Seminar
922 events
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Seminar
Clumpy Outflows from Super-Eddington Accreting Black Holes
April 10 (Fri) 14:00 - 15:15, 2026
Haojie Hu (JSPS Research Fellow, University of Tsukuba)
Recent advances in X-ray spectroscopic observation have enabled researchers to reveal distinct clumpy structures in the super-Eddington outflows from the supermassive black hole in PDS 456 (XRISM Collaboration 2025), initiating detailed investigation of fine-scale structures in accretion-driven outflows. In this talk, I will introduce our high-resolution, two-dimensional radiation-hydrodynamics simulations with time-varying and anisotropic initial and boundary conditions that reproduce clumpy outflows from super-Eddington accretion flows. The resulting clumpy outflows extend across a wide range of radial distances and polar angles, exhibiting typical properties such as a size of ~10 rg (where rg is the gravitational radius), a velocity of ~0.05–0.2 c (where c is the speed of light), and about five clumps along the line of sight. Although the velocities are slightly smaller, these characteristics reasonably resemble those obtained from the XRISM observation. The gas density of the clumps is on the order of 10^-13–10^-12 g cm^-3, and their optical depth for electron scattering is approximately 1–10. The clumpy winds accelerated by radiation force are considered to originate from the region within <300 rg.
Venue: #220, 2F, Main Research Building (Main Venue) / via Zoom
Event Official Language: English
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Seminar
Testing the quantum nature of gravity with optomechanical systems
February 26 (Thu) 10:00 - 12:00, 2026
Yuta Michimura (Assistant Professor, Department of Physics, Graduate School of Science, The University of Tokyo)
Quantum gravity remains one of the major challenges in modern physics. Even at the most fundamental level, there is no experimental confirmation of whether a mass placed in a spatial superposition generates a corresponding superposition of gravitational fields. In recent years, experiments aiming to create gravity-induced quantum entanglement have attracted significant attention as a way to probe the quantum nature of non-relativistic gravity. In particular, optomechanical systems, which exploit the interaction between light and mechanical oscillators, provide a promising platform for such studies. We are pursuing experiments at the milligram scale, which lies between the smallest mass scale at which classical gravity has been tested and the largest mass scale at which quantum states of mechanical oscillators have been realized [1]. In this seminar, I will discuss experimental approaches to testing the quantum nature of gravity using suspended and levitated mirrors. I will also discuss our recent proposal to use inverted oscillators to enhance gravity-induced entanglement exponentially [2].
Venue: Hybrid Format (3F #359 and Zoom), Seminar Room #359
Event Official Language: English
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SeminarWhat can we learn from kilonovae about nucleosynthesis and high-density matter?
February 9 (Mon) 14:00 - 15:15, 2026
Oliver Just (Postdoctoral Researcher, GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung, Germany)
The electromagnetic transients accompanying neutron-star mergers (NSMs), called kilonovae, are powered by the radioactive decay of freshly synthesized heavy elements. As such they should contain rich information about the ejected matter and the properties of the extremely dense meta-stable neutron-star remnant formed right after the collision. However, extracting such information from observed kilonova light curves and spectra remains a challenging endeavor, which requires sophisticated models of various hydrodynamic processes and neutrino transport effects, detailed knowledge of nuclear and atomic physics, as well as complex radiative transfer calculations. In this talk I will report recent efforts from our "HeavyMetal" collaboration aimed at deciphering kilonovae.
Venue: Hybrid Format (3F #359 and Zoom), Seminar Room #359
Event Official Language: English
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Seminar
Evolution of sterile soldier castes in aphids
January 21 (Wed) 13:00 - 14:00, 2026
Keigo Uematsu (Assistant Professor, Keio University)
Social evolution in aphids is tightly linked to the formation of galls on their host plants. Galls provide efficient colony defense and nutritionally rich feeding sites such that colony members need not forage outside, leading to high intra-group relatedness. Typically, social aphids form a gall on their primary host plant, after which winged morphs disperse to secondary host plants and establish a free-living, open colony. Remarkably, sterile soldier castes have independently evolved twice in these open colonies, where individuals live on plant surfaces without modifying their structure. These aphids raise intriguing questions about the prerequisites for eusocial evolution and the mechanisms by which two distinct social systems are maintained within a single genome. In this talk, I will first provide an overview of the life cycle and the diversity of altruistic behaviors in gall-forming aphids, and then present our studies of the evolution of a sterile soldier caste in aphids inhabiting open colonies. From a developmental perspective, we tested the hypothesis that the sterile soldiers evolved through the co-option of pre-existing soldier phenotypes in a gall, based on similarity in morphology, transcriptome and behavior. From an ecological perspective, we investigated the kin structure and altruistic behavior of young nymphs in the open colonies of pre-eusocial species, and demonstrate that young aphids exhibit altruism by yielding feeding sites to older kin. Together, we propose that the open colonies of social aphids provide an ideal model system for studying the evolution of altruism.
Venue: Hybrid Format (3F #359 and Zoom), Seminar Room #359 (Main Venue) / via Zoom
Event Official Language: English
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Seminar
A one-world interpretation of quantum mechanics
January 16 (Fri) 14:00 - 16:00, 2026
Isaac Layton (Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Physics, Graduate School of Science, The University of Tokyo)
The measurement problem arises in trying to explain how the objective classical world emerges from a quantum one. In this talk I’ll advocate for an alternative approach, in which the existence of a classical system is assumed a priori. By asking that the standard rules of probability theory apply to it when it interacts with a system linearly evolving in Hilbert space, I’ll show that with a few additional assumptions one can recover the unitary dynamics, collapse and Born rule postulates from quantum theory. This gives an interpretation of quantum mechanics in which classically definite outcomes are always assigned probabilities, rather than superpositions, giving one-world instead of many. The main technical tool used is a change of measure on the space of classical paths, the functional form of which characterises the quantum dynamics and Born rules of a class of quantum-like theories. Time allowing, I will also discuss how these results clarify which additional assumptions must be accepted if one wishes to seriously consider classical alternatives to quantum gravity.
Venue: #445-447, 4F, Main Research Building / via Zoom
Event Official Language: English
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Seminar
Median-based estimators for randomized quasi-Monte Carlo integration
January 9 (Fri) 15:00 - 17:00, 2026
Kosuke Suzuki (Associate Professor, Yamagata University)
High-dimensional numerical integration is a ubiquitous challenge across various fields, from mathematical finance to computational physics and Bayesian statistics. While standard Monte Carlo (MC) methods are robust, their probabilistic error convergence rate of $O(N^{-1/2})$ is often insufficient for demanding applications. In this talk, I will introduce Quasi-Monte Carlo (QMC) and Randomized QMC (RQMC) methods, which offer a powerful framework for accelerating integration using low-discrepancy point sets. A key advantage of this deterministic approach is its ability to achieve a convergence rate of $O(N^{-1+\epsilon})$, significantly outperforming the standard MC rate. The second part of the talk will focus on the construction of point sets, specifically lattice rules and digital nets. I will explain how these methods achieve higher-order convergence rates, faster than $O(N^{-1})$, for sufficiently smooth integrands. I will also discuss their randomized variants and demonstrate how RQMC with mean-based estimators provides practical error estimation while maintaining high-order convergence. Finally, I will discuss recent progress in RQMC involving median-based estimators. I will highlight how these estimators achieve almost optimal convergence rates for various function spaces without requiring prior knowledge of the integrand.
Venue: Hybrid Format (3F #359 and Zoom), Seminar Room #359
Event Official Language: English
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Seminar
Higher Gauge Structures and Invariant Action Principles
January 6 (Tue) 15:15 - 16:15, 2026
Sebastián Salgado (External Researcher, Instituto de Alta Investigacion, Universidad de Tarapaca, Chile)
I present the systematic construction of gauge theories based on free differential and L-infinity algebras. This provides a consistent algebraic framework for constructing gauge-invariant theories whose field content is extended by higher-degree differential forms as gauge potentials. I derive explicit expressions for the corresponding extended Chern-Simons actions and the generalized anomaly terms that emerge from them. Possible applications to gravity and supergravity will also be discussed.
Venue: Seminar Room #359 (Main Venue) / via Zoom
Event Official Language: English
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Seminar
Invitation to Random Tensor Models: from random geometry, enumeration of tensor invariants, to characteristic polynomials
January 6 (Tue) 13:30 - 14:30, 2026
Reiko Toriumi (Associate Professor, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST))
I will introduce random tensor models by first reviewing their motivation coming from random geometric approach to quantum gravity. Then, I will selectively present some of the interesting research results, by highlighting recent results on enumeration of graphs representing tensor invariants, and reporting our recent work on a new notion of characteristic polynomials for tensors via Grassmann integrals and distributions of roots of random tensors. The latter two are based on arXiv:2404.16404[hep-th] and arXiv:2510.04068[math-ph]
Venue: #359, 3F, Main Research Building (Main Venue) / via Zoom
Event Official Language: English
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Seminar
Topological Image Analysis
December 25 (Thu) 12:00 - 13:00, 2025
Shizuo Kaji (Professor, Institute of Mathematics for Industry, Kyushu University)
Topological Data Analysis (TDA) applies algebraic topology to the study of data such as point clouds. When applied to image and volumetric data, TDA provides a way to capture the topological features that characterise shapes and spatial structures. In this talk, I will outline the strengths and limitations of TDA for image analysis, and compare its capabilities with those of deep neural networks. I will also present hands-on examples using our open-source software Cubical Ripser. Finally, I will highlight a new direction in the use of TDA for image processing.
Venue: Room C501, West Zone 1 Building D, Ito Campus, Kyushu University, SUURI-COOL (Kyushu) (Main Venue) / via Zoom
Event Official Language: English
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Seminar
Cosmological correlators beyond the de-Sitter invariance
December 24 (Wed) 15:00 - 17:00, 2025
Zhu Yuhang (Postdoctoral Researcher, Particle Theory and Cosmology Group, Center for Theoretical Physics of the Universe (CTPU), Institute for Basic Science (IBS), Republic of Korea)
Cosmological correlators serve as powerful probes of the physics that governed the Universe in its earliest moments. Yet analytic calculations of correlators involving massive spinning fields are highly challenging. Recent progress in the cosmological bootstrap program has greatly deepened our understanding of these correlators. In this talk, we will show how to extend the bootstrap program beyond exact de Sitter invariance by studying two types of symmetry breaking: explicit scale-invariance breaking and boost breaking. We will present the boundary differential equations that characterise correlators in these settings and highlight the rich phenomenology that emerges. Finally, we will also show recent developments in approximation methods, based on the combination of exact WKB and saddle-point method, which provide a precise, efficient, and physically transparent way to capture and classify the non-analytic features of correlators.
Venue: via Zoom / Seminar Room #359
Event Official Language: English
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Seminar
Neural Network Quantum States for Quarkonium in Medium: Real-Time Open Quantum-System Dynamics
December 19 (Fri) 16:00 - 17:00, 2025
Tom Magorsch (Ph.D. Student, Department of Physics, Technical University of Munich, Germany)
Many phenomena in high energy physics can not be described by Euclidean-time Monte Carlo estimates alone, but require genuine real-time evolution and a treatment of non-equilibrium effects. However, such simulations are computationally challenging. One such example is the evolution of heavy quarkonium in the quark gluon plasma produced in heavy-ion collisions. In this talk, I will introduce the open quantum system treatment of in-medium quarkonium. I will then give an overview on neural network quantum states as a variational approach to the real-time simulation of open quantum systems. As a controlled benchmark system, I will study the application to the Caldeira-Leggett model and conclude with an outlook on future applications of neural network based simulation of quarkonia in medium.
Venue: via Zoom
Event Official Language: English
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Seminar
Two-component dark matter scenario in a pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone dark matter model - Tomohiro Abe
December 18 (Thu) 14:00 - 15:30, 2025
Tomohiro Abe (Assistant Professor, Kobayashi-Maskawa Institute for the Origin of Particles and the Universe (KMI), Nagoya University)
The WIMP dark matter (or thermal dark matter) is one of the leading candidates for dark matter and is widely studied. On the other hand, recent progress in direct detection experiments places severe constraints on WIMP dark matter models. Pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone boson dark matter models (pNG DM models) can explain the measured value of the dark matter energy density via the freeze-out mechanism and also naturally suppress the dark matter-nucleon scattering. The amplitudes for the processes are proportional to the momentum transfer squared from the dark sector to the visible sector; It is suppressed by t ~ 0 for the dark matter-nucleon scattering process, while it is proportional to s ~ 4 m_DM^2 for annihilation processes. The simplest realization faces the domain wall problem and needs to be extended. Several models have been proposed, but each model brings other issues, a large hierarchy in new energy scales, parameter tunings, and a Landau pole of a new gauge coupling. In this talk, I would like to propose a new pNG DM model based on SU(2)_gauge times SU(2)_global symmetry that overcomes those issues. The model predicts a two-component DM scenario, where one is pNG, and the other is an ordinary WIMP. I will show that the effective spin-independent cross section in the direct detection experiments is smaller than the current upper bound and larger than the prospect of the Darwin project in a wide range of parameter space in the two-component DM scenario.
Venue: Hybrid Format (3F #359 and Zoom), Seminar Room #359
Event Official Language: English
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Seminar
Origin and evolutionary history of an urban underground mosquito
December 18 (Thu) 13:00 - 14:00, 2025
Yuki Haba (Postdoc, Zuckerman Institute, Columbia University, USA)
Urbanization is rapidly reshaping landscapes around the world, which poses questions about whether and how quickly animals and plants can adapt. Culex pipiens form molestus, more commonly known as the "London Underground mosquito," has been held up as a benchmark for the potential speed and complexity of urban adaptation. This intraspecific lineage within Cx. pipiens, a major West Nile virus vector, is purported to have evolved human biting and a suite of other human-adaptive behaviors in the subways and cellars of northern Europe within the past 200 years. Form molestus features prominently in textbooks as well as scholarly reviews of urban adaptation. Yet, the hypothesis of in situ urban evolution has never been rigorously tested. I will talk our recent efforts to understand the contentious origin and evolutionary history of the urban, human-biting mosquito. Our synthesis and meta-analysis of rich yet confusing literature show that its London Underground origin is unlikely (Haba and McBride 2022 Current Biology). Whole genome resequencing and population genomics of 800+ mosquitoes across ~50 countries again debunk the in situ evolution hypothesis and instead support that molestus first adapted to human environments >1000 years ago in the Mediterranean or Middle East, most likely in ancient Egypt or another early agricultural society (Haba et al. 2025 Science). I will outline implications of our results in urban evolutionary biology as well as in public health. Speaker Bio Yuki Haba, Ph.D., is an evolutionary biologist passionate about understanding how and why diverse behaviors evolve in nature. He is currently a Leon Levy Scholar in Neuroscience at Columbia University's Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute. He aims to take multi-desciplinary approaches, combining genomics, neuroscience, and field-based behavioral ecology to comprehensively understand the evolution of behavior. Yuki completed his PhD at Princeton, MA at Columbia, and undergraduate degree at the University of Tokyo. Personal webpage: https://yukihaba.github.io/
Venue: Seminar Room #359
Event Official Language: English
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Seminar
A bi-fidelity Asymptotic-Preserving Neural Network approach for multiscale kinetic problems
December 17 (Wed) 11:00 - 12:00, 2025
Liu Liu (Assistant Professor, Department of Mathematics, The Institute of Mathematical Sciences, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong)
In this talk, we will introduce a bi-fidelity Asymptotic-Preserving Neural Network (BI-APNNs) framework, designed to efficiently solve forward and inverse problems for the linear Boltzmann equation. Our approach builds upon the previously studied Asymptotic-Preserving Neural Network (APNNs), which employs a micro-macro decomposition to handle the model’s multiscale nature. We specifically address a bottleneck in the original APNNs: the slow convergence of the macroscopic density in the near fluid-dynamic regime. This strategy significantly accelerates the training convergence as well as improves the accuracy of the forward problem solution, particularly in the fluid-dynamic limit. We show several numerical experiments on both linear Boltzmann and the Boltzmann-Poisson system that this new BI-APNN method produces more accurate and robust results for forward and inverse problems compared to the standard APNNs. This is a joint work with Zhenyi Zhu and Xueyu Zhu.
Venue: Seminar Room #359 (Main Venue) / via Zoom
Event Official Language: English
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Seminar
Phase transition in parametrized quantum circuits
December 16 (Tue) 10:00 - 12:00, 2025
Xiaoyang Wang (Postdoctoral Researcher, Quantum Mathematical Science Team, Division of Applied Mathematical Science, RIKEN Center for Interdisciplinary Theoretical and Mathematical Sciences (iTHEMS))
Venue: Seminar Room #359 (Main Venue) / via Zoom
Event Official Language: English
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Seminar
Is the Fornax galaxy cluster hiding its radio sources?
December 15 (Mon) 14:00 - 15:15, 2025
Alvina Yee Lian On (PD, Physics Division, National Center for Theoretical Sciences, Taiwan)
Recently, the ASKAP POSSUM and MeerKAT surveys revealed an apparent lack of radio source counts in the Fornax galaxy cluster field. The sources in this patch of sky also appeared to be less polarised. These observations are peculiar and could be important signatures of depolarisation on megaparsec scales. In this talk, I will present some of our recent results, where we quantified the effects on polarisation of radio point sources behind a merging galaxy cluster simulation. The merger gives rise to a large-scale intracluster shock, which compresses the gas and aligns the magnetic field along the shock front. The in-falling subcluster also triggers gas sloshing near the cluster center, resulting in the formation of cold fronts. Our ray-tracing calculations revealed that, generally, bright sources do not experience any significant changes in polarisation, whereas faint sources either get severely depolarised or enhanced as their radiation propagates through the intracluster medium. I will highlight the physical conditions under which polarisation may change significantly along the line-of-sight and discuss how these may impact our interpretations of radio observations, particularly with the SKA.
Venue: Hybrid Format (3F #359 and Zoom), Seminar Room #359
Event Official Language: English
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Seminar
RIKEN Quantum hands-on seminar on IBM and QEDMA software for quantum computing beginners
December 15 (Mon) 9:30 - 12:20, 2025
This seminar will be conducted in a hybrid format, both in-person and via Zoom. Since it includes hands-on sessions, we kindly ask you to consider attending in person whenever possible to ensure more effective learning. The overview of the seminar is as follows: Program: 9:30 - 10:50 Yuri Kobayashi (IBM Quantum) "Introduction to IBM Quantum and Qiskit" 10:50 - 11:00 Break 11:00 - 12:20 Ori Alberton (QEDMA) "Introduction to QESEM error mitigation software: Theory, use-case demonstrations and usage tutorial" Abstract of Yuri Kobayashi's tutorial: This talk introduces HPC researchers to the IBM Quantum platform and the Qiskit SDK, providing a practical orientation to quantum programming without assuming prior quantum-computing knowledge. Attendees will learn how to construct and execute quantum circuits using Qiskit, explore available simulators, and real quantum backends and submit jobs to IBM’s cloud-based quantum processors. The session will also showcase how to map your problem to quantum circuits through specific use-case applications. Abstract of Ori Alberton's tutorial: This talk introduces QESEM, Qedma’s characterization-based software tool for reliable, high-accuracy quasi-probabilistic error mitigation. We will begin by explaining why error mitigation methods are expected to be the first to unlock quantum advantage, and why they will continue to play a central role even as error correction becomes feasible. We will highlight some of the key innovations underlying QESEM’s operation and present recent results on IBM Heron r2 devices demonstrating its capabilities in the largest utility-scale unbiased error mitigation experiment to date. In addition different use-cases and demonstrations ran by QESEM users will be presented. Finally, we will provide guidance on how to start using QESEM to obtain error-mitigated results in experiments on IBM quantum systems.
Venue: Seminar Room #359 (Main Venue) / via Zoom
Event Official Language: English
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Seminar
Fracture squares and separable algebras
December 12 (Fri) 16:00 - 17:30, 2025
Luca Pol (Postdoctoral Researcher, Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn, Germany)
In this talk I will present a way to reconstruct a category from its subcategories of complete and local objects while retaining the symmetric monoidal structure. As an application of this machinery I will discuss how to calculate separable algebras in equivariant homotopy theory.
Venue: via Zoom / 3F 345-347 Seminar Room, Main Research Building
Event Official Language: English
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Seminar
Widespread conservation of genetic effect sizes between human groups across traits
December 12 (Fri) 13:30 - 15:00, 2025
Simon Robert Myers (Professor, University of Oxford, UK)
Understanding genetic differences between populations is essential for avoiding confounding in genome-wide association studies and improving polygenic score (PGS) portability. We developed a statistical pipeline to infer fine-scale Ancestry Components and applied it to UK Biobank data. Ancestry Components identify population structure not captured by widely used principal components, improving stratification correction for geographically correlated traits. To estimate the similarity of genetic effect sizes between groups, we developed ANCHOR, which estimates changes in the predictive power of an existing PGS in distinct local ancestry segments. ANCHOR infers highly similar (estimated correlation 0.98 ± 0.07) effect sizes between UK Biobank participants of African and European ancestry for 47 of 53 quantitative phenotypes, suggesting that gene–environment and gene–gene interactions do not play major roles in poor cross-ancestry PGS transferability for these traits in the United Kingdom, and providing optimism that shared causal mutations operate similarly in different populations.
Venue: via Zoom / Seminar Room #359
Event Official Language: English
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Seminar
From perturbations of operators to noncommutative condensers
December 11 (Thu) 16:00 - 17:00, 2025
Dan Voiculescu (Professor, Department of Mathematics, University of California, Berkeley, USA)
A numerical invariant, the quasicentral modulus underlies the multivariable generalizations of the classical Weyl-von Neumann-Kuroda and Kato-Rosenblum theorems. There are also connections to the Kolmogorov-Sinai dynamical entropy. I will also point out some of the open problems. Recently a noncommutative analogy with condenser capacity in nonlinear potential theory is emerging, that provides a new perspective on the subject.
Venue: via Zoom / #359, 3F, Main Research Building
Event Official Language: English
922 events