Seminar

Positivity constraints for the gravitational path integral

May 21 (Thu) 10:00 - 11:50, 2026

Gabriele Di Ubaldo (Postdoctoral Researcher, RIKEN-Berkeley Center, Division of Global Collaborations and Research Talent Development, RIKEN Center for Interdisciplinary Theoretical and Mathematical Sciences (iTHEMS))

For a quantum theory of gravity to have a well-defined Hilbert space, the inner product between different states of open and closed universes must be positive semi-definite. Positivity however is not manifest in the low-energy effective theory and in fact imposes nontrivial constraints on the theory. Working in the Gravitational Path Integral (GPI) approach, we derive the general set of positivity constraints on the closed and open universe Hilbert spaces. In the case of AdS gravity, open universe positivity in principle follows from CFT unitarity, however the holographic description of closed universes remains unclear. Strikingly, we exhibit positivity of closed universes across many theories and prove that open positivity implies closed positivity, showing that the CFT 'knows' about the closed universe hilbert space. We then analyze positivity constraints on gravitational theories coupled to axions. We present a method to compute off-shell axion wormholes in AdS and flat space which we use to show that positivity is violated if the axion shift symmetry is exact. In low-energy EFTs where these wormholes are perturbatively stable, to restore positivity the wormhole must have a non-perturbative instability due to instantons that breaks the shift symmetry. Positivity then leads to a proof of a sharp version of the Axion Weak Gravity Conjecture A-WGC, including precise numerical constants. For the QCD axion this provides a bound on the axion decay constant which has phenomenological and experimental consequences for axion searches. In string theory, positivity gives a bound on the coupling between the axion and the dilaton in the low energy effective action.

Venue: via Zoom

Event Official Language: English

Realizing two-dimensional discrete time crystals on a digital quantum computer

May 19 (Tue) 15:00 - 16:30, 2026

Kazuya Shinjo (Research Scientist, Computational Quantum Matter Research Team, RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science (CEMS))

This work was featured in a RIKEN press release. For details, please see the related link.

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

Event Official Language: English

Synthetic Data from Domain Knowledge: Pretraining Medical Deep Networks under Data Scarcity

May 18 (Mon) 14:00 - 15:00, 2026

Naoki Nonaka (Senior Research Scientist, Medical Science Deep Learning Team, Division of Applied Mathematical Science, RIKEN Center for Interdisciplinary Theoretical and Mathematical Sciences (iTHEMS))

Training deep learning models typically requires large-scale data, yet in the medical domain such data are often difficult to obtain due to privacy constraints, the rarity of certain diseases, and the high cost of acquisition. In this talk, I present one approach to this challenge: pretraining with synthetic data generated from domain knowledge. As concrete examples, I introduce the synthesis of electrocardiograms (ECG) and phonocardiograms (PCG). For ECG, each waveform component (P, Q, R, S, and T) is modeled with Gaussian functions; for PCG, synthetic signals are generated by combining S1 and S2 heart sounds with modulated noise. I show that pretraining a model on such synthetic data and then fine-tuning on a small amount of real data substantially improves classification performance compared to training on real data alone, and that this improvement becomes more pronounced as the size of the real dataset decreases. I will also touch on extensions such as self-supervised learning with synthetic data and a comparison between knowledge-driven simulators and learned generative models, and discuss the broader potential of domain knowledge as a data source for medical applications where real data are limited.

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

Event Official Language: English

Basics of chiral lattice fermion

May 18 (Mon) 13:00 - 14:00, 2026

Arata Yamamoto (Senior Research Scientist, 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

Introduction to quantum resource theories (3)

May 15 (Fri) 9:00 - 17:00, 2026

Ryuji Takagi (Associate Professor, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The University of Tokyo)

[Registration Closed] Due to high demand and venue capacity limits, registration for this course is now closed as of April 25. If you wish to be placed on a waiting list in case of cancellations, please contact us via the inquiry form at the bottom of this page. One of the central goals of quantum information theory is to quantitatively clarify the relationship between the performance of quantum information processing and the valuable quantum features that underlie it. In this lecture, we will discuss quantum resource theories, a framework that provides a useful approach to this question. By presenting concrete examples—starting with entanglement theory, the most representative resource theory—as well as recent research results, we will see how perspectives and tools from information theory enable the quantification of quantum resources and the characterization of their convertibility. Beyond entanglement theory, we plan to discuss other key settings such as quantum thermodynamics, resource theory of asymmetry, and quantum magic—relevant resource in fault-tolerant quantum compuation. The overall aim of this lecture is to provide new analytical viewpoints that can be applied to a wide range of systems and quantum information processing tasks. While we do not plan to change the overall start and end times for each day, the detailed lecture schedule is subject to change. The intensive course will be held over three days. Please register for the course using the form. The registration deadline is May 7 (Thu). Please note that the registration form is the same for all three days, so you only need to register once. The 3rd day: May 15 (Fri) 9:00–10:30 Lecture 7 10:30–11:00 Coffee break 11:00–12:30 Lecture 8 12:30-13:30 Lunch time 13:30-15:00 Lecture 9 15:00-15:30 Coffee break 15:30-17:00 Seminar (or Lecture 10) This event is in-person only.

Venue: #435-437, 4F, Main Research Building

Event Official Language: English

Sexual conflict over floral receptivity? — theory-guided experiments of evolutionary ecology

May 14 (Thu) 16:00 - 17:00, 2026

Daisuke Kyogoku (Associate Professor, Faculty, Division of Natural Sciences, Nara Women's University)

The theory of evolutionary biology predicts that the interests (in terms of adaptation) of different individuals can conflict with one another. Specifically, mating partners can have different optima in traits such as mating rates, number of mates, number of offspring, and resource allocation to the offspring. Botanists have long recognized that pollination induces floral closure or wilting, which is typically seen as the adaptation of the pollen recipients (i.e., getting rid of costly flowers after achieving their function). However, it is also possible that floral closure or wilting is, at least in part, the outcome of the manipulation by selfish pollen. For example, pollen may secure their paternity by preventing additional pollination. Fewer seed production by the recipients can result in so much allocation of maternal resources to each fertilized egg cell that is maternally maladaptive (but paternally adaptive). Being guided by these theoretical predictions, I have been testing the hypothesis using both Taraxacum dandelions and Arabidopsis. In this talk, I will show our recent (mostly unpublished) results. Although the projects are halfway, results so far generally support the hypothesis. The ideas of related future projects and the philosophy behind the projects may also be discussed.

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

Event Official Language: English

Stochastic Schrödinger Diffusion Models for Pure-State Ensemble Generation

May 14 (Thu) 14:30 - 15:30, 2026

Jian Xu (Postdoctoral Researcher, Quantum Mathematical Science Team, Division of Applied Mathematical Science, RIKEN Center for Interdisciplinary Theoretical and Mathematical Sciences (iTHEMS))

In quantum machine learning (QML), classical data are often encoded as quantum pure states and processed directly as quantum representations, motivating \emph{representation-level generative modeling} that samples new quantum states from an underlying pure-state ensemble rather than re-preparing them from perturbed classical inputs. However, extending \emph{score-based} diffusion models with well-defined reverse-time samplers to quantum pure-state ensembles remains challenging, due to the non-Euclidean geometry of the complex projective space $\mathbb{CP}^{d-1}$ and the intractability of transition densities. We propose \emph{Stochastic Schr\"odinger Diffusion Models} (SSDMs), an intrinsic score-based generative framework on $\mathbb{CP}^{d-1}$ endowed with the Fubini--Study (FS) metric. SSDMs formulate a forward Riemannian diffusion with a stochastic Schr\"odinger equation (SSE) realization, and derive reverse-time dynamics driven by the Riemannian score $\nabla_{\mathrm{FS}} \log p_t$. To enable training without analytic transition densities, we introduce a local-time objective based on a local Euclidean Ornstein--Uhlenbeck approximation in FS normal coordinates, yielding an analytic teacher score mapped back to the manifold. Experiments show that SSDMs faithfully capture target pure-state ensemble statistics, including observable moments, overlap-kernel MMD, and entanglement measures, and that SSDM-generated quantum representations improve downstream QML generalization via representation-level data augmentation.

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

Event Official Language: English

Tropical geometry as a tool in algebraic geometry and beyond

May 13 (Wed) 15:30 - 17:00, 2026

Paul Alexander Helminck (Assistant Professor, Mathematical Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland)

Tropical geometry is a field in mathematics that lies at the interface of algebraic geometry and combinatorics. One of the main goals in tropical geometry is to uncover the combinatorial patterns hidden in algebraic geometry. This basic principle can already be found in Bézout’s theorem, which counts the roots of sufficiently generic polynomial equations, and its generalization in the form of the BKK theorem, both of which can be proven tropically. The abstract combinatorial ideas that come out of this study have since also seen applications in economics, machine learning, chemical reaction networks and mathematical physics, among others. In this talk I will give an introduction to tropical geometry and I will discuss some of the main results. I will also discuss some of my latest work on finding the topology of an algebraic variety using tropical methods. In particular, I will discuss how this gives rise to a CW complex structure on a K3 surface. This structure for instance gives us a quick way to see various phenomena from mirror symmetry such as the monodromy of integral affine structures.

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

Event Official Language: English

From Birkhoff's Polytope to Petz Recovery: Unistochastic Matrices, Quantum Channels, and Approximate Markov Chains

May 13 (Wed) 13:30 - 15:00, 2026

Claude Gravel (Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science, Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada)

A doubly stochastic matrix is unistochastic if its entries correspond to the squared moduli of a unitary matrix. Determining which n × n doubly stochastic matrices admit such a representation remains an open problem at the intersection of convex geometry, combinatorics, and quantum information. For 3 × 3 matrices, elegant triangle inequalities provide a complete characterization: the unistochastic set occupies approximately 75% of the Birkhoff polytope and exhibits deltoid cross-sections. For n ≥ 4, the characterization problem remains unresolved and is influenced in unexpected ways by the prime factorization of n via the defect of the Fourier matrix. This presentation surveys these results and then establishes a connection to a second, seemingly unrelated question: given a tripartite quantum state with small conditional mutual information, to what extent can one subsystem be recovered from the others? The Petz recovery map and its rotated variants offer a universal solution. These two topics are linked through coherification, which concerns when a classical stochastic process can be elevated to coherent quantum dynamics, and through the conditional mutual information as a continuous measure of non-unistochasticity. The talk concludes with open problems at this interface, including the star-shapedness conjecture for n = 4 and the pursuit of tighter recovery bounds.

Venue: #359, Seminar Room #359

Event Official Language: English

Universal Laws of Nonequilibrium Quantum Many-Body Systems: From Understanding to Control

May 12 (Tue) 15:00 - 16:00, 2026

Ryusuke Hamazaki (RIKEN Hakubi Team Leader, Nonequilibrium Quantum Statistical Mechanics RIKEN Hakubi Research Team, RIKEN Cluster for Pioneering Research (CPR))

(Note: This lecture will be given in Japanese. This seminar is also designated as part of the Pioneering Research Institute (PRI) Lecture Series.) Recent advances in quantum simulators and quantum computers have made it possible to realize and manipulate quantum many-body systems with high precision and to directly observe their dynamics. This progress has renewed interest in a fundamental question dating back to John von Neumann: how macroscopic statistical mechanics emerges from microscopic quantum mechanics. At the same time, there is growing momentum toward harnessing the quantum nature of such systems through control, with the aim of realizing devices and functionalities that surpass those of classical systems. In this talk, I will discuss our research and future perspectives from the viewpoint of understanding universal laws governing nonequilibrium quantum many-body systems from microscopic quantum dynamics, and theoretically elucidating their controllability. In particular, I will focus on topics such as the characterization of phases unique to open quantum many-body systems, the emergence of thermal statistical mechanics in isolated quantum systems, and the establishment of rigorous universal laws in nonequilibrium dynamics. Building on these insights, I will also discuss how we may open up the unexplored frontier of the statistical and many-body physics of control. Finally, I would like to touch upon the possibility that this universal framework of nonequilibrium statistical mechanics may find applications beyond quantum condensed matter physics and extend to other fields as well.

Venue: 2F Large Conference Room, Administrative Headquarters, RIKEN Wako Campus

Event Official Language: Japanese

Introduction to quantum resource theories (2)

May 12 (Tue) 9:00 - 17:00, 2026

Ryuji Takagi (Associate Professor, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The University of Tokyo)

[Registration Closed] Due to high demand and venue capacity limits, registration for this course is now closed as of April 25. If you wish to be placed on a waiting list in case of cancellations, please contact us via the inquiry form at the bottom of this page. One of the central goals of quantum information theory is to quantitatively clarify the relationship between the performance of quantum information processing and the valuable quantum features that underlie it. In this lecture, we will discuss quantum resource theories, a framework that provides a useful approach to this question. By presenting concrete examples—starting with entanglement theory, the most representative resource theory—as well as recent research results, we will see how perspectives and tools from information theory enable the quantification of quantum resources and the characterization of their convertibility. Beyond entanglement theory, we plan to discuss other key settings such as quantum thermodynamics, resource theory of asymmetry, and quantum magic—relevant resource in fault-tolerant quantum compuation. The overall aim of this lecture is to provide new analytical viewpoints that can be applied to a wide range of systems and quantum information processing tasks. While we do not plan to change the overall start and end times for each day, the detailed lecture schedule is subject to change. The intensive course will be held over three days. Please register for the course using the form. The registration deadline is May 7 (Thu). Please note that the registration form is the same for all three days, so you only need to register once. The 2nd day: May 12 (Tue) 9:00–10:30 Lecture 3 10:30–11:00 Coffee break 11:00–12:30 Lecture 4 12:30-13:30 Lunch time 13:30-15:00 Lecture 5 15:00-15:30 Coffee break 15:30-17:00 Lecture 6 This event is in-person only.

Venue: #435-437, 4F, Main Research Building

Event Official Language: English

Introduction to quantum resource theories (1)

May 11 (Mon) 13:30 - 17:00, 2026

Ryuji Takagi (Associate Professor, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The University of Tokyo)

[Registration Closed] Due to high demand and venue capacity limits, registration for this course is now closed as of April 25. If you wish to be placed on a waiting list in case of cancellations, please contact us via the inquiry form at the bottom of this page. One of the central goals of quantum information theory is to quantitatively clarify the relationship between the performance of quantum information processing and the valuable quantum features that underlie it. In this lecture, we will discuss quantum resource theories, a framework that provides a useful approach to this question. By presenting concrete examples—starting with entanglement theory, the most representative resource theory—as well as recent research results, we will see how perspectives and tools from information theory enable the quantification of quantum resources and the characterization of their convertibility. Beyond entanglement theory, we plan to discuss other key settings such as quantum thermodynamics, resource theory of asymmetry, and quantum magic—relevant resource in fault-tolerant quantum compuation. The overall aim of this lecture is to provide new analytical viewpoints that can be applied to a wide range of systems and quantum information processing tasks. While we do not plan to change the overall start and end times for each day, the detailed lecture schedule is subject to change. The intensive course will be held over three days. Please register for the course using the form. The registration deadline is May 7 (Thu). Please note that the registration form is the same for all three days, so you only need to register once. The 1st day: May 11 (Mon) 13:30-15:00 Lecture 1 15:00-15:30 Coffee break 15:30-17:00 Lecture 2 This event is in-person only.

Venue: #435-437, 4F, Main Research Building

Event Official Language: English

Six operations in differential topology

May 8 (Fri) 15:00 - 17:00, 2026

Takumi Maegawa (Special Postdoctoral Researcher, Division of Fundamental Mathematical Science, RIKEN Center for Interdisciplinary Theoretical and Mathematical Sciences (iTHEMS))

The formalism of six operations, pioneered by Grothendieck and Verdier, serves as a unifying framework for studying cohomological phenomena. This language realizes Poincaré-type duality and transfer maps as certain adjunctions between stable $\infty$-categories of sheaves. In this talk, we highlight the theory of six operations in topology and apply it to provide an intrinsic version of the Pontryagin-Thom construction. We then discuss the intrinsic construction of invariants coming from Seiberg-Witten theory, which is based on the speaker's previous work.

Venue: via Zoom / Seminar Room #359

Event Official Language: English

Building autonomous AI physicists for frontier physics research

April 30 (Thu) 15:00 - 16:00, 2026

Tingjia Miao (Ph.D. Student, School of Artificial Intelligence, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China)

Advances in LLMs have led to agents with knowledge and operational capabilities comparable to human scientists, suggesting potential to assist, accelerate, and automate research. Physics, especially theoretical and computational physics, which requires integrating analytical reasoning, code-based computation, and profound domain expertise, is well suited for verifying the end-to-end research capabilities of AI scientists. Accordingly, we construct a general-purpose AI physicist PhysMaster, equipped with a layered academic knowledge base, adapted to the agent skill ecosystem, and adopting an adaptive exploration strategy that balances efficiency and exploration, enabling robust performance in ultra-long-horizon tasks; PhysMaster has been open-sourced. Meanwhile, we introduce PRL-Bench (Physics Research by LLMs), a benchmark with 100 tasks adapted from recent Physical Review Letters papers, covering astrophysics, condensed matter physics, high-energy physics, quantum information, and statistical physics. Evaluation across frontier models shows that failures are dominated by conceptual and formulaic errors, and that exploration and derivations remain unstable over long horizons. In addition, we develop domain-specialized AI scientists, including LQCD Master, which integrates Lattice QCD workflows and expert skills, enabling automated generation and submission of lattice computation scripts from concise physics goals.

Venue: via Zoom

Event Official Language: English

Uniform Matrix Product States for Hamiltonian Lattice Gauge Theories: Methods and Applications

April 28 (Tue) 16:00 - 17:30, 2026

Kohei Fujikura (Research Assistant Professor, Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics, Kyoto University)

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

Event Official Language: English

DEEP-IN WG Sarter Meeting 2026

April 27 (Mon) 15:30 - 17:00, 2026

Tae-Geun Kim (Postdoc, Fudan University, China)
Yang-Yang Tan (Postdoctoral Researcher, Institute for Physics of Intelligence, Graduate School of Science, The University of Tokyo)
Masato Taki (Associate Professor, Graduate School of Artificial Intelligence and Science, Rikkyo University)

15:30–16:00 NOW&NEXT of DEEP-IN WG (Lingxiao Wang) Self-Introduction of Members 16:00–16:20 AI Team and DEEP-IN (Masato Taki) 16:20–16:40 Inverse Problems in HEP (Tae-Geun Kim, FudanU) 16:40–17:00 Inverse Modeling Distributions (Yang-yang Tan, UTokyo)

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

Event Official Language: English

Cooking up holographic black holes

April 27 (Mon) 13:30 - 15:00, 2026

Daichi Takeda (Special Postdoctoral Researcher, Division of Fundamental Mathematical Science, RIKEN Center for Interdisciplinary Theoretical and Mathematical Sciences (iTHEMS))

I have recently been investigating holography for open systems and have developed a method to compute correlation functions of a CFT governed by the Lindblad equation from its gravitational dual. In an open system, the state of the subsystem of interest cannot remain pure, and one naively expects its entropy to grow over time. It is then natural to expect that this thermalization process is accompanied, on the gravity side, by black hole formation. In this talk, after giving an overview of holography for open systems, I will present a numerical nonperturbative analysis of the dynamics of JT gravity coupled to a scalar field, and show that black holes indeed form in this setup.

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

Event Official Language: English

Cautionary tales in data analysis from gravitational-wave astronomy

April 23 (Thu) 13:00 - 14:00, 2026

Kipp Cannon (Professor, Research Center for the Early Universe (RESCEU), The University of Tokyo)

We'll look at signal detection in noisy data, and at Bayesian inference in astrophysical inverse problems. We'll look at the form these problems take in the context of gravitational-wave astronomy, but we'll focus on where attempts at solutions have gone wrong. The mistakes we make transcend disciplines, and hopefully by shining light on them others can be helped to avoid making them as well.

Venue: Hybrid Format (3F #359 and Zoom), Main Research Building

Event Official Language: English

The math that shows a perfect democracy is impossible

April 23 (Thu) 10:30 - 11:30, 2026

Brian Andrew Mintz (Postdoctoral Researcher, Mathematical Social Science Team, Division of Applied Mathematical Science, RIKEN Center for Interdisciplinary Theoretical and Mathematical Sciences (iTHEMS))

Groups need to make decisions, and there are a wide variety of ways this can be done, each maximizing different notions of fairness. Social Choice Theory provides a mathematical framework to investigate these possibilities rigorously. Infamous for its many impossibility results, this topic reveals some fundamental limits to democracy. Beyond this, we'll discuss potential resolutions to these problems, as well as their real world implications.

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

Event Official Language: English

Seeing Photons, from Einstein to Bohr to Hanbury Brown-Twiss and related Hong-Ou-Mandel Interference Phenomena

April 22 (Wed) 15:00 - 16:30, 2026

Gordon Baym (Professor Emeritus, University of Illinois, USA)

Why do we believe that the electromagnetic field is quantized, and photons exist? This talk will focus on two ways that the quantization of the electromagnetic field manifests itself in interference experiments. Bohr, who initially doubted photons after Einstein's initial proposal of the photon to explain the photoeffect, eventually proposed a thought experiment showing that the consistency of elementary quantum mechanics at the level of two slit diffraction requires the quantization of the electromagnetic field. In addition, as I will argue, both Hanbury Brown-Twiss interferometry and the closely related Hong-Ou-Mandel effect provide yet another way to see that the electromagnetic field must be quantized.

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

Event Official Language: English