Volume 324
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Hot Topic
Report on the induction ceremony of American Academy of Arts and Sciences
2024-10-09
Tetsuo Hatsuda attended the induction ceremony of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences [1], held in Cambridge, Massachusetts, from September 29 to October 1, 2024, as a newly elected International Honorary Member (HIM). This year, 250 new members were inducted, including 25 HIMs [2], across various fields such as Mathematical and Physical Sciences, Biological Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Humanities and Arts, and Leadership, Policy and Communications.
The ceremony began with a gathering of new members at the House of the Academy [3]. The formal induction took place on September 30 at Sanders Theatre, Memorial Hall at Harvard University [4], starting at 3 p.m. During the ceremony, each inductee was called to the stage individually to sign the Academy members’ book.
In addition to the induction ceremony, there were receptions on September 29 and 30. The event concluded with a special lecture titled "Memory is about your future – what we think we become," delivered by André Fenton.
In the photograph, Tetsuo Hatsuda is seen on the left signing the Academy's book. On the right, he is pictured conversing with Bonnie Fleming [5], a fellow inductee in physics and a neutrino experimentalist from Fermilab.
Throughout the meeting, Tetsuo enjoyed engaging in conversations not only with fellow physicists but also with researchers from the social sciences and humanities.
References
Hot Topic
Presentation of iTHEMS outreach at NuFACT conference
2024-10-08
iTHEMS is a fantastic environment in which we conduct interdisciplinary research daily. Along with our research activity, a variety of outreach activities have been conducted so far.
Tomoya Nagai (Coordinator, iTHEMS) presented this special environment and its outreach activity at the NuFACT 2024 conference. At the conference, a session for Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Education, and Outreach (IDEEO) was composed. The session itself was organized so that we could visualize diversity in terms of speaker's and convener's properties. It provided us with a good opportunity to know IDEEO-related activities all over the world, which can be a chance to recognize and reconsider the issue around to achieve "good environments for everyone".
One special example of the iTHEMS outreach was the "Journalist in residence" program. The uniqueness of the activity caught significant attention from the participants of the conference. Also, "Mathematics Connecting to the World: One S&T poster for Every Household" seemed to be intriguing.
Although we had only a limited time for this exhibition and discussion, Nagai's attendance brought the conference a fresh view of the outreach activity as well as the achievements of the interdisciplinary and diverse environments. iTHEMS can be so influential to our community in multiple contexts!
Seminar Report
NCTS-iTHEMS Joint Workshop on Matters to Spacetime: Symmetries and Geometry on August 26, 2024
2024-10-07
The 1st NCTS-iTHEMS Joint Workshop was held from August 26th to August 29th, 2024, at the National Center for Theoretical Sciences (NCTS), National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan. The event was co-hosted by NCTS and RIKEN's Interdisciplinary Theoretical and Mathematical Sciences (iTHEMS) program. A total of around 50 participants from Japan and from Taiwan attended the workshop.
The workshop aimed to foster collaboration in the fields of condensed matter physics and quantum gravity, bringing together experts to share the latest research developments, explore interdisciplinary connections, and identify opportunities for joint projects. It marked the launch of an annual series of joint workshops between NCTS and iTHEMS, with alternating hosts.
The program alternated in each session on one day between condensed matter physics and quantum gravity topics to promote interdisciplinary collaboration. This alternating format encouraged researchers to engage with ideas outside their primary field, stimulating innovative approaches and broadening the scope for joint research. The four-day workshop included 23 talks, covering a range of topics such as topological superconductors, twisted bilayer graphene, quantum holography, and string theory.
Some afternoon sessions were dedicated to informal discussions, promoting interdisciplinary exchange between participants. Researchers had the opportunity to explore potential collaborations, exchange ideas on shared problems, and identify future research directions.
The 1st NCTS-iTHEMS Joint Workshop fostered collaboration between condensed matter physicists and quantum gravity theorists. By alternating topics each day, the workshop created a dynamic environment where researchers from both fields could engage with each other’s ideas, leading to cross-disciplinary innovations and future collaborative efforts.
The next iTHEMS- NCTS Joint Workshop will be held in RIKEN Wako campus in 2025, with iTHEMS serving as the host. The long-term objective is to continue this tradition of interdisciplinary exchange, ensuring the involvement of a diverse set of researchers and further strengthening the research connections between NCTS and iTHEMS.
Reported by Ching-Kai Chiu
NCTS-iTHEMS Joint Workshop on Matters to Spacetime: Symmetries and Geometry
August 26 (Mon) - 29 (Thu), 2024
Upcoming Events
Seminar
Math-Phys Seminar
Foliation Matter Phase and Godbillon-Vey Invariant
October 16 (Wed) at 15:00 - 17:00, 2024
Taiichi Nakanishi (Ph.D. Student, Division of Physics and Astronomy, Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University)
It has been a main topic in today's physics to classify matter phases. Especially, topologically ordered phases are attracting much attension from broad perspective. However, most of mathematical structures other than the topology are not investigated yet in physics. In this talk, we present a physical model which is strongly connected to the foliation structure of the space manifold, and its field theoretical description. In such a foliation field theory, we can see the structure is highly connected to the mathematical invariant of foliation structures called Godbillon-Vey invariant. This work would be a fiest step toward shining a light on mathematical structures used in physics. This work is based on arXiv:2408.05048 with Hiromi Ebisu, Masazumi Honda, and Soichiro Shimamori.
Venue: Seminar Room #359, 3F Main Research Building, RIKEN / via Zoom
Event Official Language: English
Seminar
iTHEMS Biology Seminar
Digital Twinning of Plant Internal Clocks for Robotics and Virtual Reality Enhancements in Agriculture
October 17 (Thu) at 16:00 - 17:00, 2024
Hirokazu Fukuda (Professor, Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka Metropolitan University)
Digital twinning, widely used in fields like industrial and agricultural engineering, creates digital replicas of physical systems. When applied to plant circadian clocks, these digital twins simulate physiological processes governed by circadian rhythms. This technology aids in predicting and optimizing plant growth and productivity in controlled environments, such as greenhouses and plant factories (vertical farms). By understanding key processes like photosynthesis and nutrient uptake, researchers can more effectively manage environmental factors, boosting crop yields and reducing waste. The integration of robotics and virtual reality further enhances these systems, enabling precise automation and real-time optimization. This presentation will explore these advancements, with a focus on mathematical models for controlling circadian clocks.
Venue: via Zoom
Event Official Language: English
Seminar
iTHEMS Theoretical Physics Seminar
Open Effective Field Theories for primordial cosmology
October 18 (Fri) at 13:30 - 15:00, 2024
Thomas Colas (Postdoc, Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, University of Cambridge, UK)
Imprints of new physics on observable cosmology may require the modelling of dissipation and noise. In this talk, I will present an open effective field theory for primordial cosmology where the inflaton sector interacts with an unknown environment. The approach recovers the usual effective field theory of inflation in a certain limit and extends it to account for local dissipation and noise. Non-Gaussianities are generated that peak in the equilateral configuration for large dissipation and in the folded configurations for small dissipation. The construction provides an embedding for local dissipative models of inflation and a framework to study dissipative and stochastic effects in cosmology.
Venue: Hybrid Format (3F #359 and Zoom), Seminar Room #359, 3F Main Research Building, RIKEN
Event Official Language: English
Seminar
iTHEMS Math Seminar
Young's convolution inequality on locally compact groups
October 18 (Fri) at 15:00 - 17:00, 2024
Takashi Satomi (Special Postdoctoral Researcher, iTHEMS)
Young's convolution inequality is one of the elementary inequalities in functional and harmonic analysis, and this inequality is related to various theories in mathematics, physics, and computer theory. In addition, it is known that Young's inequality can be generalized to any locally compact group. In this talk, we introduce the definition of locally compact groups and the statement of Young's inequality with several examples. Finally, we see the speaker's recent results about refining Young's inequality for several locally compact groups, including the special linear groups.
Venue: Seminar Room #359, 3F Main Research Building, RIKEN / via Zoom
Event Official Language: English
Seminar
iTHEMS Biology Seminar
The hidden language of light: Polarization signals in cuttlefish courtship
October 24 (Thu) at 16:00 - 17:00, 2024
Arata Nakayama (Postdoctoral Fellow, Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute, The University of Tokyo)
The most conspicuous signals are generally the most attractive; this principle underlies the evolution of sexual signal. While the sexual signal design and its exceptional diversity have primarily explored on the color (wavelength) of light, various animals utilize a different property of light for signaling: polarization.
In short, polarization is a third physical property of light, alongside color and intensity, and refers to the orientation of light waves' vibrations. While most vertebrate species, including humans, cannot perceive polarized light, some invertebrate species, such as crustaceans and cephalopods (e.g., octopus, squid, and cuttlefish), can detect the polarization of light and reflect polarized light from their body surfaces, suggesting that the polarization of light might function as a communication signal. In our study, by focusing on the sexually ornamented trait and the courtship behavior of specific cephalopod species, we found an polarization courtship signal, which is extremely conspicuous from the perspective of cephalopod polarization vision. Additionally, we conducted morphological observations and optical analyses of their polarization-reflective body surfaces, uncovering a novel mechanism for generating complex polarization patterns. In this gethering, I will provide a general introduction to the role of polarization as a visual cue and signal, followed by an overview of our study on the unique courtship behavior involving polarization signaling in the cuttlefish Sepia andreana.
Venue: Hybrid Format (3F #359 and Zoom), Seminar Room #359, 3F Main Research Building, RIKEN
Event Official Language: English
Seminar
ABBL-iTHEMS Joint Astro Seminar
Asymmetries in Stripped Envelope Supernovae
October 25 (Fri) at 14:00 - 15:15, 2024
Thomas Maunder (Ph.D. Student, Department of Astronomy, Monash University, Australia)
The explosion mechanism of supernovae is not yet fully understood. In order to better understand the inner-workings of the explosion we need to be able to test our models with observations. Current hydrodynamic simulations of stellar explosions often do not provide photometry or spectroscopy as this requires a treatment of the radiation transport of the ejecta. This project takes hydrodynamic simulations of Type Ib/c (stripped-envelope) supernovae and then performs Monte Carlo Radiative Transport simulations on the ejecta to obtain results we can compare with observations. We choose stripped-envelope supernovae because the lack of Hydrogen shell provides a more direct view into the core and the asymmetries of the explosion mechanism. Through these comparisons between models and observations we can improve our understanding of the explosion mechanism in core-collapse supernovae.
Venue: via Zoom
Event Official Language: English
Workshop
iTHEMS Science Outreach Workshop 2024
November 15 (Fri) - 17 (Sun), 2024
This year's meeting on "Outreach of RIKEN iTHEMS 2024@Sendai&Zoom" will be held from FRI November 15 to SUN November 17, as a face-to-face meeting at TOKYO ELECTRON House of Creativity of Tohoku Forum for Creativity in cooperation with iTHEMS SUURI-COOL (Sendai) using ZOOM for the necessary part as well.
Venue: TOKYO ELECTRON House of Creativity, Katahira Campus, Tohoku University / via Zoom
Event Official Language: Japanese
Seminar
DEEP-IN Seminar
Solving inverse problem via latent variable optimization of diffusion models: An application to CT reconstruction
November 25 (Mon) at 14:00 - 15:00, 2024
Sho Ozaki (Assistant Professor, Graduate School of Science and Technology, Hirosaki University)
Inverse problems are widely studied in various scientific fields, including mathematics, physics, and medical imaging (such as CT and MRI reconstructions). In this talk, I will present a novel method for solving inverse problems using the diffusion model, with an application to CT reconstruction. The diffusion model, which is a core component of recent image-generative AI, such as Stable Diffusion and DALL-E3, is capable of producing high-quality images with rich diversity. The imaging process in CT (i.e., CT reconstruction) is mathematically an inverse problem. When the radiation dose is reduced to minimize a patient's exposure, image quality deteriorates due to information loss, making the CT reconstruction problem highly ill-posed. In the proposed method, the diffusion model, trained with a large dataset of high-quality images, serves as a regularization technique to address the ill-posedness. Consequently, the proposed method reconstructs high-quality images from sparse (low-dose) CT data while preserving the patient's anatomical structures. We also compare the performance of the proposed method with those of other existing methods, and find that the proposed method outperforms the existing methods in terms of quantitative indices.
Reference
- Sho Ozaki, Shizuo Kaji, Toshikazu Imae, Kanabu Nawa, Hideomi Yamashita, Keiichi Nakagawa, Iterative CT Reconstruction via Latent Variable Optimization of Shallow Diffusion Models, arXiv: 2408.03156
Venue: #359, 3F, Seminar Room #359, 3F Main Research Building, RIKEN / via Zoom
Event Official Language: English
Colloquium
MACS ColloquiumSupported by iTHEMS
The 27th MACS Colloquium
November 25 (Mon) at 14:45 - 18:00, 2024
Ryusuke Hamazaki (RIKEN Hakubi Team Leader, Nonequilibrium Quantum Statistical Mechanics RIKEN Hakubi Research Team, RIKEN Cluster for Pioneering Research (CPR))
Teruaki Enoto (Associate Professor, Department of Physics, Division of Physics and Astronomy, Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University)
14:45-15:00 Teatime discussion
15:00-16:00 Talk by Dr. Ryusuke Hamazaki (RIKEN Hakubi Team Leader, Nonequilibrium Quantum Statistical Mechanics RIKEN Hakubi Research Team)
16:15-17:15 Talk by Dr. Teruaki Enoto (Associate Professor, Department of Physics, Division of Physics and Astronomy, Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University)
17:15-18:00 Discussion
Venue: Maskawa Hall, 1F, Maskawa Building for Education and Research, North Campus, Kyoto University
Event Official Language: Japanese
Workshop
Third Workshop on Density Functional Theory: Fundamentals, Developments, and Applications (DFT2025)
March 25 (Tue) - 27 (Thu), 2025
The density functional theory (DFT) is one of the powerful methods to solve quantum many-body problems, which, in principle, gives the exact energy and density of the ground state. The accuracy of DFT is, in practice, determined by the accuracy of an energy density functional (EDF) since the exact EDF is still unknown. Currently, DFT has been used in many communities, including nuclear physics, quantum chemistry, and condensed matter physics, while the fundamental study of DFT, such as the first principle derivations of an accurate EDF and methods to calculate many observables from obtained densities and excited states, is still ongoing. However, there has been little opportunity to have interdisciplinary communication.
On December 2022, we had the first workshop on this series (DFT2022) at Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics, Kyoto University, and several interdisciplinary discussions and collaborations were started. On February 2024, we had the second workshop on this series (DFT2024) at RIKEN Kobe Campus, and more stimulated discussion occured. To keep and extend collaborations, we organize the third workshop. Since the third workshop, we extend the scope of the workshop to the development and application of DFT as well. In this workshop, the current status and issues of each discipline will be shared towards solving these problems by meeting together among researchers in mathematics, nuclear physics, quantum chemistry, and condensed matter physics.
This workshop mainly comprises lectures/seminars on cutting-edge topics and discussion, while sessions composed of contributed talks are also planned.
Venue: 8F, Integrated Innovation Building (IIB), Kobe Campus, RIKEN / via Zoom
Event Official Language: English
Person of the Week
Self-introduction: Gabriele Di Ubaldo
2024-10-07
I am broadly interested in understanding quantum gravity as an emergent phenomenon. This is the case in the AdS/CFT correspondence where a d+1-dimensional theory of quantum gravity (usually a string theory) emerges from the collective dynamics of a d-dimensional Conformal Field Theory (CFT) with many degrees of freedom. I believe this is a beautiful example of Anderson's principle "More is different", where many-body quantum systems (the CFT) can exhibit striking and unexpected collective behaviour (Gravity). I am particularly interested in the role of quantum chaos and thermalization in the correspondence between CFT and black hole physics and how to explain and derive gravitational phenomena, such as wormholes, using CFT and the tools of the conformal bootstrap.
More broadly, I am interested in many-body quantum systems, disordered systems, classical and quantum chaos, and diverse topics in math, such as random matrix theory, analytic number theory (modular forms), topological recursion, and three-manifold geometry.
If you are working on any of these topics or are simply interested, I'll be happy to talk physics!
Previously, I obtained my PhD at the Institut de Physique Theorique in Paris, CEA Saclay, working with Eric Perlmutter, and my master's degree at Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris.
Looking forward to my time at RIKEN and UC Berkeley!
Paper of the Week
Week 2, October 2024
2024-10-10
Title: Building Hadron Potentials from Lattice QCD with Deep Neural Networks
Author: Lingxiao Wang, Takumi Doi, Tetsuo Hatsuda, Yan Lyu
arXiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/2410.03082v1
Title: Enhanced quantitation of pathological ɑ-synuclein in patient biospecimens by RT-QuIC seed amplification assays
Author: Srivastava, A, Q Wang, CD Orrù, M Fernandez, Y Compta, B Ghetti, G Zanusso, WQ Zou, B Caughey, and CAA Beauchemin
Journal Reference: PLOS Pathog., 20(9):e1012554
doi: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.ppat.1012554
Title: Consistency of operator product expansions of Boundary 2d CFT and Swiss-cheese operad
Author: Yuto Moriwaki
arXiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/2410.02648v1
Title: Gravitational wave asteroseismology of accreting neutron stars in a steady state
Author: Hajime Sotani, Akira Dohi
arXiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/2410.01552v1
Title: The Disk Wind Contribution to the Gamma-Ray emission from the nearby Seyfert Galaxy GRS 1734-292
Author: Nobuyuki Sakai, Tomoya Yamada, Yoshiyuki Inoue, Ellis R. Owen, Tomonari Michiyama, Ryota Tomaru, Yasushi Fukazawa
arXiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/2410.02263v1
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