Gauge fixing for open systems: A pathway to open gravity EFTs

2026年1月30日(金) 14:00 - 16:00

Maria Mylova (カブリ数物連携宇宙研究機構 (Kavli IPMU) 特任研究員)

Understanding how to gauge-fix open quantum field theories is essential for building consistent open frameworks for cosmology and gravity, where gauge symmetry must coexist with dissipation and noise and decoherence. I will present our recent work developing explicit top-down constructions of open effective field theories (EFTs) for gauge degrees of freedom, with particular emphasis on the role of gauge fixing. We implement BRST quantisation on the Schwinger-Keldysh contour and show that the in-in boundary conditions reduce the doubled global BRST symmetry to a single diagonal copy. This diagonal BRST symmetry is nevertheless sufficient to guarantee that the influence functional remains gauge invariant under two independent gauge transformations, retarded and advanced, independently of the choice of initial state, the presence of symmetry-breaking phases, and whether the gauge theory is Abelian or non-Abelian. We further clarify how this is compatible with the decoupling limit, in which the global advanced symmetry is generically broken by the state. I will conclude by outlining bottom-up implications, and how these principles provide a systematic route to causal, gauge-invariant open EFTs suitable for cosmological and gravitational applications.

会場: 研究本館 4階 445-447号室 (Hybrid)

イベント公式言語: 英語

Development of a real-time object tracking and response system

2026年1月29日(木) 13:00 - 14:00

イザク・プラナス シッジャ (理化学研究所 数理創造研究センター (iTHEMS) 数理基礎部門 特別研究員)

I will introduce the real-time tracking software and automatic response system that we are developing: TracktorLive. We created a modular system to overcome several issues in close-loop experiments, with the aim to automatise mechanical stimulus delivery or time-consuming actions, and provide tools for VR experiments in animals. This tracker, coded as a Python package, separates the processes into server and client functions to run several processes in parallel, which minimises the frame processing time, and allows running on low-end computers. We hope to implement LLM or AI functions as server processes in the future.

会場: セミナー室 (359号室)

イベント公式言語: 英語

iTHEMS Cosmology Forum n°5 - Effective Field Theory approaches across the Universe

2026年1月29日(木) 10:00 - 17:00

青木 勝輝 (京都大学 基礎物理学研究所 基研特任助教)
野海 俊文 (東京大学 大学院総合文化研究科 准教授)
Lucas Pinol (CNRS Researcher, Laboratoire de Physique de l’École Normale Supérieure (LPENS), CNRS/École Normale Supérieure, France)

This fifth workshop will bring together researchers exploring the effective field theory (EFT) framework in diverse cosmological contexts. Topics will include EFT formulations of interacting dark matter and dark energy, open EFTs for gravity, and multi-field inflationary dynamics. By highlighting recent progress and open questions, the workshop seeks to bridge insights from the early and late universe through the unifying language of EFT. In addition to the invited talks, the workshop will feature a panel discussion designed to promote interaction between the speakers and participants. One of the key goals of this event is to foster collaboration among researchers working in neighboring fields, and to encourage participation from young and early-career researchers who are interested in, but may not yet have worked on, these themes. The workshop welcomes a broad audience with an interest in theoretical cosmology, gravitation, and quantum field theory. The workshops are organised by the Cosmology Study Group at RIKEN iTHEMS.

会場: 大河内記念ホール

イベント公式言語: 英語

DEEP-IN-iPI Joint Meeting

2026年1月26日(月) - 30日(金)

郭 星雨 (Lecturer, Institute of Quantum Matter, South China Normal University, China)
Gert Aarts (Professor, Department of Physics, Swansea University, UK)
施 舒哲 (Assistant Professor, Physics Department, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China)
Sung Hak Lim (Senior Researcher, Center for Theoretical Physics of the Universe (CTPU-PTC), Institute for Basic Science (IBS), Republic of Korea)
ジンヤン・リー (総合研究大学院大学 素粒子原子核コース 博士課程)
許 インイン (Research fellow, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Helsinki, Finland)

The series of DEEP-IN meetings (Jan 26–30, 2026) are joint with UTokyo Institute for Physics of Intelligence (iπ), which is a multi-day scientific program bringing together researchers to explore quantum simulations, machine learning physics, and applications in particle and nuclear physics. The tentative schedule is, UTokyo-iπ Session (Venue: #512, Faculty of Science Bldg.1, School of Science, UTokyo) Day 1: Jan 26 (Mon) 14:30–16:00 Onset of Bjorken flow in a quantum many-body simulation of the massive Schwinger model, Shuzhe Shi Day 2: Jan 27 (Tue) 14:30–16:00 Physics of Diffusion Models, Gert Aarts 16:00–17:30 Discovering Symmetry from Energy-Based Diffusion Models, Jinyang Li RIKEN-iTHEMS Session (Venue: Seminar Room #359, Main Research Building) Day 3: Jan 28 (Wed) 14:30–16:00 Understanding Galactic Dark Matter with Generative Models, Sung Hak Lim 16:00–18:00 Free Discussion ML Physics-1 Day 4: Jan 29 (Thu) 10:00–11:30 Quantum Simulations of HEP and Beyond, Xingyu Guo 14:30–16:00 Physics of Machine Learning, Gert Aarts 16:00–17:30 Storage capacity of perceptron with variable selection, Yingying Xu Day 5: Jan 30 (Fri) 11:00–14:00: Free Discussion ML Physics-2

会場: via Zoom / セミナー室 (359号室) / 東京大学 本郷キャンパス 理学部１号館

イベント公式言語: 英語

New computational methods in quantum field theory 2026

2026年1月26日(月) - 28日(水)

Recent developments in quantum computers and related theoretical/technical advancements have brought attention to "new computational methods in quantum field theory" in the fields of high energy/nuclear physics. Main targets of this school are graduate students and postdocs. This school provides opportunities to discuss recent research trends and their applications through lectures by experts and presentations by participants. Lecturers: Junichi Haruna (University of Osaka) "Introduction to Quantum Error Correction (tentative)" Yoshimasa Hidaka (Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics/RIKEN iTHEMS) “Introduction to Hamiltonian Lattice Gauge Theory (tentative)” Tokiro Numasawa (University of Tokyo) "Open Majorana system (tentative)"

会場: 研究本館 4階 435-437号室

イベント公式言語: 英語

Evolution of sterile soldier castes in aphids

2026年1月21日(水) 13:00 - 14:00

植松 圭吾 (慶応義塾大学)

This seminar is jointly organized with the RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science (CSRS). Social evolution in aphids is tightly linked to the formation of galls on their host plants. Galls provide efficient colony defense and nutritionally rich feeding sites such that colony members need not forage outside, leading to high intra-group relatedness. Typically, social aphids form a gall on their primary host plant, after which winged morphs disperse to secondary host plants and establish a free-living, open colony. Remarkably, sterile soldier castes have independently evolved twice in these open colonies, where individuals live on plant surfaces without modifying their structure. These aphids raise intriguing questions about the prerequisites for eusocial evolution and the mechanisms by which two distinct social systems are maintained within a single genome. In this talk, I will first provide an overview of the life cycle and the diversity of altruistic behaviors in gall-forming aphids, and then present our studies of the evolution of a sterile soldier caste in aphids inhabiting open colonies. From a developmental perspective, we tested the hypothesis that the sterile soldiers evolved through the co-option of pre-existing soldier phenotypes in a gall, based on similarity in morphology, transcriptome and behavior. From an ecological perspective, we investigated the kin structure and altruistic behavior of young nymphs in the open colonies of pre-eusocial species, and demonstrate that young aphids exhibit altruism by yielding feeding sites to older kin. Together, we propose that the open colonies of social aphids provide an ideal model system for studying the evolution of altruism.

会場: セミナー室 (359号室) 3階 359号室とZoomのハイブリッド開催 (メイン会場) / via Zoom

イベント公式言語: 英語

Analog variational quantum eigensolver for neutral atomic quantum simulators

2026年1月20日(火) 10:00 - 12:00

長尾 一馬 (理化学研究所 計算科学研究センター (R-CCS) 量子系物質科学研究チーム 特別研究員)

会場: セミナー室 (359号室) (メイン会場) / via Zoom

イベント公式言語: 英語

Introduction to the gravitational wave background from the primordial universe

2026年1月16日(金) 16:00 - 17:15

難波 亮 (理化学研究所 数理創造研究センター (iTHEMS) 数理基礎部門 上級研究員)

Being genuine propagating degrees of freedom of the spacetime metric, gravitational waves (GWs) serve as an independent "eye" through which we can probe the evolution history of our universe. They are complementary to electromagnetic observables such as cosmic microwave background (CMB) and can act as direct messengers from the earliest stage of the universe, where conventional probes lose access. In particular, a stochastic background of GWs is widely regarded as a smoking gun of cosmic inflation. In this talk, I introduce the basic theoretical framework for GWs produced in the primordial universe and discuss how they arise from vacuum fluctuations of the metric. I also outline additional production mechanisms sourced by matter fields in the early universe and contrast their characteristic observational signatures with those of vacuum tensor modes. The emphasis of my talk will be on physical intuition and analytic derivations, with the aim of making the subject accessible to non-specialists in the astrophysics community.

会場: セミナー室 (359号室) 3階 359号室とZoomのハイブリッド開催

イベント公式言語: 英語

A one-world interpretation of quantum mechanics

2026年1月16日(金) 14:00 - 16:00

Isaac Layton (東京大学 大学院理学系研究科 物理学専攻 ポスドク研究員)

The measurement problem arises in trying to explain how the objective classical world emerges from a quantum one. In this talk I’ll advocate for an alternative approach, in which the existence of a classical system is assumed a priori. By asking that the standard rules of probability theory apply to it when it interacts with a system linearly evolving in Hilbert space, I’ll show that with a few additional assumptions one can recover the unitary dynamics, collapse and Born rule postulates from quantum theory. This gives an interpretation of quantum mechanics in which classically definite outcomes are always assigned probabilities, rather than superpositions, giving one-world instead of many. The main technical tool used is a change of measure on the space of classical paths, the functional form of which characterises the quantum dynamics and Born rules of a class of quantum-like theories. Time allowing, I will also discuss how these results clarify which additional assumptions must be accepted if one wishes to seriously consider classical alternatives to quantum gravity.

会場: 研究本館 4階 445-447号室 / via Zoom

イベント公式言語: 英語

Classical Spinning Black Hole Scattering from Quantum Amplitudes

2026年1月15日(木) 14:00 - 15:30

Dogan Akpinar (Ph.D. Student, Higgs Centre for Theoretical Physics, School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Edinburgh, UK)

Scattering amplitudes have recently become a powerful tool for extracting classical observables in two-body gravitational dynamics, with direct relevance for current and future gravitational-wave experiments. In this talk, I will review how quantum scattering amplitudes can be used to obtain classical black hole scattering observables. A key focus will be the inclusion of spin effects, modelled by treating black holes as point particles in fixed-spin representations. This approach introduces a subtle ambiguity in the separation between classical and quantum information, which we resolve using our spin interpolation method. Leveraging this, we obtain, for the first time, the classical two-loop amplitude accurate to quartic order in spin, from which we extract physical observables such as linear and angular impulses using covariant Dirac brackets. Remarkably, the resulting amplitude obeys a spin-shift symmetry, remaining invariant under a shift of the black hole spin by the momentum transfer in the scattering process. Motivated by this structure, we examine the conserved quantities governing scattering and show that—at least asymptotically—the probe dynamics remain integrable through quartic order in spin. Under this asymptotic integrability, together with the spin-shift symmetry, we demonstrate that the quartic-in-spin radial action is fully determined by the aligned-spin sector. Taken together, these results advance our understanding of spinning black hole scattering and illuminate new structural features of Kerr dynamics.

会場: セミナー室 (359号室) 3階 359号室とZoomのハイブリッド開催

イベント公式言語: 英語

Enhancing the methodological framework for inferring selection with ancient DNA: theoretical insights, improvements and comparison

2026年1月15日(木) 13:00 - 14:00

リュカ・ソール (理化学研究所 数理創造研究センター (iTHEMS) 数理基礎部門 数理遺伝学理研ECL研究ユニット 特別研究員)

Over the past decade, the emergence of ancient DNA has opened new opportunities for studying evolutionary processes. However, inferring signals of selection from such data remains a methodological challenge since controlling for population stratification, admixture, and dynamically changing demographic histories, among other confounding evolutionary processes, is difficult. In this context, ancient DNA time series data, which have proliferated, have led to the development of methods based on two main frameworks: Hidden Markov Models and Generalized Linear Mixed Models. In this work, we aim to clarify how these frameworks relate to the classical Wright–Fisher model, enabling targeted modeling improvements and producing more relevant comparisons across methods.

会場: セミナー室 (359号室) (メイン会場) / via Zoom

イベント公式言語: 英語

Measuring evolutionary forces of cultural change

2026年1月13日(火) 14:00 - 15:30

ジョシュア・プロトキン (Walter H. and Leonore C. Annenberg Professor of the Natural Sciences, University of Pennsylvania, USA)

I will describe how to measure the forces that drive cultural change, using inference tools from evolutionary theory. We study time series data from large corpora of parsed English texts to identify what drives language change over the course of centuries. We also measure frequency-dependent effects in time series of baby names and purebred dog preferences. The form of frequency dependence we infer helps to explain the diversity distribution of names, and it replicates across the United States, France, Norway and the Netherlands. We find different growth laws for male versus female names, attributable to different rates of innovation, whereas names from the bible enjoy a genuine advantage at all frequencies. Frequency dependence emerges from a host of underlying social and cultural mechanisms, including a preference for novelty that recapitulates fashion trends in dog owners. Studying culture through the lens of evolutionary theory provides a quantitative account of social pressures to conform or to be different; and it provides inference tools that may be used in biology as genetic and phenotypic time series are increasingly available.

会場: 大河内記念ホール (メイン会場) / via Zoom

イベント公式言語: 英語

LEVERAGING EARTH OBSERVATIONS WITH MACHINE-LEARNING APPROACHES FOR WATER CYCLE MONITORING

2026年1月13日(火) 10:30 - 12:00

Victor Pellet (Professor, Laboratoire de Météorologie dynamique (LMD-X), Ecole Polytechnique, France)

Earth observation satellites provide unprecedented information to monitor the different components of the water cycle, from soil moisture to river dynamics. However, fully exploiting these observations remains challenging due to sensor limitations, data heterogeneity, complex physical processes, and spatio-temporal resolution constraints. This seminar provides an overview of machine-learning approaches that accompany and enhance remote sensing for water cycle analysis. It illustrates how statistical and machine-learning techniques can improve the exploitation of Earth observation (EO) data at different processing levels, from Level 1 to Level 4. Four examples are presented: (i) compressing hyperspectral information to reduce observation dimensionality, (ii) improving the retrieval of soil moisture from space by exploiting spatial patterns and handling missing data, (iii) harmonizing multi-source EO at the global scale for consistent water cycle monitoring, and (iv) modeling river dynamics using data-driven approaches. Together, these examples highlight the potential of machine-learning techniques to better integrate observations and improve our understanding of hydrological processes.

会場: 計算科学研究棟

イベント公式言語: 英語

Visit by ASCENT-6E high school students (2026)

2026年1月12日(月) 10:40 - 16:00

PROGRAMME Visit of students enrolled in the ASCENT Program at Chiba University Schedule 10:30-10:40 (10 min): Arriving procedure 10:40-11:00 (20 min) at the meeting room on the 4th floor, Main Research Building Introduction of students (to hear their names and scientific fields of interest). We will provide colour-coded badges for them to write their names, with each colour representing their field of interest (e.g., blue for biology, green for math, red for physics). 11:00-11:10 (10 min) Bathroom break 11:10-12:00 (50 min) at the meeting room on the 4th floor, Main Research Building First set of talks by iTHEMS members (10 min each) Catherine Beauchemin (Physics, biology) Gen Kurosawa (Biology) Yuta Sekino (Physics) Isaac Planas-Sitja (Biology) Wei-Hsiang Shao (Physics) 12:00-13:30 (90 min) at Common Space on the 4th floor of Main Research Building Discussion Lunch with students 13:30-14:20 (50 min) at the meeting room on the 4th floor, Main Research Building Second set of talks by iTHEMS members (10 min each) Ryo Namba (Physics) Sungsik Kong (Biology) Kenji Okubo (Biology) Steffen Backes (Physics) Jose Gutierrez (Biology) 14:20-14:30 (10 min) at the meeting room on the 4th floor, Main Research Building Brief overview of iTHEMS and RIKEN programmes (C.Beauchemin) (e.g., JRA, IPA, SPDR, RS/SRS) 14:30-14:40 (10 min) Bathroom break 14:40-14:55 (15 min) at the meeting room on the 4th floor, Main Research Building Short statements by Prof. Jun Nomura, Prof. Koji Tsuji, Prof. Kohei Watanabe, Prof. Yukiharu Akimoto, ASCENT program coordinators Qian Wang and Hina Morishige, graduate student Rin Chinen. 14:55-16:00 (65 min) at Common Space on the 4th floor of Main Research Building Informal discussions among ASCENT program students and iTHEMS members over some snacks and coffee. iTHEMS members will spread out across different areas in the common space on the 3rd floor and display posters or conduct activities to facilitate discussion.

会場: 研究本館 435-437号室

イベント公式言語: 英語

Median-based estimators for randomized quasi-Monte Carlo integration

2026年1月9日(金) 15:00 - 17:00

鈴木 航介 (山形大学 准教授)

High-dimensional numerical integration is a ubiquitous challenge across various fields, from mathematical finance to computational physics and Bayesian statistics. While standard Monte Carlo (MC) methods are robust, their probabilistic error convergence rate of $O(N^{-1/2})$ is often insufficient for demanding applications. In this talk, I will introduce Quasi-Monte Carlo (QMC) and Randomized QMC (RQMC) methods, which offer a powerful framework for accelerating integration using low-discrepancy point sets. A key advantage of this deterministic approach is its ability to achieve a convergence rate of $O(N^{-1+\epsilon})$, significantly outperforming the standard MC rate. The second part of the talk will focus on the construction of point sets, specifically lattice rules and digital nets. I will explain how these methods achieve higher-order convergence rates, faster than $O(N^{-1})$, for sufficiently smooth integrands. I will also discuss their randomized variants and demonstrate how RQMC with mean-based estimators provides practical error estimation while maintaining high-order convergence. Finally, I will discuss recent progress in RQMC involving median-based estimators. I will highlight how these estimators achieve almost optimal convergence rates for various function spaces without requiring prior knowledge of the integrand.

会場: セミナー室 (359号室) 3階 359号室とZoomのハイブリッド開催

イベント公式言語: 英語

Higher Gauge Structures and Invariant Action Principles

2026年1月6日(火) 15:15 - 16:15

Sebastián Salgado (External Researcher, Instituto de Alta Investigacion, Universidad de Tarapaca, Chile)

I present the systematic construction of gauge theories based on free differential and L-infinity algebras. This provides a consistent algebraic framework for constructing gauge-invariant theories whose field content is extended by higher-degree differential forms as gauge potentials. I derive explicit expressions for the corresponding extended Chern-Simons actions and the generalized anomaly terms that emerge from them. Possible applications to gravity and supergravity will also be discussed.

会場: セミナー室 (359号室) (メイン会場) / via Zoom

イベント公式言語: 英語

Invitation to Random Tensor Models: from random geometry, enumeration of tensor invariants, to characteristic polynomials

2026年1月6日(火) 13:30 - 14:30

鳥海 玲子 (沖縄科学技術大学院大学 (OIST) 准教授)

I will introduce random tensor models by first reviewing their motivation coming from random geometric approach to quantum gravity. Then, I will selectively present some of the interesting research results, by highlighting recent results on enumeration of graphs representing tensor invariants, and reporting our recent work on a new notion of characteristic polynomials for tensors via Grassmann integrals and distributions of roots of random tensors. The latter two are based on arXiv:2404.16404[hep-th] and arXiv:2510.04068[math-ph]

会場: 研究本館 3階 359号室 (メイン会場) / via Zoom

イベント公式言語: 英語