)
intracellular organization, dynamics, and
mechanics; (2) principles of information
transmission and decision making; and (3)
principles of nonequilibrium biophysics.
June 8
- June 29
Ultra-Compact
Binaries as Laboratories for Fundamental
Physics
Organizers:
Paul Groot, Radboud
University Nijmegen
Ilya Mandel, University
of Birmingham
Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz,
University of California, Santa Cruz
Stephan Rosswog,Stockholm
University
Ultra-compact binaries
with orbital periods shorter than one hour
are central to understanding such
disparate phenomena as type Ia supernova
and short gamma-ray burst explosions; they
serve as laboratories for studying the
physics of accretion, which produces the
bulk of high-energy radiation in the
Universe; and they are spectacular probes
of the extreme physics at high energy and
high density, being strong
gravitational-wave sources. Recent
progress in observations of ultra-compact
populations ranges from a revolution in
the discovery of detached white dwarf
binaries to observations of gamma-ray
pulsars. The coming decade holds enormous
promise for further study of ultra-compact
binaries, due to the advent of large
wide-field and variability surveys to find
new systems, efficient optical and near-IR
spectrographs combined with large
telescopes to allow detailed
characterization of their properties, and
the imminent advent of gravitational-wave
astronomy, which will allow studying these
populations in unprecedented detail. On
the theoretical front, detailed modeling
of the evolution of binaries, the onset of
mass transfer and the merger process
itself relies on further developing
relativistic numerical methods, and
combining hydrodynamics with radiation and
magnetic interaction. The goal of this
workshop is to bring together experts in
binary evolution, stellar evolution,
accretion processes,gravitational
radiation, and radio, optical and X-ray
astronomy in order to promote
collaborations between these groups.
June
15 - July 6
Fast and Furious:
Understanding Exotic Astrophysical
Transcients
Organizers:
Joshua Bloom,
University of California, Berkeley
Ryan Foley, University
of Illinois
Suvi Gezari, University
of Maryland
Daniel Kasen, University
of California, Berkeley
Alicia M. Soderberg,
Harvard University
Over the last decade,
with the implementation of large,
systematic, digital-image supernova
searches, astrophysicists have begun to
discover many astrophysical transients
that do not fall into the traditional
supernova classes. About a dozen new types
of “exotic” or “peculiar” transients were
found lurking in the shadows. These are
observationally diverse events; some are
100 times fainter than typical supernovae,
with durations of a few days instead of
weeks (“Fast”), while others are 100 times
brighter than typical supernovae and can
last for years (“Furious”). Currently,
discovery is outpacing understanding. This
workshop aims to bring together
researchers with diverse backgrounds and
varied expertise to deepen our physical
understanding of the heterogeneity of
exotic transients, and to draw connections
between classes. By bridging the current
gap between data and theory, participants
will have the opportunity to develop new
theories and observing strategies,
necessary preparations for the coming era
of Advanced LIGO and LSST.
June
22- July 20
Connecting Flavor
Physics with Naturalness: from Theory to
Experiment
Organizers:
Roni Harnik, Fermi
National Laboratory
Gudrun Hiller, Technical
University of Dortmund
Graham Kribs, University
of Oregon
Jure Zupan, University of
Cincinnati
The past year has seen
remarkable progress in the discovery and
in scrutinizing the properties of a
particle consistent with a Higgs boson.
Electroweak symmetry breaking appears to
be well described by a weakly-coupled
sector with properties that are broadly
consistent with the Standard Model. From
the perspective of flavor physics, the LHC
and Tevatron data provide new clues for
flavor physics by measuring how the Higgs
couples to fermions. From the perspective
of electroweak symmetry breaking and Higgs
physics, these new data provide new clues
for the naturalness problem.
The aim of the workshop is to bring
together experts to study flavor physics,
and the origins of flavor, and see what
impact this has on the naturalness problem
of the Higgs sector and vice versa. Given
the various experiments dedicated to
flavor physics that are ongoing or
planned, combined with the LHC data on
Higgs physics, summer 2014 will prove to
be an opportune moment to analyze the
theory/experiment interplay for flavor and
naturalness.
July
6 - August 3
Emergent Spacetime in
String Theory
Organizers:
Donald Marolf,
University of California, Santa Barbara
Joseph Polchinski,
University of California, Santa Barbara
Eva Silverstein Stanford
University
General arguments from
black hole quantum mechanics suggest that
spacetime must be holographic, emerging
from degrees of freedom living on a lower
dimensional space. AdS/CFT and other
gauge/gravity dualities have given
concrete examples of this. They provide at
least a partial formulation of quantum
gravity subject to special boundary
conditions via a dual description which,
intriguingly, makes no reference to the
usual spacetime geometry. Many interesting
results follow from this duality,
including geometric realizations of
supersymmetry breaking and confinement,
new methods for finite density transport
calculations, and the unitarity of black
hole evaporation. But despite over 15
years of research, central questions
involving the duality are still far from
understood. These include the particular
manner in which the bulk spacetime emerges
from the dual gauge theory, whether the
duality provides a complete and unique
definition of the bulk theory, and how to
best describe bulk degrees of freedom far
from the boundary -- especially inside the
horizons of black holes. This part of the
duality appears particularly important in
attempts to generalize it to backgrounds
closer to the spacetime we observe,
dominated by a positive cosmological
constant today and with structure
apparently seeded by quantum fluctuations
during early universe inflation. Our
program will address central problems on a
broad front using a variety of methods
including the study of entanglement
entropy and its connection with spacetime
geometry, various approaches to holography
for de Sitter and other cosmological
spacetimes, new insights from the black
hole information paradox, and detailed
analysis of concrete models such as higher
spin gravity and string-theoretic
constructions.
July
20 - August 10
Combining Probes in
Cosmological Surveys
Organizers:
Sarah Bridle, University
of Manchester
Scott Dodelson, Fermi
National Laboratory
Masahiro Takada, Kavli
Institute for the Physics and Mathematics
of the Universe
The Lambda-dominated Cold Dark Matter
paradigm successfully explains a broad
range of cosmological observations
including the recent Planck measurement of
cosmic microwave background anisotropies.
However, the success is only
phenomenological in that the model
requires introducing new unknown physics
in the form of inflation, dark matter and
dark energy or modified gravity.
Understanding the nature of this new
physics is arguably the most tantalizing
problem in cosmology today. Cosmological
observations, such as galaxy surveys and
cosmic microwave background experiments,
offer the most promising way of making
progress on these problems. The workshop
will focus on learning even more about the
new physics by combining the many probes
made possible by these observations.
August
3 - August 31
Model Building in the
LHC Era
Organizers:
Mu-Chun Chen,
University of California, Irvine
Stuart Raby, Ohio State
University
Michael Ratz, Technical
University, Munich
Carlos Wagner, University
of Chicago
The workshop will
concentrate on the question of Higgs
physics, as well as on models that provide
a description of high energy physics
phenomena beyond the one provided by the
SM. It will bring together experts working
on the various areas of particle physics
model building and phenomenology
(extensions of the standard model,
neutrino, grand unified and string model
building) to confront the theories with
current experimental data from the LHC and
other experiments, such as direct and
indirect dark matter detection
experiments, as well as discussing future
searches.Present and future data from the
LHC and other experiments may discover new
physics beyond the SM and/or allow us to
constrain this new physics. It will also
help us to identify viable settings which
are consistent with other requirements,
such as those from flavor physics or
cosmology. Guidelines for model building
can come from more top--down scenarios
such as grand unified theories, string
compactifications and/or models with
(warped) extra dimensions. We aim at a
discussion of how to test such ideas at
the LHC and other experiments, and
possibly invent new ways of exploring
physics beyond the standard model.
August
10 - September 7
Gauge Fields in
Condensed Matter, Ultracold Atoms and
Beyond
Organizers:
Victor Galitski, University
of Maryland
Arun Paramekanti,
University of Toronto
Daniel Podolsky,
Technion
Ian Spielman, National
Institute of Standards and Technology
Smitha Vishveshwara,
University of Illinois
The physics of gauge
fields spans energy scales ranging from
trillions of Kelvin in particle physics to
the scale of a few Kelvin for solids.
Recent experiments on ultracold atomic
gases have made remarkable breakthroughs
in realizing synthetic magnetic fields and
spin-orbit coupling for neutral atoms,
pushing the energy scale to observe the
physics of gauge fields down to the
nano-Kelvin. Parallel developments in
condensed matter physics include the
discovery of new states of quantum
condensed matter --- topological
insulators, quantum spin liquids, and
Chern insulators --- in which spin-orbit
coupling and emergent dynamical gauge
fields play an important role. Particles
such as the famous Higgs boson, which play
a crucial role in gauge theories of
elementary particles and in condensed
matter physics, have also recently been
detected in experiments on the atomic Bose
Hubbard model. Such emergent gauge fields
also appear in itinerant magnets,
accompanying the formation of exotic
skyrmion textures. The aim of this
workshop is to bring together leading
theorists and experimentalists in the
field of ultracold atomic gases and
condensed matter physics in order to
foster an exchange of ideas. Given the
rapid developments in these areas, both in
ultracold atoms and solid-state physics,
such an interdisciplinary workshop would
be extremely timely and have a great
impact in setting directions for future
research.
August
10 - August 31
Many-Body Quantum
Systems Far from Equilibrium
Organizers:
Uwe Bovensiepen,
University of Duisburg-Essen
Andew Daley, University
of Pittsburgh
James Freericks,
Georgetown University
Marcos Rigol,
Pennsylvania State University
Joerg Schmiedmayer, TU-Wien
Despite the great progress made over the
last 50 years in understanding quantum
many-body systems in equilibrium, their
dynamics far from equilibrium has remained
relatively unexplored until quite
recently. This results in part from the
fact that we do not yet have a unified
theoretical framework for non-equilibrium
systems that is comparable to
well-established concepts of universality
in equilibrium systems, and in part
because it was previously very difficult
to probe nonequilibrium relaxation
processes in experiments. This picture has
changed rapidly in the last few years as
great progress has been made in the AMO
and Condensed Matter communities, both in
terms of new experiments that give access
to dynamics on fast timescales and in
clean environments, and also in terms of
theoretical advances in describing these
processes. The goal of this program is to
bring together a core of theorists and
experimentalists from the AMO and
Condensed Matter communities, as well as a
variety of researchers from other fields.
We will discuss recent developments in the
understanding of many-body quantum
dynamics, with an emphasis on the advances
in theoretical formalisms and experimental
approaches that have made those
developments possible. By stimulating the
sharing ideas between these separate
communities, and bringing these
communities in contact with researchers
studying out-of-equilibrium processes in
other subfields, we aim to accelerate the
development of an understanding of far
from equilibrium quantum dynamics.
August
24 - September 14
The Galaxy-Halo
Connection Across Cosmic Time
Organizers:
Andreas Berlind,
Vanderbilt University
Frank Van Den Bosch,
University of Utah
Jeremy Tinker, New York
University
Risa Wechsler, Stanford
University
Andrew Zentner, University
of Pittsburgh
August
31 - September 14
Radiation Driven
Outflows in Stars and Quasars
Organizers:
Janet Drew, University
of Hertfordshire
Martin Elvis,
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for
Astrophysics
Fred Hamann, University
of Florida
Norman Murray,
University of Toronto
Nolan R. Walborn, Space
Telescope Science Institute
Radiation pressure operates in a wide
range of astrophysical environments from
comets to quasars. Both the phenomenology
and the physics involved is complex and is
dominated by electron scattering and
atomic line driving in ionized
environments. Understanding line driving
and closely associated problems are
subjects of active interest in several
distinct fields. This workshop
concentrates on the best-studied areas:
stellar winds in hot stars and disk winds
in compact binaries, and quasars. These
separate fields are a classic case of
long-suspected, but little-explored
physical commonalities. For example,
understanding of O-star wind physics is
quite advanced, while that of quasars is
less so and might benefit from the former.
Conversely, quasar phenomena span a wider
range of physical conditions and so may
well illuminate the key physics to apply
to current issues in massive stellar
winds. By bringing the best observers and
theorists in each field for extensive
discussions this workshop aims to
establish collaborations across research
areas. To enable this no session will be
exclusively focused on stars, CVs or on
quasars, but will address a single
physical problem common to both.
