Seminar
709 events
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Seminar
Genetic Drift and Gnatural Selection
September 22 (Thu) at 16:00 - 17:00, 2022
Thomas Hitchcock (Special Postdoctoral Researcher, iTHEMS)
Understanding how the various evolutionary forces of mutation, selection, and drift collectively shape the genetic composition of populations is a key goal of population genetics research. One classic method of study has been to compare different inheritance systems, and particularly popular has been the within genome comparison of autosomes and sex chromosomes. However, inferences from such comparisons can be limited by the fact that multiple factors differ between sex chromosomes and autosomes (e.g. ploidy and transmission genetics). Here, we study a group of black winged fungus gnats with a peculiar type of reproduction “digenic PGE” in which X and autosomes are inherited equally from females and males, but the X remains expressed in a haploid state in males compared to a diploid state in females. I first explain what is known about their inheritance system, and then show how we can extend classic theory to the various inheritance systems that coexists within the fungus gnats.
Venue: via Zoom
Event Official Language: English
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Seminar
MeV gamma-ray all sky simulation
September 16 (Fri) at 14:00 - 15:00, 2022
Naomi Tsuji (Assistant Professor, Faculty of Science, Kanagawa University)
The MeV gamma-ray domain is the only unexplored window among recent multiwavelength observations in astrophysics, often referred to as the "MeV gap". To fulfill this gap, there are several ongoing and planned projects of MeV gamma-ray telescopes. The measurement of MeV gamma rays (both continuum and line emission) would give us new insight into many topics in astrophysics, such as relativistic jets, particle acceleration, and origin of matter. In advance of the future MeV gamma-ray missions, we have been working on prediction of the MeV gamma-ray sky, which is helpful to determine what kinds of sources can be detectable with the future telescopes. In order to explore the MeV gamma-ray sources, we performed a catalog cross-matching between the hard X-ray (Swift/BAT) and GeV gamma-ray (Fermi/LAT) catalogs, resulting in 145 firmly cross-matched sources. Combined with the Galactic diffuse emission, which is calculated by GALPROP to reconcile the cosmic-ray and gamma-ray spectra with observations by AMS-02, Voyager, and Fermi-LAT, the all-sky maps in the MeV gamma-ray band can be produced. This is also used to investigate a long-standing problem in the MeV gamma-ray astrophysics: the origin of the diffuse emission from the inner Galaxy, measured by COMPTEL. I will report the analysis and results in detail, and introduce future missions of the MeV gamma-ray detectors.
Venue: via Zoom
Event Official Language: English
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Seminar
Phantom Bethe excitations and spin helices in integrable spin chains
September 15 (Thu) at 17:00 - 18:15, 2022
Vladislav Popkov (University Wuppertal, Germany)
We demonstrate the existence of a special chiral “phantom” mode with some analogy to a Goldstone mode in the anisotropic quantum XXZ Heisenberg spin chain. The phantom excitations contribute zero energy to the eigenstate, but a finite fixed quantum of momentum. The mode exists not due to symmetry principles, but results from nontrivial scattering properties of magnons with momentum k given by the anisotropy via cos (k) = Jz/Jx. The mode originates from special string-type solutions of the Bethe ansatz equations with unbounded rapidities, the phantom Bethe roots. All such Bethe states are chiral (the simplest representative being factorized state with helicoidal magnetization profile) and exist in both periodic and open XXZ spin chain under fine-tuning. I show how phantom Bethe states can be generated dissipatively, by setting a polarization gradient via coupling the ends of the open spin chain to suitable dissipative baths. Spin helix eigenstates were observed and used in recent cold atom experiments, and led to further surprising findings.
Venue: via Zoom
Event Official Language: English
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Seminar
Hessian Geometric Structure of Equilibrium and Nonequilibrium Chemical Reaction Newtworks
September 8 (Thu) at 16:00 - 17:00, 2022
Tetsuya Kobayashi (Associate Professor, Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo)
Cells are the basic units of all living things, and their functions are realized by circuits and networks of chemical reactions. Thus, understanding the mechanism how various cellular functions are implemented by chemical reaction networks (CRN) is the central challenge in biophysics and quantitive biology. Among various aspects of CRN, its thermodynamic property is particularly important because most of biological functions are energy-consuming nonequilibrium phenomena. However, even though the equilibrium chemical thermodynamics and kinetics of chemical reactions were founded more than one century ago, the nonequilibrium theory of CRN is still immature. One reason is the nonlinearity in the constitutive equation between chemical force and flux, which prevents us from associating the tangent and cotangent spaces of the dynamics by the usual inner product structure. In this work, we show that the nonlinear relation between chemical force and flux can be captured by Legendre transformation and the geometric aspects of CRN dynamics can be characterized by Hessian geometry. Hessian geometry is the geometry generated by Legendre dual pairs of convex functions and is the basis of dually flat structure of information geometry and also equilibrium thermodynamics. Thus, we have dually flat structures in CRN dynamics, one on the state-potential space where equilibrium and energetic aspect is formulated (1,2), and the other on the force-flux space where nonequilibrium and kinetics aspect is characterized(3). Two of them are consistently connected by topological property of the underlying hypergraph structure of CRN. We discuss potential applications of this structure not only for CRN but also for other phenomena and problems(4,5).
Venue: via Zoom
Event Official Language: English
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Seminar
Search for Galactic SNR PeVatrons: γ-ray observations in the vicinity of SNRs G106.3+2.7 & HB9
September 2 (Fri) at 14:00 - 15:00, 2022
Tomohiko Oka (Ph.D. Student, Division of Physics and Astronomy, Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University)
Supernova remnants (SNRs) are believed to be the site of cosmic ray acceleration up to PeV (called PeVatron), but there is no conclusive observational evidence. The possible reason is that only young SNRs (t_age < 1 kyr) can accelerate CRs up to PeV, and then the particles escape at the early stage, thus, the opportunity to observe them is limited. To investigate this scenario, we observed and analyzed the following two SNRs. First, we focused on SNR G106.3+2.7, the most promising SNR as a PeVatron, since 100 TeV gamma rays have been detected with air shower experiments. With the gamma-ray observation results, we discussed the origin of the PeV CR in the vicinity of this middle-aged SNR (t_age = 5-10 kyr) and then obtained the following interpretation: CRs accelerated at the SNR in the past are illuminating the molecular cloud and producing gamma rays at present. Second, we analyzed the observation data around SNR HB9 and newly found gamma-ray emissions outside the SNR shell at the molecular cloud region. The gamma-ray emission can be explained by the protons accelerated and escaped from the SNR in the past. Therefore, we have attempted to measure the time evolution of the maximum acceleration energy at the SNR by comparing the gamma-ray spectra at the SNR shell and cloud regions. In this seminar, I will report the analysis results of those two SNRs.
Venue: via Zoom
Event Official Language: English
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Seminar
Loop structure via one sided loop extrusion with twist deformation
September 1 (Thu) at 16:00 - 17:00, 2022
Hiroshi Yokota (Postdoctoral Researcher, iTHEMS)
During cell division, a chromatin fiber condenses into the rod-like shape which is so called chromosome. The chromosome is composed of consecutive loop structures. Many researchers have been interested in the loop formation mechanism. The loop extrusion is the one of the promising hypotheses. However, the only loop extrusion does not completely explain the chromosome condensation dynamics. In order to tackle this problem, we constructed a mechanical model of the loop formation dynamics by focusing on the twist and writhe structures in DNA or chromatin. In this talk, I would like to explain the loop extrusion mechanism and our model.
Venue: via Zoom
Event Official Language: English
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Seminar
Study of the eta' meson in nuclei in the LEPS2/BGOegg experiment
August 26 (Fri) at 16:30 - 18:00, 2022
Natsuki Tomida (Specially Appointed Assistant Professor, Center for Science Adventure and Collaborative Research Advancement (SACRA), Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University)
A large mass reduction of eta'(958) meson in nuclear medium owing to its UA(1) anomaly is expected in several model calculations. We carried out the LEPS2/BGOegg experiment at SPring-8 to study eta' meson properties in nuclei. If there is a large mass reduction in nuclei, an eta' meson and a nucleus may form a bound state. We searched for the eta'-nucleus bound states via missing mass spectroscopy of the 12C(gamma, p) reaction. To suppress background events from multi-meson production, we simultaneously measured decay products from the eta'-nucleus system for the first time. We also carried out the missing mass spectroscopy simultaneously detecting an eta' meson escaping from a nucleus for the first time. We will show the experimental results and comparisons with theoretical calculations. We will also show the preliminary results of the line shape analysis of the invariant mass spectra of the eta'->2gamma decay in the gamma+12C->eta'+X reaction.
Venue: Common Room #246-248 (Main Venue) / via Zoom
Event Official Language: English
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Seminar
Testing Astrophysical Models from the Shadow of the Galactic Center Black Hole
August 26 (Fri) at 14:00 - 15:00, 2022
Yosuke Mizuno (T.D. Lee Fellow / Associate Professor, Tsung-Dao Lee Institute, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China)
We present the first Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) observations of Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), the Galactic center source associated with a supermassive black hole. These observations were conducted in 2017 using a global interferometric array of eight telescopes operating at a wavelength 1.3 mm. A variety of imaging and modeling analyses all support an image that is dominated by a bright, thick ring with a diameter of ~50 micro-arcsecond. Using a large suite of numerical simulations, we demonstrate that the EHT images of Sgr A* are consistent with the expected appearance of a Kerr black hole with mass ∼4 million solar mass, which is inferred to exist at this location based on previous infrared observations of individual stellar orbits, as well as maser proper-motion studies. Our model comparisons disfavor scenarios where the black hole is viewed at high inclination (i > 50 deg), as well as non-spinning black holes and those with retrograde accretion disks. Our results provide direct evidence for the presence of a supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. In this talk, I will focus on more theoretical interpretation and model comparison to understand the accretion flow properties nearby Sgr A*.
Venue: via Zoom
Event Official Language: English
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Seminar
A rooted phylogeny of bacteria resolves early evolution
August 25 (Thu) at 16:00 - 17:00, 2022
Adrian Davin (JSPS Research Fellow, Department of Biological Sciences, Graduate School of Science, The University of Tokyo)
Bacteria are the most diverse life forms on Earth and yet, we know surprisingly little about their early evolution. In this talk, I will explain how phylogenetic reconciliations and models of genome evolution can be used to answer some of the most interesting open questions in biology, such as the nature of the last bacterial common ancestor or whether a tree is a meaningful representation of evolution in the presence of abundant lateral gene transfer.
Venue: via Zoom
Event Official Language: English
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Seminar
How does subatomic matter organize itself? A low-energy nuclear physics perspective
August 3 (Wed) at 16:30 - 18:00, 2022
Xavier Roca-Maza (Associate Professor, Department of Physics, University of Milan, Italy / Sezione di Milano, INFN, Italy)
This seminar is a part of the RCNP workshop (RCNP研究会「低エネルギー核物理と高エネルギー天文学で読み解く中性子星」). Those who want to attend this seminar are required to register for the workshop by July 31. This seminar is supported by Gravitational Wave and Equation of State Working Group (GW-EOS WG), RIKEN iTHEMS.
Venue: Research Center for Nuclear Physics (RCNP), Osaka University (Main Venue) / via Zoom
Event Official Language: English
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Seminar
Product Replacement Algorithm, Semidefinite Programming, and Operator Algebras
August 2 (Tue) at 16:00 - 17:00, 2022
Narutaka Ozawa (Professor, Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences (RIMS), Kyoto University)
Suppose you are given a large finite set G and want to estimate the size |G| or see how a typical element x in G looks like. In this talk, G will be a finite group generated by g_1,...,g_d. The "Product" Replacement Algorithm" is a popular algorithm for random sampling in the group G. The PRA shows outstanding performance in practice, but the theoretical explanation has remained mysterious. I will talk how an infinite-dimensional topological-algebraic analysis (operator algebra theory) connects this problem to a convex (semidefinite) optimization problem that can be rigorously solved by computer. This talk is intended for a general audience.
Venue: Hybrid Format (Common Room 246-248 and Zoom)
Event Official Language: English
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Seminar
Test of the Cosmological principle by observing the primordial gravitational waves
July 27 (Wed) at 13:30 - 15:00, 2022
Yuko Urakawa (Associate Professor, High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK))
In this talk, using the generalized deltaN formalism, which dramatically facilitates a computation of the primordial density perturbation and the primordial GWs (PGWs), we address a violation of the Cosmological principle, namely a violation of the global isotropy in the Universe. It’s turned out that measuring the PGWs provides a powerful tool to explore a violation of the global isotropy. If time permits, I will also discuss some prospects on LiteBIRD.
Venue: Hybrid Format (Common Room 246-248 and Zoom)
Event Official Language: English
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Seminar
Introduction to instanton knot homology
July 25 (Mon) at 16:00 - 18:00, 2022
Hayato Imori (Ph.D. Student, Division of Mathematics and Mathematical Sciences, Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University)
Floer theory is an infinite-dimensional version of Morse theory and has provided powerful invariants in the study of low-dimensional topology. In the context of Yang-Mills gauge theory, some versions of Floer homology groups for knots have been developed. These knot invariants are called instanton knot homology groups and are strongly related to representations of the fundamental group of the knot complement. In this talk, the speaker introduces basic constructions of instanton knot homology groups and recent developments related to the equivariant version of instanton knot homology theory.
Venue: Hybrid Format (Common Room 246-248 and Zoom)
Event Official Language: English
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Seminar
Superconducting-like heat current: Effective cancellation of current-dissipation trade-off by quantum coherence
July 25 (Mon) at 13:30 - 15:00, 2022
Tajima Hiroyasu (Assistant Professor, Graduate School of Informatics and Engineering, The University of Electro-Communications)
Recent developments in statistical mechanics have revealed a tradeoff between heat current and dissipation [1,2]. In various situations, this current-dissipation tradeoff represents a relationship between thermal energy flow and entropy increase, similar to Joule’s law W=RI^2. On the other hand, the coherence effect on the current-dissipation tradeoff has not been thoroughly analyzed. Here, we systematically analyze how coherence affects the current-dissipation tradeoff [3]. The results can be summarized in the following three rules:
Venue: via Zoom
Event Official Language: English
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Seminar
Bayesian optimization of multivariate genomic prediction models based on secondary traits for improved accuracy gains and phenotyping costs
July 21 (Thu) at 16:00 - 17:00, 2022
Kosuke Hamazaki (Ph.D. Student, Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences, The University of Tokyo)
In recent years, the genomic prediction that predicts phenotypic values from marker genotype data has attracted much more attention in the area of breeding. Especially, genomic selection using prediction values based on genomic prediction models has been contributing to more efficient and rapid breeding. In genomic prediction, it is important to construct the prediction model so that its accuracy becomes higher. Thus, multivariate genomic prediction models with secondary traits, such as data from various omics technologies including high-throughput phenotyping (e.g., unmanned aerial vehicle-based remote sensing), have started to be applied to many datasets because it offers improved accuracy gains compared with genomic prediction based only on marker genotypes. Although there is a trade-off between accuracy gains and phenotyping costs of secondary traits, no attempt has been made to optimize these trade-offs. In this study, we propose a novel approach to optimize multivariate genomic prediction models with secondary traits measurable at early growth stages for improved accuracy gains and phenotyping costs. The proposed approach employs Bayesian optimization for efficient Pareto frontier estimation, representing the maximum accuracy at a given cost. The proposed approach successfully estimated the optimal secondary trait combinations across a range of costs while providing genomic predictions for only about 20% of all possible combinations. The simulation results reflecting the characteristics of each scenario of the simulated target traits showed that the obtained optimal combinations were reasonable. Analysis of real-time target trait data showed that the proposed multivariate genomic prediction model had significantly superior accuracy compared to the univariate genomic prediction model.
Venue: via Zoom
Event Official Language: English
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Seminar
Seiberg-Witten Floer homotopy
July 15 (Fri) at 14:00 - 16:30, 2022
Hokuto Konno (Assistant Professor, Graduate School of Mathematical Sciences, The University of Tokyo)
I will survey a mathematical object called the Seiberg-Witten Floer homotopy type introduced by Manolescu. This is a machinery that extracts interesting aspects of 3- and 4-dimensional manifolds through the Seiberg-Witten equations. This framework assigns a 3-manifold to a "space" (more precisely, the stable homotopy type of a space), and this space contains rich information that is strong enough to recover the monopole Floer homology of the 3-manifold, which is known already as a strong invariant. I shall sketch how this theory is constructed along Manolescu's original work, and introduce major applications. If time permits, I will also explain recent developments of Seiberg-Witten Floer homotopy theory. If you are not familiar with the mathematical formulation of TQFT and categorification, I recommended you to watch Dr. Sano's recent talk in advance (see related links).
Venue: Hybrid Format (Common Room 246-248 and Zoom)
Event Official Language: English
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Seminar
Dual stochasticity of neurons and synapses for sampling-based learning in the brain
July 14 (Thu) at 16:00 - 17:00, 2022
Jun-nosuke Teramae (Associate Professor, Nonlinear Physics Division, Department of Advanced Mathematical Sciences, Graduate School of Informatics, Kyoto University)
Neurons and synapses behave highly stochastically in the brain. However, how this stochasticity is beneficial for computation and learning in the brain remains largely unknown. In this presentation, we will see that the stochastic processes in neurons and synapses can be integrated into a unified framework to optimally sample events from the environments, resulting in an efficient learning algorithm consistent with various experimental results. In particular, the learning algorithm enables us to reproduce the recently discovered efficient power-law coding in the cortex. These results suggest that synapses and neurons work cooperatively to implement a fundamental method for stochastic computing in the brain.
Venue: via Zoom
Event Official Language: English
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Seminar
Speed limits for macroscopic transitions
July 13 (Wed) at 13:30 - 15:00, 2022
Ryusuke Hamazaki (RIKEN Hakubi Team Leader, Nonequilibrium Quantum Statistical Mechanics RIKEN Hakubi Research Team, RIKEN Cluster for Pioneering Research (CPR))
Speed of state transitions in macroscopic systems is a crucial concept for foundations of nonequilibrium statistical mechanics as well as various applications in quantum technology represented by optimal quantum control. While extensive studies have made efforts to obtain rigorous constraints on dynamical processes since Mandelstam and Tamm, speed limits that provide tight bounds for macroscopic transitions have remained elusive. Here, by employing the local conservation law of probability, the fundamental principle in physics, we develop a general framework for deriving qualitatively tighter speed limits for macroscopic systems than many conventional ones. We show for the first time that the speed of the expectation value of an observable defined on an arbitrary graph, which can describe general many-body systems, is bounded by the “gradient” of the observable, in contrast with conventional speed limits depending on the entire range of the observable. This framework enables us to derive novel quantum speed limits for macroscopic unitary dynamics. Unlike previous bounds, the speed limit decreases when the expectation value of the transition Hamiltonian increases; this intuitively describes a new trade-off relation between time and the quantum phase difference. Our bound is dependent on instantaneous quantum states and thus can achieve the equality condition, which is conceptually distinct from the Lieb-Robinson bound. We also find that, beyond expectation values of macroscopic observables, the speed of macroscopic quantum coherence can be bounded from above by our general approach. The newly obtained bounds are verified in transport phenomena in particle systems and nonequilibrium dynamics in many-body spin systems. We also demonstrate that our strategy can be applied for finding new speed limits for macroscopic transitions in stochastic systems, including quantum ones, where the bounds are expressed by the entropy production rate. Our work elucidates novel speed limits on the basis of local conservation law, providing fundamental limits to various types of nonequilibrium quantum macroscopic phenomena.
Venue: Hybrid Format (Common Room 246-248 and Zoom)
Event Official Language: English
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Seminar
Adiabatic pumps in quantum spin systems
July 12 (Tue) at 16:00 - 17:15, 2022
Ken Shiozaki (Assistant Professor, Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics, Kyoto University)
The Thouless pump is a one-parameter cycle of 1-dimensional gapped quantum systems with U(1) symmetry, which is classified by integers. In this talk, I introduce a generalization of the Thouless pump to quantum spin systems in any dimension with any finite group onsite symmetry. I show a simple model with Z_2 onsite symmetry, and how it is nontrivial via boundary degrees of freedom. Using the framework of the injective matrix product state, one can construct the topological invariant in a way similar to the Berry phase. If time allows, I will briefly introduce a group cohomology model by Roy and Harper for generic space dimensions and discuss its properties.
Venue: via Zoom
Event Official Language: English
709 events