Seminar

Search for ultralight dark matter with laser interferometric gravitational wave detectors

July 13 (Mon) at 10:00 - 11:00, 2020

Yuta Michimura (Assistant Professor, Department of Physics, Graduate School of Science, The University of Tokyo)

Venue: via Zoom

Event Official Language: English

Complex Langevin study of an attractively interacting two-component Fermi gas in 1D with population imbalance

July 10 (Fri) at 13:30 - 14:30, 2020

Shoichiro Tsutsui (Special Postdoctoral Researcher, Quantum Hadron Physics Laboratory, RIKEN Nishina Center for Accelerator-Based Science (RNC))

We investigate an attractively interacting two-component Fermi gas in 1D described by the Gaudin-Yang model with population imbalance. While the Gaudin-Yang model is known as a solvable model based on the thermodynamic Bethe ansatz, the binding energy and mass of poralon at finite temperature and moderate impurity density are still unknown. Moreover, in such a system, quantum Monte Carlo simulation suffers from the sign problem because the population imbalance makes the fermion determinant non-positive definite. In this study, we apply complex Langevin method, a holomorphic extension of the stochastic quantization to overcome the sign problem. We first confirm our numerical results satisfy a criteria for correct convergence [1], and present how the polaron energy depends on temperature and density of impurity. We also compare our results with a recent study based on a diagrammatic approach [2].

Venue: via Zoom

Event Official Language: English

Constrained evolution of animal embryogenesis

July 8 (Wed) at 10:00 - 11:00, 2020

Yui Uchida (Special Postdoctoral Researcher, Laboratory for Multiscale Biosystem Dynamics, RIKEN Center for Biosystems Dynamics Research (BDR))

Animals have developed a great variety of morphologies during the course of evolution. Despite this, phylogeny-specific features have sometimes been maintained for hundreds of millions of years, suggesting that there are constraints to morphological evolution. In my talk, I will introduce some of general motivations behind the EvoDevo study and talk particularly about the blank space in morphospaces (Each axis of a morphospace corresponds to a variable describing morphological features). It remains to be seen if these blank areas are caused by impossible developmental pathways. However, computer simulations of embryogenesis, which has been proposed in recent years, may provide a clue to a solution. Finally, I’m going to talk about my research plan based on this.

Venue: via Zoom

Event Official Language: English

Waveform Analysis of Biological Rhythms

July 1 (Wed) at 10:00 - 11:00, 2020

Shingo Gibo (Postdoctoral Researcher, iTHEMS)

Nonlinear oscillatory phenomena often emerge in various systems, for example circadian rhythms in biological systems and acoustic vibrations in engineering. Analysis and control of these oscillatory phenomena are one of the big problems in science and technology. My main research field is biological oscillations, especially circadian clocks. The circadian clocks are based on gene-activity rhythms with approximately 24-hour period, and its temporal waveforms are of various shapes. Recently, we theoretically showed that the period of circadian clocks is proportional to the waveform distortion from sinusoidal waves. Interestingly, we found the waveform is important for periods not only in biological oscillations but also in several other types of nonlinear oscillator models.

Venue: via Zoom

Event Official Language: English

Universal Error Bound for Constrained Quantum Dynamics

June 24 (Wed) at 16:00 - 18:10, 2020

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

In quantum mechanics, the existence of large energy gaps allows us to trace out the degrees of freedom of irrelevant energy scale. Consequently, we can treat a system within a constrained subspace obtained by the projection of the total Hilbert space. While this statement has widely been used to approximate quantum dynamics in various contexts, a general and quantitative justification stays lacking. In this talk, we show a universal and rigorous error bound for such a constrained-dynamics approximation in generic gapped quantum systems [1,2]. This universal bound is a linear function of time that only involves the energy gap and coupling strength, provided that the latter is much smaller than the former. If time allows, I will briefly talk about generalizations of our result to e.g., quantum many-body systems and open quantum systems.

Venue: via Zoom

Event Official Language: English

Dark Matter Heating vs. Rotochemical Heating in Old Neutron Stars

June 22 (Mon) at 16:00 - 17:00, 2020

Koichi Hamaguchi (Associate Professor, Graduate School of Science, The University of Tokyo)

*Detailed information about the seminar refer to the email

Venue: via Zoom

Event Official Language: English

Information geometry of operator scaling

June 17 (Wed) at 16:00 - 18:10, 2020

Tasuku Soma (Research Associate, Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo)

Matrix scaling is a classical problem with a wide range of applications. It is known that the Sinkhorn algorithm for matrix scaling is interpreted as alternating e-projections from the viewpoint of classical information geometry. Recently, a generalization of matrix scaling to completely positive maps called operator scaling has been found to appear in various fields of mathematics and computer science, and the Sinkhorn algorithm has been extended to operator scaling. In this study, the operator Sinkhorn algorithm is studied from the viewpoint of quantum information geometry through the Choi representation of completely positive maps. The operator Sinkhorn algorithm is shown to coincide with alternating e-projections with respect to the symmetric logarithmic derivative metric, which is a Riemannian metric on the space of quantum states relevant to quantum estimation theory. This talk is based on joint work with Takeru Matsuda.

Venue: via Zoom

Event Official Language: English

Field theoretical approach to relativistic hydrodynamics

June 12 (Fri) at 13:00 - 14:30, 2020

Masaru Hongo (Visiting Scientist, iTHEMS / Postdoctoral Research Associate, Physics Department, The University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), USA)

Hydrodynamics is a low-energy effective theory of a conserved charge density, which describes a long-distance and long-time behavior of many-body systems. It is applicable not only to a non-relativistic weakly-interacting dilute gas but also a relativistic strongly-interacting dense liquid like a quark-gluon plasma. The main purpose of this seminar is to explain how we can derive the hydrodynamic equation from the underlying field-theoretical description of systems [1-3]. Our derivation is based on the recent development of non-equilibrium statistical mechanics, and we show that the procedure to derive hydrodynamic equations is similar to the so-called renormalized/optimized perturbation theory. Also, to describe transport phenomena in local thermal equilibrium, we give a path-integral formula for a thermodynamic functional, which results in the emergence of thermally induced curved spacetime [2]. These results enable us to derive hydrodynamic equation based on quantum field theories.

Event Official Language: English

The effect of the early kinetic decoupling in a fermionic dark matter model

June 12 (Fri) at 10:00 - 11:00, 2020

Tomohiro Abe (Assistant Professor, Kobayashi-Maskawa Institute for the Origin of Particles and the Universe (KMI), Nagoya University)

*Detailed information about the seminar refer to the email

Venue: via Zoom

Event Official Language: English

Turing Patterns in Biology and Beyond

June 10 (Wed) at 10:00 - 10:45, 2020

Martin Skrodzki (Visiting Scientist, iTHEMS / Fellow, German Academic Scholarship Foundation, Germany)

In his 1952 paper "The chemical basis of morphogenesis", Alan M. Turing presented a model for the formation of skin patterns. While it took several decades, the model has been validated, e.g. in the skin pattern formation of zebrafish. More surprising, seemingly unrelated pattern formations can also be studied via the model, like e.g. the formation of plant patches around termite hills. In 1984, David A. Young proposed a discretization of Turing's model, reducing it to a activator/inhibitor process on a discrete domain. In my talk, I will present both the model of Turing and its discretization. We will then consider a generalization to pattern-formation in three-dimensional space and investigate the related parameter space.

Venue: via Zoom

Event Official Language: English

Quantification model of energy of loop structure on biopolymer

June 3 (Wed) at 10:00 - 10:45, 2020

Hiroshi Yokota (Postdoctoral Researcher, iTHEMS)

During cell division, the chromatin fiber condenses into a rod-like shape, which is the so-called chromosome. The chromosome is constructed by consecutive chromatin loop structures whose excluded volume interaction gives chromosome its stiffness. So far, the energy source for the loop growing has remained a controversial issue. In this seminar, we quantify the energy source by calculating the free energy difference before and after a model polymer chain creating a loop structure.

Venue: via Zoom

Event Official Language: English

Localization and universality in non-Hermitian many-body systems

May 29 (Fri) at 15:00 - 16:30, 2020

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

Recent study on isolated quantum many-body systems have revealed two different phases distinguished by their dynamics and spectral statistics. One is an ergodic phase whose spectral statistics exhibit universality of random matrices, and the other is a many-body localized phase where dynamics is constrained due to strong disorder. In this talk, we show that novel and rich physics concerning such localization and universality appears in non-Hermitian many-body systems, which have been utilized in diverse scientific disciplines from open quantum systems to biology. As a first topic, we analyze non-Hermitian quantum many-body systems in the presence of interaction and disorder [1]. We demonstrate that a novel real-complex transition occurs upon many-body localization of non-Hermitian interacting systems with asymmetric hopping that respect time-reversal symmetry. As a second topic, we show that “Dyson’s threefold way,” a threefold symmetry classification of universal spectral statistics of random matrices, is nontrivially extended to non-Hermitian random matrices [2]. We report our discovery of two distinct universality classes characterized by transposition symmetry, which is distinct from time-reversal symmetry due to non-Hermiticity. We show that the newly found universality classes indeed manifest themselves in dissipative quantum many-body ergodic systems described by Lindblad equations.

Venue: via Zoom

Event Official Language: English

Knotted 2-spheres in the 4-space and Yang-Mills gauge theory

May 27 (Wed) at 16:00 - 18:10, 2020

Masaki Taniguchi (Special Postdoctoral Researcher, iTHEMS)

The classification problem of knots is one of the central topics in a study of topology. In the first part, we review classical knot theory and theory of 2-dimensional knots in the 4-dimensional space. In the second part, we focus on a problem considered in differential topology. In the studies of differential topology, people are interested in the difference between continuous and smooth. As the main result of this talk, we introduce a theorem that tells us the difference between continuous and smooth 2-dimensional knots. The proof uses Yang-Mills gauge theory for 4-manifolds obtained by the surgery of 2-knots.

Venue: via Zoom

Event Official Language: English

Forgetting in Reinforcement Learning Links Sustained Dopamine Signals to Motivation

May 27 (Wed) at 10:00 - 10:45, 2020

Ayaka Kato (RIKEN Center for Brain Science (CBS) / Ph.D. Student, The University of Tokyo)

Dopamine (DA) has been suggested to have two reward-related roles: (1) representing reward-prediction-error (RPE), and (2) providing motivational drive. Role(1) is based on the physiological results that DA responds to unpredicted but not predicted reward, whereas role(2) is supported by the pharmacological results that blockade of DA signaling causes motivational impairments such as slowdown of self-paced behavior. Whereas synaptic/circuit mechanisms for role(1), i.e., how RPE is calculated in the upstream of DA neurons and how RPE-dependent update of learned-values occurs through DA-dependent synaptic plasticity, have now become clarified, mechanisms for role(2) remain unclear. We modeled self-paced behavior by a series of ‘Go’ or ‘No-Go’ selections in the framework of reinforcement-learning assuming DA's role(1), and demonstrated that incorporation of decay/forgetting of learned-values, which is presumably implemented as decay of synaptic strengths storing learned-values, provides a potential unified mechanistic account for the DA's two roles, together with its various temporal patterns.

Venue: via Zoom

Event Official Language: English

Gradient Flow Equation and Its Applications

May 15 (Fri) at 13:30 - 15:00, 2020

Kengo Kikuchi (Special Postdoctoral Researcher, iTHEMS)

Gradient flow is the one of the methods to suppress the ultraviolet divergence in gauge theories. The any correlation functions in terms of the flowed field, which is defined by the gradient flow equation, are finite without additional renormalizations. Because of this surprising property, the methods has been studied widely, especially in the lattice field theory. In this seminar, we introduce what the gradient flow is briefly. And we show our work, “generalized gradient flow equation”, which is the gradient flow equation for field theories with nonlinearly realized symmetry. Applying the formalism to a supersymmetric theory and O(N) non linear sigma model, we obtain the SUSY gradient flow and the Large N gradient flow. We also refer to the current research, the gradient flow of the supersymmetric theory with the non-renormalization theorem and the new formalism to obtain the sphalerons, which is one of the static classical solutions, using gradient flow methods, if time allows.

Venue: via Zoom

Event Official Language: English

How many electrons can atoms bind?

May 13 (Wed) at 16:00 - 18:10, 2020

Yukimi Goto (Special Postdoctoral Researcher, iTHEMS)

In this talk, I will introduce the mathematical studies on the ionization problem. Some experimental & numerical evidences say that any doubly charged atomic ion X^{2-} is not stable. This 'fact' is called the ionization conjecture in mathematical physics literatures. My hope is to illustrates the interplay between mathematical and physical ideas. The talk is directed towards researchers on various aspects of quantum mechanics. In the first part, we will discuss the many-body aspects of quantum mechanics and introduce some basic notions. The second part will deal with the mathematical results in some approximation theories.

Venue: via Zoom

Event Official Language: English

Models to describe how virus spreads in vitro

May 13 (Wed) at 10:00 - 10:45, 2020

Catherine Beauchemin (Senior Visiting Scientist, iTHEMS / Professor, Department of Physics, Ryerson University, Canada)

This is meant as an introductory talk about my research field, virophysics, in which I apply the rigour and methods of physics to study virology. My focus is primarily in vitro (how virus spreads cell-to-cell in a cell culture) but I occasionally do some in vivo work. Recently, my hobby became tracking COVID-19 spread.

Venue: via Zoom

Event Official Language: English

Slip or (k)not: Geometry and mechanical performance of physical knots

May 7 (Thu) at 17:00 - 17:45, 2020

Tomohiko Sano (PD, École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland)

Knots can impart unique mechanical function to filamentary structures, with examples ranging across length scales, including DNA, polymer-chains, shoelaces, climbing ropes, tennis racket, and surgical sutures. Even though knot theory has a long history of studies in the realm of mathematics, mechanics-based studies of physical knots are much rarer. The fundamental challenge in the understanding of their mechanics under a wide range of loading conditions stems from the fact that their topology, geometry, elasticity, and friction are all tangled ingredients. In this talk, combining experiments, simulations and theory, we present the recent progress on the predictive framework for the knot performance.

Venue: via Zoom

Event Official Language: English

From Eigenvalues to Resonances

May 1 (Fri) at 16:00 - 18:10, 2020

Keita Mikami (Research Scientist, iTHEMS)

Resonance is one of the most studied object in mathematical study of Schrödinger operators. One possible reason is that resonance is appeared in many other fields like arithmetic, physics, and topography. This series of talks target both mathematicians and researchers in other fields. The goal of the talk is to introduce the study of resonances for two body Schrödinger operators. In the first part, we briefly review spectral theory and how we use it in the study of Schrödinger operators. The aim of this part is to introduce the audience some basic notions used in the study of Schrödinger operators. In the second part, we give brief introduction of resonances and its application to both mathematicians and researchers in other fields. We start from mathematical definition of resonances to its applications in the other fields.

Venue: via zoom

Event Official Language: English

Analyses of large-scale sequence data from “PROTIST” can reveal the eukaryotic phylogeny and evolution

April 30 (Thu) at 10:00 - 10:45, 2020

Euki Yazaki (Postdoctoral Researcher, iTHEMS)

Most of the phylogenetic diversity of eukaryotes is made up of unicellular eukaryotic microorganisms called protists, some of which have not known phylogenetic home (called Orphans). Orphans are likely to hold important keys to the evolution of eukaryotes. In this seminar, I will introduce present case studies that reveal phylogenetic home and organelle evolution of orphan protists through sequence analysis based on large-scale sequence data.

Venue: via Zoom

Event Official Language: English