Volume 241

iTHEMS Weekly News Letter

Seminar Report

iTHEMS Biology Seminar by Dr. Adrian Gonzalez-Casanova on January 19, 2023

2023-03-07

We had the pleasure to have Dr. Adrián González-Casanova (Neyman Visiting Assistant Professor, The University of California, Berkeley, USA / Associate Professor, National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico) in our Biology seminar of January 19th, 2023. He presented us a talk consisting of two sections. First, he explained to us the basis of the coalescent theory: a model that depicts how alleles within a population relate each other until reaching a common ancestor. Second, he presented us how the coalescent theory can be used to explain and predict the behavior of one of the most intriguing experiments in evolutionary biology: the Lenski experiment. The Lenski experiment consists of a daily cultivation of E. coli; each day's culture is grown from a population cultivated the previous day. This, way, after thousand generations, the experiment has shown that the fitness increase of individuals is decelerating, but it doesn't decrease or even reach a plateau. Dr. González-Casanova presented us some ideas of how we can model the underlying biological processes behind the experiment while considering other noisy processes such as epistasis or clonal interference, and thus better understand how evolution occurs.

Reported by José Said Gutiérrez-Ortega

Seminar Report

Quantum Matter Seminar by Dr. Yung-Yeh Chang on March 2, 2023

2023-03-03

On March 2nd, 2023, the iTHEMS Quantum Matter Seminar was held online, featuring a talk on "Topological Kondo Superconductors" by Yung-Yeh Chang, a postdoctoral researcher at the National Center for Theoretical Sciences and National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University in Taiwan.

Yung-Yeh Chang began by introducing Kondo lattice and heavy fermion compound. Interestingly, superconductivity can emerge in this compound. Then, including topology, he proposed a realization of a 2D time-reversal symmetric superconductor in a class of Kondo lattice materials.

The proposed system involves the odd-parity Kondo hybridization, which mediates ferromagnetic spin-spin coupling and leads to spin-triplet resonant-valence-bond (t-RVB) pairing between local moments. The speaker explained that spin-triplet p±p' wave topological superconductivity is reached when the Kondo effect co-exists with t-RVB. By using the mean field theory to generate an effective free fermion (BdG) Hamiltonian, the topological nature was identified by the non-trivial topological invariant and the chiral Majorana modes at edges. The results on the superconducting transition temperature, Kondo coherent scale, and onset temperature of Kondo hybridization were discussed, which not only qualitatively but also quantitatively agree with the observations for UTe2.

In summary, the iTHEMS Quantum Matter Seminar on "Topological Kondo Superconductors," presented by Yung-Yeh Chang, provided an insightful discussion on the study of topological superconductors in Kondo lattice materials. The attendees had the opportunity to ask questions and engage in discussions with the speaker, making it an interactive and informative seminar.

Reported by Chen-Hsuan Hsu (Academia Sinica, Taiwan) and Ching-Kai Chiu

Upcoming Events

Seminar

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iTHEMS Seminar

Neutrinos from the big bang: probing cosmic gravitational inhomogeneities & magnetic fields in the early universe

March 13 (Mon) at 13:30 - 15:00, 2023

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

Primordial neutrinos from the Big Bang are about 100 times more prevalent than solar neutrinos, and at least two-thirds of them are now non-relativistic. These relic neutrinos, which have never been detected, decoupled in the early universe predominantly in helicity eigenstates. As I will discuss, their subsequent propagation through gravitational inhomogeneities and even background gravitational radiation, as well as cosmic and galactic magnetic fields partially flips their helicities, and can produce noticeable effects in their eventual detection. I will briefly mention future detection of relic neutrinos.

Venue: Common Room #246-248, 2F Main Research Building, RIKEN / via Zoom

Event Official Language: English

Seminar

iTHEMS Theoretical Physics Seminar

Towards S-matrix theory of unstable particles

March 15 (Wed) at 13:30 - 15:00, 2023

Katsuki Aoki (Research Assistant Professor, Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics, Kyoto University)

The S-matrix is one of the central objects in quantum field theory and gains renewed interest recently to understand the possible structures of low-energy effective field theories and quantum gravity. However, most of the particles have finite decay widths and thus do not appear in asymptotic states. Therefore, the standard S-matrix arguments may not be directly applied to scatterings of such unstable particles and we need to formulate “the S-matrix theory of unstable particles” to properly understand the availability of the S-matrix arguments in realistic systems. In this talk, I will talk about the first steps towards this goal. In particular, I will discuss non-perturbative consequences of unitarity in a scattering amplitude of unstable particles and its analytic properties.

Venue: Hybrid Format (Common Room 246-248 and Zoom)

Event Official Language: English

Seminar

iTHEMS Seminar

Gauge-equivariant neural networks as preconditioners in lattice QCD

April 6 (Thu) at 13:30 - 15:00, 2023

Tilo Wettig (Professor, Universität Regensburg, Germany)

We demonstrate that a state-of-the-art multi-grid preconditioner can be learned efficiently by gauge-equivariant neural networks. We show that the models require minimal re-training on different gauge configurations of the same gauge ensemble and to a large extent remain efficient under modest modifications of ensemble parameters. We also demonstrate that important paradigms such as communication avoidance are straightforward to implement in this framework.

Reference

  1. Christoph Lehner and Tilo Wettig, Gauge-equivariant neural networks as preconditioners in lattice QCD, (2023), arXiv: 2302.05419

Venue: Common Room #246-248, 2F Main Research Building, RIKEN / via Zoom

Event Official Language: English

Seminar

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iTHEMS Theoretical Physics Seminar

Spectral correlations and scrambling dynamics in Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev type models

May 30 (Tue) at 13:30 - 15:00, 2023

Masaki Tezuka (Assistant Professor, Division of Physics and Astronomy, Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University)

Note: Due to unexpected trouble, we have made the decision to postpone the seminar scheduled for February 21 to May 30. Sorry for the trouble.

Abstract:
The Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model, proposed in 2015, is a quantum mechanical model of N Majorana or complex fermions with all-to-all random four-body interactions. The model has attracted significant attention over the years due to its features such as the existence of the large-N solution with maximally chaotic behavior at low temperatures and holographic correspondence to low-dimensional gravity.
The sparse version of the SYK model reproduces essential features of the original model for reduced numbers of disorder parameters. We recently proposed [1] a further simplification, where we set the nonzero couplings to be +1 or -1 rather than sampling from a continuous distribution such as Gaussian. This binary-coupling model exhibits strong correlations in the spectrum, as observed in the spectral form factor, more efficiently in terms of the number of nonzero terms than in the Gaussian distribution case. We also discuss the scrambling dynamics with the binary-coupling sparse SYK model, comparing the model with the original model as well as the SYK model with random two-body terms [2], where the localization of the many-body eigenstates in the Fock space has been quantitatively studied [3,4].

References

  1. Masaki Tezuka, Onur Oktay, Enrico Rinaldi, Masanori Hanada, and Franco Nori, Binary-coupling sparse Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model: An improved model of quantum chaos and holography, Phys. Rev. B 107, L081103 (2023), doi: 10.1103/PhysRevB.107.L081103, arXiv: 2208.12098
  2. Antonio M. García-García, Bruno Loureiro, Aurelio Romero-Bermúdez, and Masaki Tezuka, Chaotic-Integrable Transition in the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev Model, Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 241603 (2018), doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.120.241603
  3. Felipe Monteiro, Tobias Micklitz, Masaki Tezuka, and Alexander Altland, Minimal model of many-body localization, Phys. Rev. Research 3, 013023 (2021), doi: 10.1103/PhysRevResearch.3.013023
  4. Felipe Monteiro, Masaki Tezuka, Alexander Altland, David A. Huse, and Tobias Micklitz, Quantum Ergodicity in the Many-Body Localization Problem, Phys. Rev. Lett. 127, 030601 (2021), doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.030601, arXiv: 2012.07884

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

Event Official Language: English

Workshop

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Supported by iTHEMS

6th Workshop on Virus Dynamics

July 4 (Tue) - 6 (Thu), 2023

Catherine Beauchemin (Deputy Program Director, iTHEMS)
Shingo Iwami (Professor, Graduate School of Science, Nagoya University)

The Workshop on Virus Dynamics is an international meeting held every 2 years. It brings virologists, immunologists, and microbiologists together with mathematical and computational modellers, bioinformaticians, bioengineers, virophysicists, and systems biologists to discuss current approaches and challenges in modelling and analyzing different aspects of virus and immune system dynamics, and associated vaccines and therapeutics. This 6th version of the workshop builds on the success of previous ones held in Frankfurt (2013), Toronto (2015), Heidelberg (2017), Paris (2019) and virtually (2021). It is supported by the Interdisciplinary Theoretical and Mathematical Sciences (iTHEMS) program at RIKEN, by Nagoya University, and by the Japan Science and Technology Agency. Up-to-date information and registration is available via the website. The workshop is for in-person participation only (no virtual or hybrid option).

Venue: Noyori Conference Hall, Higashiyama Campus, Nagoya University

Event Official Language: English

Upcoming Visitors

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March 13 (Mon) - 14 (Tue), 2023

Yoshiyuki Inoue

Senior Visiting Scientist, iTHEMS / Associate Professor, Department of Earth and Space Science, Graduate School of Science, Osaka University

Research fields: High Energy Astrophysics

Visiting Place: RIKEN Wako Campus

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March 13 (Mon) - 14 (Tue), 2023

Nagisa Hiroshima

Visiting Scientist, iTHEMS / Assistant Professor, Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, University of Toyama

Research fields: Dark Matter, High Energy Astrophysics

Visiting Place: RIKEN Wako Campus

Paper of the Week

Week 2, March 2023

2023-03-09

Title: Empirical neutron star mass formula based on experimental observables
Author: Hajime Sotani, Tomoya Naito
arXiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/2303.03631v1

Title: On the regularity conditions for holographic nonlinear responses: electric conductivity and friction coefficient
Author: Shuta Ishigaki, Shin Nakamura, Kazuaki Takasan
arXiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/2303.02633v1

Title: Neutron star mass-radius constraints using the high-frequency QPOs of GRB 200415A
Author: H. Sotani, K. D. Kokkotas, N. Stergioulas
arXiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/2303.03150v1

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