Volume 297

iTHEMS Weekly News Letter

Hot Topic

The annual S&T poster for everyone titlled “Mathematics: One S&T poster for Every Household” has been published

2024-04-02

The theme for the 2024 edition of the annual S&T poster for everyone “One S&T poster for Every Household” produced by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) for Science and Technology Week in April each year, is "Mathematics Connecting to the World”, planned by the RIKEN Interdisciplinary Theoretical and Mathematical Sciences Program (iTHEMS). The image for downloading was published on the Science and Technology Week page of the MEXT on March 25, 2024. The poster has been distributed to elementary schools, junior high schools, high schools, and universities nationwide. The posters will also be distributed at science museums and museums in the future. A special website with more in-depth coverage of the poster's contents will also be made available. The theme is “mathematics", which is used as a tool to understand and answer questions about things in the world, and the paper introduces how mathematics is used in our daily lives based on various examples.

Research News

Thomas Hitchcock thumbnail

RIKEN Research: How the genetic battle of the sexes plays out in species that can switch sex

2024-03-29

A model developed by RIKEN researchers incorporates species that change sex during their life cycles for the first time1, promising new insights into genes affecting the reproductive success of males and females differently.
Some genes that boost the reproductive success of females can be detrimental to that of males, and vice versa—a phenomenon dubbed ‘sexual antagonism’. Sometimes such genes can be silenced in individuals of the sex they are detrimental to. However, it may take a long time for these sexually antagonistic genes to be turned off, and so they may remain active in both sexes for generations.
“Researchers have long been interested in how sexual antagonism may maintain genetic variation in populations, and whether variants favoring one sex are systematically preferred,” says Thomas Hitchcock of the RIKEN Interdisciplinary Theoretical and Mathematical Sciences.

To read more, please visit the related link.

Reference

  1. Thomas J. Hitchcock and Andy Gardner, Sexual antagonism in sequential hermaphrodites, Proceedings of the Royal Society 290, 20232222 (2023), doi: 10.1098/rspb.2023.2222

Seminar Report

iTHEMS Biology Seminar by Haruna Fujioka on March 26, 2024

2024-04-05

On March 26, 2024, Dr. Haruna Fujioka from Okayama University gave a remarkable talk on behavioral ecology, sociobiology, and chronobiology using her own data of ants. In the 24-hour fluctuating environment on Earth, many organisms have evolved to have a daily rhythm. In humans, it is known that mothers can lose their daily rhythms when they are caring for their babies. Recently, Dr Fujioka developed a special experimental system for ants to discover when daily rhythms are lost. In the talk, she discussed when, how, and why ants lose their daily rhythms. During and after her talk, there was a lively discussion between the speaker and the audience. The talk was concise and easily understood by the 33+ Zoom attendees with various backgrounds. We enjoyed her talk very much. Thanks, Fujioka-san!!!

Reported by Gen Kurosawa

Upcoming Events

Seminar

iTHEMS Theoretical Physics Seminar

Short-Lived Hawking Radiation Under Stringy Effects

April 11 (Thu) at 13:30 - 15:00, 2024

Wei-Hsiang Shao (Ph.D. Student, Department of Physics, National Taiwan University, Taiwan)

A UV theory is required in order to describe the origin of late-time Hawking radiation. In this talk, I will explore Hawking radiation in a non-local model of the radiation field inspired by Witten's open string field theory. An attempt at extracting the correlators of this theory will be discussed, which leads to a space-time uncertainty relation. As a result, the characteristics of trans-Planckian field modes differ significantly from that in the standard low-energy effective theory, and I will argue that this ultimately results in the termination of Hawking radiation around the scrambling time of the black hole.

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

Event Official Language: English

Internal Meeting

The first internal meeting of RIKEN Quantum

April 16 (Tue) at 15:00 - 18:00, 2024

Seminar

RIKEN Quantum Seminar

Quantum Fine-Grained Complexity

April 18 (Thu) at 10:30 - 12:00, 2024

Harry Buhrman (Chief Scientist for Algorithms and Innovation, Quantinuum, UK)

(The speaker is also a professor at University of Amsterdam & QuSoft. This is a joint seminar with the iTHEMS Quantum Computation Study Group.)

One of the major challenges in computer science is to establish lower bounds on the resources, typically time, that are needed to solve computational problems, especially those encountered in practice. A promising approach to this challenge is the study of fine-grained complexity, which employs special reductions to prove time lower bounds for many diverse problems based on the conjectured hardness of key problems.
For instance, the problem of computing the edit distance between two strings, which is of practical interest for determining the genetic distance between species based on their DNA, has an algorithm that takes O(n^2) time. Through a fine-grained reduction, it can be demonstrated that a faster algorithm for edit distance would imply a faster algorithm for the Boolean Satisfiability (SAT) problem. Since faster algorithms for SAT are generally considered unlikely to exist, this implies that faster algorithms for the edit distance problem are also unlikely to exist. Other problems used for such reductions include the 3SUM problem and the All Pairs Shortest Path (APSP) problem.
The quantum regime presents similar challenges; almost all known lower bounds for quantum algorithms are defined in terms of query complexity, which offers limited insight for problems where the best-known algorithms take super-linear time. Employing fine-grained reductions in the quantum setting, therefore, represents a natural progression. However, directly translating classical fine-grained reductions to the quantum regime poses various challenges.
In this talk, I will present recent results in which we overcome these challenges and prove quantum time lower bounds for certain problems in BQP, conditioned on the conjectured quantum hardness of, for example, SAT (and its variants), the 3SUM problem, and the APSP problem. This presentation is based on joint works with Andris Ambainis, Bruno Loff, Florian Speelman, and Subhasree Patro.

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

Event Official Language: English

Colloquium

Maskawa Building for Education and Research venue photo

MACS ColloquiumSupported by iTHEMS

The 25th MACS Colloquium

April 19 (Fri) at 14:45 - 18:30, 2024

Wataru Morita (Researcher, Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Nature and Science / Associate Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, Graduate School of Science, The University of Tokyo)

14:45-15:00 Teatime discussion
15:00-16:00 Talk by Dr. Wataru Morita (Researcher, Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Nature and Science / Associate Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, Graduate School of Science, The University of Tokyo)
16:15-17:20 2024 Study Group introduction session
17:30-18:30 Discussion

Venue: Maskawa Hall, 1F, Maskawa Building for Education and Research, North Campus, Kyoto University

Event Official Language: Japanese

External Event

RIKEN DAY: Let's Talk with Researchers! Let's get to know each other through "Mathematics: One S&T poster for Every Household”!

April 19 (Fri) at 18:00 - 18:50, 2024

In this RIKEN DAY, we will introduce various phenomena in the world (all things in the universe) that are understood using "mathematics” and the use of "mathematics", including the latest research, while looking at the annual S&T poster for everyone titlled “Mathematics: One S&T poster for Every Household”.

For details, please see the related links.

Venue: via Zoom

Event Official Language: Japanese

Special Lecture

iTHEMS x academist Online Event "World of Mathematical Sciences 2024"

April 21 (Sun) at 10:00 - 15:30, 2024

Shingo Gibo (Postdoctoral Researcher, iTHEMS)
Taketo Sano (Special Postdoctoral Researcher, iTHEMS)
Misako Tatsuuma (Research Scientist, iTHEMS)
Tomoya Naito (Special Postdoctoral Researcher, iTHEMS)

Venue: via Zoom

Event Official Language: Japanese

Workshop

Nuclear Fusion and its Interdisciplinary Fields

May 14 (Tue) at 9:00 - 18:15, 2024

We will learn about nuclear fusion and related subjects, such as turbulence in astronomy and astrophysics, from experts and discuss possible interdisciplinary collaborations in the near future. Some researchers will visit RIKEN iTHEMS from the National Institute for Fusion Science (NIFS) and other universities and research institutes for the workshop. We will have the workshop in a hybrid style so that many researchers in Japan can hear the presentations even remotely. This workshop is supported by Moonshot Goal 10 (Program Director Yoshida Zensho (NIFS)).

Program
Session1
9:00-9:35 (25+10: 25 mins for Presentation, 10 mins for Q&A):Shinya Maeyama
9:35-10:10 (25+10): Naoki Sato
10:10-10:45 (25+10): Yohei Kawazura
10:45-11:15 Coffee Break
Session2
11:15-11:50 (25+10): Takanobu Amano
11:50-12:25 (25+10): Yosuke Matsumoto
12:25-13:00 (25+10): Akira Mizuta
13:00-14:00 Lunch Break
Session3
14:00-14:35 (25+10): Chiho Nonaka
14:35-15:10 (25+10): Takeo Hoshi
15:10-15:45 (25+10): Motoki Nakata
15:45-16:15 Coffee Break
Session 4
16:15-16:50 (25+10): Kumiko Hori
16:50-17:25 (25+10): Yutaka Ohira
17:25-18:00 (25+10): Camilia Demidem (TBC)
18:30-20:30: Dinner in the Main Research Building.

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

Event Official Language: English

Seminar

Quantum Gravity Gatherings

Black hole graviton and quantum gravity

May 16 (Thu) at 15:00 - 16:30, 2024

Yusuke Kimura (Research Scientist, Analytical quantum complexity RIKEN Hakubi Research Team, RIKEN Center for Quantum Computing (RQC))

Drawing from a thought experiment that we conduct, we propose that a virtual graviton gives rise to a black hole geometry when its momentum surpasses a certain threshold value on the Planck scale. This hypothesis implies that the propagator of a virtual graviton, that possesses momentum surpassing this threshold, vanishes. Consequently, a Feynman diagram containing this type of graviton propagator does not add to the overall amplitude. This mechanism suggests the feasibility of formulating an ultraviolet-finite four-dimensional quantum gravitational theory. The elementary particles including the gravitons are treated as point particles in this formulation.

Reference

  1. Yusuke Kimura, Black hole graviton and quantum gravity, arXiv: 2310.01925

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

Event Official Language: English

Workshop

Recent Developments and Challenges in Topological Phases

June 3 (Mon) - 14 (Fri), 2024

Thanks to intensive research efforts, topology has been established as a fundamental concept in physics. For closed quantum systems, the classification of gapped topological phases has matured. Moreover, the importance of topology is not limited to isolated quantum systems. Recently, the topology of non-Hermitian Hamiltonians, which effectively describe systems with dissipation, has attracted much attention worldwide. This fascination is exemplified by topological phases and topological phenomena unique to non-Hermitian systems.

Against this background, the primary purpose of this workshop is to bring together researchers working on topological phases and to discuss (i) open questions in topological phases of closed quantum systems and (ii) the role of topology in open quantum systems and measurements.

Venue: Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics, Kyoto University

Register: Event registration form

Event Official Language: English

Upcoming Visitor

April 9 (Tue) - 12 (Fri), 2024

Wei-Hsiang Shao

Ph.D. Student, Department of Physics, National Taiwan University, Taiwan

Visiting Place: RIKEN Wako Campus

Paper of the Week

Week 1, April 2024

2024-04-04

Title: Universal Bound on Effective Central Charge and Its Saturation
Author: Andreas Karch, Yuya Kusuki, Hirosi Ooguri, Hao-Yu Sun, Mianqi Wang
arXiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/2404.01515v1

Title: Accurate and precise quantum computation of valence two-neutron systems
Author: Sota Yoshida, Takeshi Sato, Takumi Ogata, Tomoya Naito, Masaaki Kimura
arXiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/2404.01694v1

Title: Order of the SU(N_f) x SU(N_f) chiral transition via the functional renormalization group
Author: G. Fejos, T. Hatsuda
arXiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/2404.00554v1

Title: ALMA Confirmation of Millimeter Time Variability in the Gamma-Ray Detected Seyfert Galaxy GRS 1734-292
Author: Tomonari Michiyama, Yoshiyuki Inoue, Akihiro Doi, Tomoya Yamada, Yasushi Fukazawa, Hidetoshi Kubo, Samuel Barnie
arXiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/2404.00647v1

Title: Decision Mamba: Reinforcement Learning via Sequence Modeling with Selective State Spaces
Author: Toshihiro Ota
arXiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/2403.19925v1

Title: Stochastic failure of cell infection post viral entry: Implications for infection outcomes and antiviral therapy
Author: Christian Quirouette, Daniel Cresta, Jizhou Li, Kathleen P. Wilkie, Haozhao Liang, Catherine A. A. Beauchemin
Journal Reference: Sci. Rep. 13, 17243 (2023)
doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-44180-w
arXiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/2208.00637v1

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