Seminar

7-Branes in Non-SUSY String Theory

September 24 (Thu) 15:00 - 17:00, 2026

Masashi Kawahira (Program-Specific Researcher, Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics, Kyoto University)

7-branes play an important role in probing the strongly coupled regime of type IIB superstring theory. In this talk, we discuss whether analogous objects exist in type 0B string theory, which can be regarded as a non-supersymmetric counterpart of type IIB superstring theory. Specifically, we investigate their existence based on the self-duality group of type 0B string theory recently proposed by Baykara, Dudas, and Vafa. This talk is based on joint work with Hiroki Wada (Tohoku University) and Naoto Kan (The University of Osaka), arXiv:2608.16522 [hep-th].

Venue: Hybrid Format (3F #359 and Zoom), Seminar Room #359 (Main Venue) / via Zoom

Event Official Language: English

Tannaka duality for spectral sheaves on compact Hausdorff spaces

September 17 (Thu) 15:00 - 16:30, 2026

Ko Aoki (Postdoc, University of Copenhagen, Denmark)

Tannaka duality asks to what extent a geometric object can be recovered from a category naturally associated with it. In this talk, the geometric objects are topological spaces, and the associated categories are their categories of sheaves of spectra. I showed that, for compact Hausdorff spaces X and Y, every colimit-preserving symmetric monoidal functor from Shv(X; Sp) to Shv(Y; Sp) arises uniquely from a continuous map from Y to X, where Shv(X; Sp) denotes the (∞, 1)-category of sheaves of spectra on X. The main ingredient is an adjunction between the construction of sheaves and a new variant of the smashing spectrum. I will also discuss variants of this machinery to broader classes of spaces, including ongoing work on toposes.

Venue: via Zoom / Seminar Room #359

Event Official Language: English

Primtive form of singularity and mirror symmetry

September 11 (Fri) 15:30 - 17:30, 2026

Zhe Wang (Research Scientist, Division of Fundamental Mathematical Science, RIKEN Center for Interdisciplinary Theoretical and Mathematical Sciences (iTHEMS))

In 1980s, K. Saito introduced the primitive forms in his study of periods as to generalize the elliptic period integral theory to higher dimensions. An important consequence was that there exists a flat structure on the space of universal unfolding of a singularity. Later after Witten proposed his famous conjecture relating the intersection theory on moduli space to the integrable hierarchy, this flat structure was re-discovered by Dubrovin, and nowadays it is referred as a Frobenius mafniold structure. Frobenius mafniolds provide a convenient tool for formulating the mirror symmetry, which was a special type of duality among string theories orginally studied by physicits. In this talk, I will explain the related constructions, and show by examples how the study of primitive forms gives prediction of geometric quantities such as Gromov-Witten invariants.

Venue: #359, 3F, Seminar Room #359 / via Zoom

Event Official Language: English

Making robust reionisation 21 cm signal predictions with C21LRT

September 11 (Fri) 14:00 - 15:15, 2026

Qin Han (JSPS International Research Fellow, Shibaura Institute of Technology)

The redshifted 21 cm line signal is a unique probe for the Epoch of Reionisation by tracking the evolution of the averaged intergalactic medium properties as well as their fluctuations, enabling tomographic studies. Accurate modelling of the 21 cm global and power spectrum signals is crucial for interpreting measurements from current and forthcoming 21 cm experiments. Theoretical predictions usually post-process reionisation simulations with optical depth approximation, which treats local line broadening and peculiar velocities approximately and often leads to divergences due to its velocity gradient term. I will present our cosmological 21 cm line radiative transfer (C21LRT) formulation which resolve these issues naturally. I will compare the 21-cm signals calculated with C21LRT and the conventional optical depth method, and highlight the need to fully quantify the uncertainties of using the optical depth method for exploring the 21-cm signals associated from various possible reionisation scenarios.

Venue: Hybrid Format (2F #220 and Zoom), Main Research Building

Event Official Language: English

Magic state distillation and cultivation #2

September 10 (Thu) 13:30 - 17:00, 2026

Yutaka Hirano (Research Scientist, Nanofiber Quantum Technologies)

Venue: Seminar Room #359 (Main Venue) / via Zoom

Event Official Language: Japanese

Magic state distillation and cultivation #1

September 10 (Thu) 10:30 - 12:00, 2026

Yutaka Hirano (Research Scientist, Nanofiber Quantum Technologies)

Venue: Seminar Room #359 (Main Venue) / via Zoom

Event Official Language: Japanese

How fungi generate one of the highest pressures in biology: the cell wall as a living nanoporous material

September 7 (Mon) 14:00 - 15:00, 2026

Naoyoshi Kumakura (Senior Research Scientist, RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science (CSRS))

Many devastating crop diseases, including anthracnose and rice blast, begin when a fungal pathogen builds a single infection cell called an appressorium. This single cell generates up to ~8 megapascals of turgor pressure (roughly 40 times a car tire’s air pressure), among the highest documented in any living organism, to physically rupture the plant's tough surface. This pressure arises because the cell wall acts as a semipermeable membrane, retaining internal osmolytes such as glycerol while allowing water to pass. What confers this selective permeability had remained unknown for decades: melanin was long assumed responsible, but turgor still forms in melanin-deficient mutants. Using genome editing and direct biochemical analysis of these fungi, we identified two enzymes, PKS2 and PBG13, that synthesize a novel polymer from dihydroxyhexanoic acid (DHHA), which narrows cell-wall pore size at the nanometer scale and is required for turgor generation (Kumakura* et al., Science, 2026). I will frame this system as a living adaptive porous material and discuss questions open to mathematical and physical modeling, including how pore geometry sets the limits of selective permeability.

Venue: Hybrid Format (3F #359 and Zoom), Seminar Room #359

Event Official Language: English

Dualizable Additive Categories

September 4 (Fri) 14:00 - 15:30, 2026

Vladimir Sosnilo (Research Scientist, Division of Fundamental Mathematical Science, RIKEN Center for Interdisciplinary Theoretical and Mathematical Sciences (iTHEMS))

We will discuss the notion of a dualizable additive category. Examples include the category of connective modules over an almost ring in the sense of Gabber--Ramero and the category of nuclear modules in the sense of Clausen and Scholze. Most of the theory parallels the theory of dualizable stable categories, and, in particular, any dualizable additive category can be represented as the category of connective modules over a connective almost ring. The theory is also equivalent to the theory of compactly assembled additive categories of Efimov. As the main application of the theory, we prove a universal property of the category of nuclear modules over uniform Tate rings, that doesn't involve condensed mathematics. This talk is based on a joint work with Ishan Levy and Jiancheng Liang.

Venue: via Zoom / Seminar Room #359

Event Official Language: English

Cancellation of loop corrections to soft power spectrum of inflation

September 3 (Thu) 16:30 - 18:00, 2026

Muzi Hong (Postdoctoral Researcher, Division of Fundamental Mathematical Science, RIKEN Center for Interdisciplinary Theoretical and Mathematical Sciences (iTHEMS))

Inflation theory provides an explanation for the seeds of structure formation and inhomogeneities in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) through quantum fluctuations stretched to cosmological scales during inflation. Mechanisms that enhance small-scale curvature perturbations during inflation can lead to the formation of primordial black holes after horizon re-entry. Recently, some arguments have claimed that loop corrections from such enhanced small-scale fluctuations can give a scale-invariant contribution to the large-scale power spectrum and thereby spoil the inflationary prediction for the CMB. This appears to challenge the standard tree-level expectation that large-scale curvature perturbations are conserved on superhorizon scales in single-clock inflation, and has ignited discussion. In this talk, I will show that the scale-invariant contribution from the enhanced small-scale fluctuations indeed cancels, both in an explicit one-loop calculation and as a consequence of the diffeomorphism symmetry of General Relativity. This seminar is jointly organized by the iTHEMS–ABBL Joint Astro Study Group and the Cosmology Study Group.

Venue: Seminar Room #359 (Main Venue) / via Zoom

Event Official Language: English

Can Electric Sheep Evolve? Engineering Evolution in Populations of Language-Model Agents

September 3 (Thu) 15:00 - 16:00, 2026

Ivan Romić (Research Scientist, Mathematical Social Science Team, Division of Applied Mathematical Science, RIKEN Center for Interdisciplinary Theoretical and Mathematical Sciences (iTHEMS))

The idea of artificial intelligence that evolves has long been a theme in science fiction. It also has roots in early research on complex adaptive systems and artificial societies, including Holland’s Echo framework and Epstein and Axtell’s Sugarscape, which modeled adaptation, resource competition, reproduction, and cultural transmission among artificial agents. Contemporary LLM development, however, has largely centered on pretrained models and gradient-based post-training, while explicitly Darwinian population processes have remained comparatively peripheral. This seminar reviews an emerging literature on evolutionary optimization, cultural transmission, and population dynamics in LLM-based agents. I distinguish systems that merely borrow evolutionary terminology from those implementing meaningful variation, heredity, and reproduction. I then assess the strengths and limitations of current studies and ask whether such processes can support cumulative adaptation, collective intelligence, and potentially new levels of organization among artificial agents.

Venue: Seminar Room #359 (Main Venue) / via Zoom

Event Official Language: English

Computational demands shape seizure susceptibility in recurrent neural networks

September 3 (Thu) 13:00 - 14:00, 2026

Sebastian Eydam (Research Scientist, Neural Circuits and Computations Unit, RIKEN Center for Brain Science (CBS))

Why do some brain areas slip into seizures more readily than others? Anatomy and physiology are part of the story, but in this talk we argue that the computation a network performs is itself a determinant of its vulnerability. Working in the language of recurrent neural networks and attractor dynamics, we contrast two computational regimes: networks that represent continuous variables (e.g. tracking a continuous position in space) establish barrier-free state manifolds, whereas networks that store discrete memories have to separate different states by establishing deep wells. A simple energy-landscape picture suggests that continuous networks can amplify perturbations into runaway activity more easily while discrete networks contain them. We test this idea across three systems: handcrafted spiking attractor networks, recurrent networks trained on continuous or discrete computational tasks, and in vivo Neuropixels recordings comparing medial entorhinal cortex (continuous, grid-cell dynamics) with hippocampal CA3 (discrete memory). Under a shared disinhibitory "seizure perturbation," the continuous systems destabilize sooner and drive stronger epileptiform activity, and causal silencing shows this depends on intact entorhinal output. Together, these results establish a direct link between the computation a network is built to perform and its susceptibility to seizures, showing that the very features that enable a network to process information also shape its vulnerability to pathological transitions.

Venue: via Zoom / #359, 3F, Seminar Room #359

Event Official Language: English

Finite cut-off holography and Matrix models

September 3 (Thu) 10:30 - 11:45, 2026

Sounak Pal (Student, Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar, India)

In this talk, I will discuss finite-cutoff models of two-dimensional topological gravity and their relation to random matrix theories. Random matrix models have emerged as a useful tool for understanding and refining semiclassical holographic dualities, particularly in low-dimensional quantum gravity. I will begin with a brief introduction to large-(N) matrix models and then describe their connection to low-dimensional topological quantum field theories. Along the way, I will highlight how introducing a finite cutoff can lead to significant modifications in the growth of the black-hole interior compared with the matrix-model description of pure JT gravity. Finally, I will discuss the relation between (TT-bar)-deformed Schwarzian theories and their gravitational bulk duals, emphasizing how these deformations provide an avenue for exploring finite-cutoff holography and possible departures from the standard JT-gravity picture.

Venue: #359, 3F, Main Research Building / via Zoom

Event Official Language: English

Coulomb branches in supersymmetric gauge theories

August 28 (Fri) 15:30 - 17:00, 2026

Hiraku Nakajima (Professor, Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU), The University of Tokyo)

Supersymmetric gauge theories in 3 and 4 dimensions have no mathematically rigorous foundation. Coulomb branches of gauge theories originally defined via low energy effective theories by non-rigorous physical argument in 90s. I will explain how I interpret this original argument and make a mathematically rigorous definition of Coulomb branches in my joint work with Braverman and Finkelberg.

Venue: Okochi Hall (Main Venue) / via Zoom

Event Official Language: English

Multistability in Biochemical Reaction Systems: Structural Approach

August 27 (Thu) 16:00 - 17:00, 2026

Takashi Okada (Associate Professor, Program of Mathematical and Life Sciences, Graduate School of Integrated Sciences for Life, Hiroshima University)

In living cells, biochemical reactions form intricate networks that can exhibit multistability, allowing a single system to maintain multiple stable states under identical conditions. However, determining theoretically whether a given reaction system can exhibit multistability is challenging because detailed kinetic parameters are often unknown. In this presentation, we introduce a structural framework that decomposes biochemical networks into subnetworks based solely on network topology. For each subnetwork, we define a scalar quantity, and an index-theoretic argument shows that the sign of this quantity determines whether the subnetwork can contribute to multistability. Our method identifies indicator species whose concentrations distinguish all steady states without detailed kinetic information, thereby enabling efficient measurement design in large networks.

Venue: via Zoom

Event Official Language: English

Scattering amplitude from quantum computing with reduction formula

August 27 (Thu) 15:00 - 16:00, 2026

Wai Kin Lai (Lecturer, The University of Hong Kong, China)

In this talk, I will present a new general framework for computing scattering amplitudes in quantum field theory with quantum computers in a fully nonperturbative way. After giving a motivation for the application of quantum computing to particle physics, I will briefly introduce the basics of quantum computing. After that, I will give the details of the proposed quantum algorithm for calculating scattering amplitudes, which utilizes the Lehmann-Symanzik-Zimmermann (LSZ) reduction formula. In this framework, one only has to construct one-particle states of zero momentum, and no wave packets of incoming particles are needed. The framework is able to incorporate scatterings of bound states, and is ideal for scatterings involving a small number of particles. This framework is expected to have particular advantages when applied to exclusive hadron scatterings. As a proof of concept, by simulations on classical hardware, I demonstrate that in the one-flavor Gross-Neveu model, the fermion propagator, the connected fermion four-point function, and the propagator of a fermion-antifermion bound state obtained from our proposed quantum algorithm have the desired pole structure crucial to the implementation of the LSZ reduction formula. Brief CV: Wai Kin Lai received PhD in physics at the University of Pittsburgh in 2016. He was a postdoctoral reseacher at the Technical University of Munich from 2016 to 2020. From 2020 to 2023, he was a postdoctoral researcher at South China Normal University, and was a visiting assistant researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles from 2022 to 2023. Wai Kin Lai is currently a lecturer at HKU SPACE in Hong Kong. Wai Kin Lai's research interests are applications of effective field theories of QCD to particle phenomenology and studies of nonperturbative physics with quantum computation.

Venue: Seminar Room #359 (Main Venue) / via Zoom

Event Official Language: English

Genome Language Models: From DNA Sequences to Biological Foundation Models

August 13 (Thu) 15:00 - 16:00, 2026

Minrui Chen (Ph.D. Student, Kyushu University)

Recent advances in protein language models have greatly transformed protein structure prediction, functional annotation, and biomolecular design. In contrast, genome language models aim to learn directly from DNA sequences, which represent a more upstream layer of biological information encoding genes, regulatory logic, variant effects, and evolutionary signals. In this talk, I will introduce the basic motivation and recent progress of DNA and genome language models, including DNABERT, DNABERT-2, HyenaDNA, Evo, Evo 2, and AlphaGenome. I will discuss how different model architectures and tokenization strategies address the challenges of genomic sequence modeling, such as long-range dependencies, multi-scale biological structure, and genome-scale context.

Venue: #359, 3F, Main Research Building (Main Venue) / via Zoom

Event Official Language: English

In Search of The Building Blocks of the Universe

August 7 (Fri) 15:00 - 16:30, 2026

Anamaria Hell (Project Researcher, Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU))

We live in an exceptional era of precision cosmology, marked by rapidly advancing observational probes that explore the Universe across many length scales. While these experiments offer clues about the geometry, dynamics, and large-scale structure of the cosmos, they still leave the origin and much of the evolution and structure of the Universe unknown. One of the key steps to answer these questions is to uncover the building blocks of theoretical models in both linear and non-linear regimes. In this talk, I will present methods for uncovering physical degrees of freedom, outlining the standard approaches and presenting an alternative, simple and straightforward way. I will then show how one can naturally connect this approach to machine learning. Finally, I will introduce the framework of constrained gravity, and discuss how such approaches can help address long-standing challenges in fundamental physics and open new directions across disciplines.

Venue: Hybrid Format (3F #359 and Zoom), Seminar Room #359

Event Official Language: English

How Reputation Sustains Cooperation: Mathematical Theories of Indirect Reciprocity

August 6 (Thu) 15:00 - 16:00, 2026

Yohsuke Murase (Team Director, Mathematical Social Science Team, Division of Applied Mathematical Science, RIKEN Center for Interdisciplinary Theoretical and Mathematical Sciences (iTHEMS))

Cooperation among unrelated individuals is a central puzzle in the evolution of social behavior. Indirect reciprocity offers one influential explanation: people help others not only because they expect direct returns, but also because their actions affect their reputation. In this seminar, I will review mathematical theories of indirect reciprocity, focusing on how reputation and social norms can sustain cooperation. I will begin with the classical framework of public assessment, where everyone shares the same view of each individual’s reputation, including the seminal work of Ohtsuki and Iwasa on the “leading eight” social norms. I will then turn to private assessment, where individuals may disagree about others’ reputations, and discuss why synchronization of opinions becomes essential for cooperation. Overall, the seminar aims to provide an accessible overview of how mathematical models allow us to formalize moral judgments—what counts as good or bad behavior—and to understand the evolution of cooperation through reputation.

Venue: Seminar Room #359 (Main Venue) / via Zoom

Event Official Language: English

Theoretical Approaches for Cell Deaths

August 6 (Thu) 13:00 - 14:00, 2026

Yusuke Himeoka (Assistant Professor, Universal Biology Institute, The University of Tokyo)

Understanding the boundary between cell life and death is a fundamental challenge and a highly important theme in biology. In this talk, focusing on microbial cell death, I would like to discuss how "cell death" can be understood from the perspective of mathematical sciences. Research on microbial cell death has progressed by identifying the molecular mechanisms that drive relevant biochemical processes, which are identified based on empirically known cell death markers. However, there has been little discussion on what death actually is in the first place, or how it can be "defined." Furthermore, recent reports have shown that commonly used live/dead assays—such as dead-cell staining and metabolic activity measurements—can yield conflicting results regarding cell viability, highlighting the growing need to discuss what criteria we should use to define "death." In this study, we propose a definition: a cell is "dead" if it cannot return to a predetermined "representative point of the living state," no matter how gene expression levels or external nutrient concentrations are controlled. Plant seeds may appear "dead" at first glance due to their lack of apparent biochemical activity, yet they germinate when watered. Our proposal in this study is to determine the life or death of a cell based on whether an operation equivalent to "watering" exists [1]. Of course, it is experimentally impossible to prove that a cell cannot regain activity under any operation; however, it is theoretically possible using mathematical models. We developed a method called "Stoichiometric Rays" to calculate the controllability of metabolic reaction systems. Using this, we calculated states that cannot be controlled back to the "representative point of the living state" regardless of how enzyme levels and external nutrient concentrations are manipulated. Consequently, we succeeded in quantifying the separating hyperplane between the "living state" and the "dead state" in a mathematical model of metabolism [2], which we call the Separating Alive and Non-life Zone (SANZ) Hypersurface. In this talk, I will outline the theory, the quantification of the SANZ hypersurface, and its biological interpretation. In addition, through our research [3], we have partially identified a class of models that do not exhibit "death" in the sense described above. I would also like to discuss the relationship between the absence of "death" in these models and the autonomy of life.

Venue: #359, Seminar Room #359 (Main Venue) / via Zoom

Event Official Language: English