Volume 359

iTHEMS Weekly News Letter

Press Release

Ryosuke Iritani thumbnail

Developing a framework for inferring spatial biodiversity: quantifying the "beta-diversity" patterns

2025-06-12

An international research team led by Ryosuke Iritani, Senior Research Scientist at RIKEN iTHEMS, has developed a theoretical framework to estimate the probability distribution of spatial biodiversity. This interdisciplinary work uses fuzzy set theory to formulate species presence-absence in a community, armed with analytical techniques and concepts from mathematics and theoretical physics.

This work enables a quantitative assessment of differences and variations in species richness across regions, contributing to the prediction of how environmental changes in the biosphere influence biodiversity.

For more details, please refer to the related link.

Reference

  1. Ryosuke Iritani, Vicente J. Ontiveros, David Alonso, José A. Capitán, William Godsoe, Shinichi Tatsumi, Jaccard dissimilarity in stochastic community models based on the species-independence assumption, Ecography e07737 (2025), doi: 10.1002/ecog.07737

Seminar Report

iTHEMS Theoretical Physics Seminar by Wu Xianxin on June 5, 2025

2025-06-12

On June 5, Prof. Xianxin Wu (the Institute of theoretical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences) delivered a seminar hosted by RIKEN iTHEMS, where he presented an overview of recent experimental advances in kagome metals. His talk highlighted key phenomena such as unconventional superconductivity, charge density wave (CDW) order, and electronic nematicity. Particularly noteworthy was the growing body of evidence indicating spontaneous time-reversal symmetry (TRS) breaking within the CDW phase—potentially signaling the emergence of a long-sought loop current order, although its microscopic origin remains unresolved. Following this overview, he discussed an effective theoretical model that captures the unique sublattice texture associated with van Hove singularities in the kagome lattice. This sublattice structure plays a crucial role in shaping correlated electronic states. To conclude the seminar, Xianxin proposed a theoretical scenario for the emergence of a TRS-breaking CDW in kagome systems and explored the possibility of unconventional superconducting pairing mediated by loop-current fluctuations.

Reported by Ching-Kai Chiu and Congcong Le

Upcoming Events

Seminar

iTHEMS Theoretical Physics Seminar

A New Holographic Entanglement Entropy in the de Sitter space

June 13 (Fri) 16:00 - 17:00, 2025

Yuki Suzuki (Ph.D. Student, Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics, Kyoto University)

We propose a new holographic entanglement entropy in the three-dimensional de Sitter space. It is known that the holographic entanglement entropy via Ryu-Takayanagi prescription violates the entropic inequalities that they should satisfy. We propose a kind of extensions of the Ryu-Takayanagi formula so that they satisfy the strong subadditivity. We fix consistent parameter regions of the entropy and finally comment on the implications to the static patch holography.

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

Event Official Language: English

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iTHEMS Theoretical Physics Seminar

Charting the landscape of gauge-fermion dynamics

June 16 (Mon) 13:30 - 15:00, 2025

Álvaro Pastor Gutiérrez (Special Postdoctoral Researcher, Division of Fundamental Mathematical Science, RIKEN Center for Interdisciplinary Theoretical and Mathematical Sciences (iTHEMS))

Gauge–fermion quantum field theories are central to our understanding of nature, from QCD to the electroweak sector. Beyond the Standard Model, strongly coupled gauge dynamics offer compelling avenues to address open puzzles. In this talk, I present a cartographic study of gauge–fermion theories across varying numbers of colours and flavours, focusing on the interplay between colour confinement and chiral symmetry breaking. We determine the flavour and colour dependence of the corresponding dynamical scales, providing a unified picture that interpolates between QCD-like regimes—where we recover quantitative agreement with lattice results—and the perturbative conformal limit. The analysis is based on the functional renormalisation group and employs a novel approximation scheme that allows for controlled and flexible access to the non-perturbative dynamics. We further explore the near-conformal regime with walking behaviour and estimate the lower boundary of the Caswell–Banks–Zaks conformal window. This framework enables a self-consistent mapping of the theory space of strongly coupled gauge–fermion systems and yields first-principles results with direct relevance for physics beyond the Standard Model.

Reference

  1. Florian Goertz, Álvaro Pastor-Gutiérrez, Jan M. Pawlowski, Gauge-Fermion Cartography: from confinement and chiral symmetry breaking to conformality, arXiv: 2412.12254

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

Event Official Language: English

Seminar

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DEEP-IN Seminar

Identifying Lightning Structures and Predicting Cloud Properties

June 18 (Wed) 15:00 - 16:00, 2025

Lingxiao Wang (Research Scientist, Division of Fundamental Mathematical Science, RIKEN Center for Interdisciplinary Theoretical and Mathematical Sciences (iTHEMS))

This third talk in the DEEP-IN series focuses on using unsupervised machine learning to identify and predict patterns in atmospheric phenomena. We begin by demonstrating how clustering and dimensionality reduction techniques can uncover coherent lightning patterns from high-dimensional LOFAR (LOw Frequency ARray) data, offering insight into large-scale organization. We then show how generative diffusion models enable super-resolution retrieval of cloud properties for all day from satellite observations.

This is an informal seminar, we will start with the methodology and some practical examples, and finally reserve time for everyone interested to discuss it together.

References

  1. L. Wang, B. M. Hare, K. Zhou, H. Stoecker, and O. Scholten, Identifying lightning structures via machine learning, Chaos, Solitons & Fractals 170, 113346 (2023), doi: 10.1016/j.chaos.2023.113346
  2. H. Xiao, F. Zhang, L. Wang, W. Li, B. Guo, and J. Li, CloudDiff: Super-Resolution Ensemble Retrieval of Cloud Properties for All Day Using the Generative Diffusion Model, (2024), arXiv: 2405.04483
  3. H. Xiao, F. Zhang, R. Zhang, F. Lu, M. Cai, and L. Wang, Retrieval of total precipitable water under all-weather conditions from Himawari-8/AHI observations using the generative diffusion model, (2025), doi: 10.22541/au.173748287.72657559/v1

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

Event Official Language: English

Seminar

iTHEMS Theoretical Physics Seminar

Black hole states at finite N

June 18 (Wed) 16:30 - 17:30, 2025

Sunjin Choi (Postdoctoral Fellow, Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU), The University of Tokyo)

We study new cohomologies for the local BPS operators of the maximal super-Yang-Mills theory to better understand the black hole microstates. We first analyze the index of these black hole operators and explicitly construct their cohomologies to study how they imitate the quantum black holes. We find many towers of states and partial no-hair behaviors where certain gravtions are forbidden to dress these black hole operators. This qualitatively agrees with the behavior of the perturbative hairy BPS black holes or the so-called grey galaxies. Throughout this talk, we mainly focus on a subsector of the field theory corresponding to the BMN matrix theory, which exhibits a black hole-like entropy growth at large N.

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

Event Official Language: English

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DEEP-IN Seminar

Gauge-equivariant multigrid neural networks

June 19 (Thu) 10:30 - 12:00, 2025

Tilo Wettig (Professor, Universität Regensburg, Germany)

In lattice QCD simulations, the most time-consuming element is typically the solution of the Dirac equation in the presence of a given gauge field. The current state of the art is to use a multigrid preconditioner to reduce the condition number of the Dirac operator matrix. We show how such preconditioners can be constructed using gauge-equivariant neural networks. For the multigrid solve we employ parallel-transport convolution layers. For the multigrid setup we consider two versions: the standard construction based on the near-null space of the operator, and a gauge-equivariant construction using pooling and subsampling layers. We show that both versions eliminate critical slowing down.

References

  1. Daniel Knüttel, Christoph Lehner and Tilo Wettig, Gauge-equivariant multigrid neural networks, PoS(LATTICE2023)037, arXiv: https://pos.sissa.it/453/037/pdf
  2. Christoph Lehner and Tilo Wettig, Gauge-equivariant pooling layers for preconditioners in lattice QCD, arXiv: 2304.10438

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

Event Official Language: English

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iTHEMS Biology Seminar

Programmed chromosome eliminations in flies

June 19 (Thu) 13:00 - 14:00, 2025

Robert Baird (Visiting Researcher, Division of Fundamental Mathematical Science, RIKEN Center for Interdisciplinary Theoretical and Mathematical Sciences (iTHEMS))

Species that break the traditional rules of genetics and inheritance offer perhaps some of the best opportunities to study fundamental biological questions. Sciarids (fungus gnats) are a species-rich family of flies with highly unorthodox chromosome inheritance. Asymmetric male meiotic divisions result in elimination of the paternal genome every generation, and maternally-controlled eliminations of chromosomes in the developing embryo determine offspring sex. I use a combination of genomics, population genetics, and cytogenetics to understand both the mechanisms and the evolution of this system. I will discuss how these approaches have allowed us to uncover some fascinating biology as well as tackle broader biological questions.

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

Event Official Language: English

Internal Meeting

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5th Mathematical Application Research Team Meeting

June 20 (Fri) 14:00 - 15:30, 2025

Taketo Sano (Research Scientist, Mathematical Application Research Team, Division of Applied Mathematical Science, RIKEN Center for Interdisciplinary Theoretical and Mathematical Sciences (iTHEMS))

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

Event Official Language: English

Seminar

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iTHEMS Math Seminar

Categorification and K-theory

June 20 (Fri) 15:30 - 17:30, 2025

Vladimir Sosnilo (Research Scientist, Division of Fundamental Mathematical Science, RIKEN Center for Interdisciplinary Theoretical and Mathematical Sciences (iTHEMS))

In this talk, I will explain and motivate the concept of categorification and present various examples. The Euler characteristic is an invariant of a topological space, that serves as a shadow of a more refined category theoretic invariant—homology—which retains significantly more information. The existence of such a categorical construction underlying a numerical one is a common phenomenon in topology and algebra. I will also discuss Khovanov's question on the existence of categorification of arbitrary rings.

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

Event Official Language: English

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iTHEMS Math Seminar

Spectral flow and applications

June 23 (Mon) 14:00 - 16:00, 2025

Christopher Bourne (Associate Professor, Institute of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Nagoya University)

Given a family of symmetric matrices indexed by a parameter (e.g. time, external field), changing this parameter will cause the eigenvalues to move along the real axis. The spectral flow tracks these eigenvalues and counts how many cross the point 0. This idea turns out to be very useful for both pure mathematics as well as applications to physics and elsewhere. In this talk, I will introduce the spectral flow and how it can be generalised to a variety of settings that are also relevant for applications in quantum physics.

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

Event Official Language: English

Seminar

LLM-based physics analysis assistant at BESIII

June 23 (Mon) 15:00 - 16:00, 2025

Yipu Liao (Ph.D. Student, Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China)

The data processing and analyzing is one of the main challenges at HEP experiments. To accelerate the physics analysis and drive new physics discovery, the rapidly developing Large Language Model (LLM) is the most promising approach, it have demonstrated astonishing capabilities in recognition and generation of text while most parts of physics analysis can be benefitted. In this talk we will discuss the construction of a dedicated intelligent agent, an AI assistant names Dr.Sai at BESIII based on LLM, the potential usage to boost the data analysis. I will also provide a brief overview of the construction of the AI platform at the Institute of High Energy Physics (ai.ihep.ac.cn) and outline the roadmap for AI4HEP.

Yipu Liao (廖一朴) is a Ph.D. student at the Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. His research is centered on particle physics data analysis, with a special emphasis on Charmonium(-like) and tau physics within the BESIII and Belle II experiments. He is actively engaged in the development of the AI assistant project (DrSai) for the BESIII experiment, and leads the design and evaluation of automated processes.

Reference

  1. Zhengde Zhang, Yiyu Zhang, Haodong Yao, Jianwen Luo, Rui Zhao, Bo Huang, Jiameng Zhao, Yipu Liao, Ke Li, Lina Zhao, Jun Cao, Fazhi Qi, Changzheng Yuan, Xiwu: A Basis Flexible and Learnable LLM for High Energy Physics, (2024), arXiv: 2404.08001

Venue: #345-347, Main Research Building, RIKEN Wako Campus / via Zoom

Event Official Language: English

Workshop

iTHEMS-TheoryCenter(KEK) Scientific Writing and DEI Workshop

June 24 (Tue) - 25 (Wed) 2025

Ashleigh Griffin (Professor, Department of Biology, University of Oxford, UK)
Stuart West (Professor, Department of Biology, University of Oxford, UK)
Ryosuke Iritani (Senior Research Scientist, Division of Fundamental Mathematical Science, RIKEN Center for Interdisciplinary Theoretical and Mathematical Sciences (iTHEMS))

This is a two-day KEK-iTHEMS workshop on scientific writing and diversity, equity, and inclusion.
For more details, please visit the workshop website via the relevant link.

Venue: 2F Large Conference Room, Administrative Headquarters, RIKEN Wako Campus

Event Official Language: English

Seminar

ComSHeL Seminar

ComSHeL introductions meeting

June 24 (Tue) 14:00 - 15:30, 2025

Following our Launch Meeting on May 1st, in this second meeting of our study group we plan for each member of the ComSHeL Study Group and anyone who joins us that day to introduce their research briefly to get to know one another's focus and expertise. If you are interested in possibly collaborating with ComSHeL members and/or you would like to get to know some of the researchers who joined us as part of iTHEMS new Division of Applied Mathematical Science, please join us. I extended the duration to 90 min (from our usual 60 min) to make sure we have enough time to hear from everyone.

Each attendee will have approximately 4 minutes to explain their past, current, or upcoming research and time will be kept strictly. Time might be adjusted on the day of the meeting based on the number of applicants. If you would like to show some slides (max 3 slides), please prepare them in advance and send them to cbeau@riken.jp in PDF format no later than June 20. But no one should feel they must prepare slides: it is fine to speak freely and informally about your work.

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

Event Official Language: English

Seminar

GWX-EOS Seminar

Condensed-Matter Physics of Neutron Stars 1

June 25 (Wed) 10:00 - 12:30, 2025

Hiroyuki Tajima (Assistant Professor, Graduate School of Science, The University of Tokyo)

Neutron stars, the most compact stars in the Universe, are composed of various matter. However, due to their extremely low temperatures and high densities, they exhibit strong interactions and condensed states. Knowledge of condensed-matter physics is essential for describing such quantum matter. In this lecture, theoretical aspects of condensed-matter physics relevant with neutron stars, through active discussion with participants.

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

Event Official Language: Japanese

Seminar

GWX-EOS Seminar

Condensed-Matter Physics of Neutron Stars 2

June 25 (Wed) 14:00 - 16:30, 2025

Daisuke Inotani (Postdoctoral Researcher, Research and Education Center for Natural Sciences, Keio University)

Neutron stars, the most compact stars in the Universe, are composed of various matter. However, due to their extremely low temperatures and high densities, they exhibit strong interactions and condensed states. Knowledge of condensed-matter physics is essential for describing such quantum matter. In this lecture, theoretical aspects of condensed-matter physics relevant with neutron stars, through active discussion with participants.

Venue: #359, 3F, RIKEN Wako Campus / via Zoom

Event Official Language: Japanese

Seminar

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DEEP-IN Seminar

Generative Models for Statistical Field Theories

June 25 (Wed) 15:00 - 16:00, 2025

Lingxiao Wang (Research Scientist, Division of Fundamental Mathematical Science, RIKEN Center for Interdisciplinary Theoretical and Mathematical Sciences (iTHEMS))

In the final talk of the DEEP-IN series, we will explore the role of generative models in learning phase transitions and sampling in lattice systems. First, we demonstrate how generative models can serve as global samplers by learning the underlying probability distributions. This enables the sampling of configurations more efficiently for lattice field theories. We will also demonstrate how the ferromagnetic phase transition, the Kosterlitz-Thouless transition, and quantum phase transitions can be identified from generative models. I will briefly introduce generative diffusion models, which can be interpreted as a stochastic quantization scheme. This opens a new path for understanding deep generative models.

This is an informal seminar, we will start with the methodology and some practical examples, and finally reserve time for everyone interested to discuss it together.

References

  1. Q. Zhu, G. Aarts, W. Wang, K. Zhou, and L. Wang, Physics-Conditioned Diffusion Models for Lattice Gauge Theory, (2025), arXiv: 2502.05504
  2. L. Wang, G. Aarts, and K. Zhou, Diffusion models as stochastic quantization in lattice field theory, JHEP 05, 060 (2024), doi: 10.1007/JHEP05(2024)060
  3. T. Xu, L. Wang, L. He, K. Zhou, and Y. Jiang, Building imaginary-time thermal filed theory with artificial neural networks, Chin. Phys. C 48, 103101 (2024), doi: 10.1088/1674-1137/ad5f80
  4. S. Chen, O. Savchuk, S. Zheng, B. Chen, H. Stoecker, L. Wang, and K. Zhou, Fourier-flow model generating Feynman paths, Phys. Rev. D 107, 056001 (2023), doi: 10.1103/PhysRevD.107.056001
  5. L. Wang, Y. Jiang, L. He, and K. Zhou, Continuous-mixture autoregressive networks learning the Kosterlitz-Thouless transition, Chin. Phys. Lett. 39, 120502 (2022), doi: 10.1088/0256-307X/39/12/120502

Venue: #345-347, Main Research Building, RIKEN Wako Campus / via Zoom

Event Official Language: English

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iTHEMS Biology Seminar

Simulating the spread of infection in networks with quantum computers

June 26 (Thu) 13:00 - 14:00, 2025

Xiaoyang Wang (Postdoctoral Researcher, Quantum Mathematical Science Team, Division of Applied Mathematical Science, RIKEN Center for Interdisciplinary Theoretical and Mathematical Sciences (iTHEMS))

Many classical stochastic processes can be modeled as Markovian processes, including the spreading of infection in networks. Simulating the Markovian processes using classical computers is generally unscalable for large networks. In this seminar, I will introduce the Hamiltonian evolution on quantum computers and how the Markovian spreading of infection can be efficiently simulated using the Hamiltonian evolution. In particular, we analytically and numerically analyze the evolution of a specifically designed Hamiltonian, and prove that the evolution simulates a classical Markovian process, which describes the well-known epidemiological stochastic susceptible and infectious (SI) model. As an example, we simulate the infection spreading process of the SARS-CoV-2 variant Omicron in a small-world network. The simulation results are qualitative consistent with the infection spreading in the west coast of USA.

Reference

  1. X. Wang, Y. Lyu, C. Yao, and X. Yuan, Simulating the Spread of Infection in Networks with Quantum Computers, Phys. Rev. Applied (2023), doi: 10.1103/PhysRevApplied.19.064035

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

Event Official Language: English

Seminar

Universal Pseudo-Goldstone Damping from the Real-Time Functional Renormalization Group

June 26 (Thu) 15:00 - 16:00, 2025

Yang-Yang Tan (Ph.D. Candidate, Dalian University of Technology, China)

Strongly correlated systems, from QCD matter to condensed matter, exhibit universal dynamics near phase transitions. However, despite the successes of various theoretical approaches, systematic treatments of fluctuations are scarce. This talk unveils a novel universal damping mechanism for pseudo-Goldstone modes in systems with spontaneously broken approximate symmetries. I will introduce the real-time functional renormalization group (fRG) method, a powerful non-perturbative framework for studying real-time dynamics near critical points. Using this approach within a critical O(N) model, we uncover a new universal scaling for pseudo-Goldstone damping. Different from the conventional damping found in holography and hydrodynamics, the new one is controlled by critical fluctuations, hence is invisible in mean-field systems or strongly correlated systems with classical gravity duals. Since the critical damping depends solely on the universalities of the critical point, irrespective of the microscopic details, our conclusion should be applicable to a wide class of interacting systems.

Reference

  1. Yang-yang Tan, Yong-rui Chen, Wei-jie Fu and Wei-Jia Li, Universality of pseudo-Goldstone damping near critical points, Nature Commun. 16 (2025) 1, 2916, doi: 10.1038/s41467-025-58170-1, arXiv: 2403.03503

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

Event Official Language: English

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Math-Phys Seminar

Exact WKB as unified analytic structure for resonance physics

June 27 (Fri) 15:00 - 17:00, 2025

Okuto Morikawa (Special Postdoctoral Researcher, Division of Fundamental Mathematical Science, RIKEN Center for Interdisciplinary Theoretical and Mathematical Sciences (iTHEMS))

We develop a unified framework for analyzing quantum mechanical resonances using the exact WKB method. The non-perturbative formulation based on the exact WKB method works for incorporating well-established phenomenological regularizations, the ABC theorem (proof of the completeness of Hilbert space), and the rigged Hilbert space in resonant phenomena. By examining the inverted Rosen-Morse potential, we illustrate how the exact WKB analysis captures resonant phenomena rigorously. Also, we clarify the corresponding linear spaces defined in each step of the exact WKB manipulations. The complementarity between the essential analyticity for resonance and the ABC theorem leads us to construct a modified Hilbert space called the rigged Hilbert space within the exact WKB framework. This offers a deeper understanding of resonant states and their analytic structures. Our results provide a concrete demonstration of the non-perturbative accuracy of exact WKB methods in unstable quantum systems.

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

Event Official Language: English

Seminar

iTHEMS Theoretical Physics Seminar

Boundary Scattering and Non-invertible Symmetries in 1+1 Dimensions

July 4 (Fri) 14:00 - 15:00, 2025

Soichiro Shimamori (Ph.D. Student, Graduate School of Science, Osaka University)

Recent studies by Copetti, Córdova and Komatsu have revealed that when non-invertible symmetries are spontaneously broken, the conventional crossing relation of the S-matrix is modified by the effects of the corresponding topological quantum field theory (TQFT). We extend these considerations to (1+1)-dimensional quantum field theories (QFTs) with boundaries. In the presence of a boundary, one can define not only the bulk S-matrix but also the boundary S-matrix, which is subject to a consistency condition known as the boundary crossing relation. We show that when the boundary is weakly-symmetric under the non-invertible symmetry, the conventional boundary crossing relation also receives a modification due to the TQFT effects. As a concrete example of the boundary scattering, we analyze kink scattering in the gapped theory obtained from the Φ(1,3)-deformation of a minimal model. We explicitly construct the boundary S-matrix that satisfies the Ward-Takahashi identities associated with non-invertible symmetries. This talk is based on the collaboration with Satoshi Yamaguchi.

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

Event Official Language: English

Colloquium

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MACS ColloquiumSupported by iTHEMS

The 29th MACS Colloquium

July 4 (Fri) 14:45 - 18:00, 2025

Takashi Sakajo (Professor, Division of Mathematics and Mathematical Sciences, Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University)
Shinichi Sasa (Professor, Division of Physics and Astronomy, Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University)

14:45-15:00 Teatime discussion
15:00–15:50 Talk by Prof. Takashi Sakajo (Professor, Division of Mathematics and Mathematical Sciences, Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University)
16:00–16:50 Talk by Prof. Shinichi Sasa (Professor, Division of Physics and Astronomy, Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University)
17:15-18:00 Discussion

Venue: Science Seminar House (Map 9), Kyoto University

Event Official Language: Japanese

External Event

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What is “Quantum”!?: RIKEN Symposium Commemorating 100 Years of Quantum Science

July 12 (Sat) 13:00 - 17:00, 2025

Makoto Kobayashi (Director Emeritus, Kobayashi-Maskawa Institute for the Origin of Particles and the Universe (KMI), Nagoya University)
Yasunori Nomura (Professor/Director, Berkeley Center for Theoretical Physics, University of California, Berkeley, USA)
Kenji Ito (Professor, Division of Contemporary Culture, Graduate School of Letters, Kyoto University)
Miho Hatanaka (Professor, Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science and Technology, Keio University)
Norio Kawakami (Deputy Director, Fundamental Quantum Science Program, TRIP Headquarters, RIKEN)
Yasushi Okada (Deputy Director, RIKEN Center for Biosystems Dynamics Research (BDR))
Kouichi Hagino (Professor, Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University)
Shigeki Takeuchi (Professor, Graduate School of Engineering, Kyoto University)
Yasunobu Nakamura (Director, RIKEN Center for Quantum Computing (RQC))
Makoto Gonokami (President, RIKEN)

In celebration of the 100th anniversary of the birth of quantum science, the United Nations General Assembly has declared 2025 as the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology, coordinated by UNESCO.

To mark this occasion, we will host a public symposium entitled:
“What is “Quantum”!?: RIKEN Symposium Commemorating 100 Years of Quantum Science”, aimed at the general public.

The talks will be conducted in Japanese.
For more details and to register, please visit the official website via the related link.

Venue: via Zoom

Event Official Language: Japanese

Seminar

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iTHEMS Theoretical Physics Seminar

Mesoscopic transport via one-dimensional chain with Localized two-body loss

July 23 (Wed) 10:00 - 11:30, 2025

Kensuke Kakimoto (Ph.D. Student, Faculty of Science and Engineering, School of Fundamental Science and Engineering, Waseda University)

Mesoscopic transport has long served as a powerful probe into the quantum behavior of matter; however, the role of dissipation in such systems remains unresolved. In recent years, quantum simulations of mesoscopic systems with ultracold atomic gases have made significant progress, particularly through the use of optical tweezers to induce local dissipation via atom loss. In this talk, we discuss a two-terminal mesoscopic system in which two-body loss occurs locally at the center of a one-dimensional chain, modeling a dissipative quantum point contact. To analyze this setup, we employ the Keldysh Green’s function formalism in combination with a noise-field representation of Lindblad dynamics. Our analysis reveals that the dissipation strength depends on the occupation number of the central dissipative site, leading to a weaker suppression of particle current in the weakly dissipative regime compared to the case of one-body loss.

Reference

  1. Kensuke Kakimoto and Shun Uchino, Quantum Point Contact with Local Two-body Loss (2025), arXiv:2505.24391 (2025), doi: 10.48550/arXiv.2505.24391, arXiv: 2505.24391

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

Event Official Language: English

Workshop

Co-hosted by iTHEMS

The Theory of Periodic Tangles & Their Interdisciplinary Applications

July 28 (Mon) - August 1 (Fri) 2025

The mathematical characterization of entanglement holds immense potential for describing the mechanical functions of diverse physical systems and materials. A universal interdisciplinary study, involving scientists, engineers, and artists promises both advance of the field itself and significant contribution to the research and design of innovative solutions for textiles, medical devices, polymers, molecular chemistry, or construction materials among others. The program seeks an alternative to the trial–and–error approach, bringing together academia and industry to seek new sustainable solutions and inspiration, contributing to society. It will consist not only of scientific exchanges but will promote cultural impact by organizing exhibitions or hands–on workshops. Additionally, it will encourage several discussions by providing networking opportunities and utilizing the unique venue of House of Creativity at Tohoku University.

This workshop will gather researchers from various disciplines and include invited lectures, a poster session, roundtable discussions, and brainstorming activities. Our focus will be on exploring the connections between knot theory and its applications in areas such as polymers and soft matter, textile mechanics, graphic design, and more.

This event includes a joint symposium between the WPI–AIMR (Tohoku University) and WPI–SKCM2 (Hiroshima University) on Friday, August 1st, 2025: INTERWOVEN: A WPI–AIMR & WPI–SKCM2 Symposium, Towards a Universal Topological Model of Entangled Structures for Sustainable Metamaterials

Please fill in the registration form by June 16th 2025.

Confirmed speakers (alphabetical order):

Jörn Dunkel (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Yuanyuan Guo (Tohoku University)
Tatsuki Hayama (Keio University)
Louis H. Kauffman (University of Illinois at Chicago)
Yuka Kotorii (Hiroshima University)
Sofia Lambropoulou (National Technical University of Athens)
Eleni Panagiotou (Arizona State University)
Pedro M. Reis (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne)
Takahiro Sakaue (Aoyama Gakuin University)
Vanessa Sanchez (Rice University)
Henry Segerman (Oklahoma State University)
Koya Shimokawa (Ochanomizu University)
Hiroshi Suito (Tohoku University)
Ryuichi Tarumi (Osaka University)
Hirofumi Wada (Ritsumeikan University)

Please refer to the workshop website via the relevant link for more details.
We are looking forward to your participation and to welcoming you to Sendai!

Venue: TOKYO ELECTRON House of Creativity, Katahira Campus, Tohoku University

Event Official Language: English

Workshop

Recent Developments and Challenges in Tensor Networks: Algorithms, Applications to science, and Rigorous theories

July 28 (Mon) - August 8 (Fri) 2025

Venue: Panasonic Hall, Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics, Kyoto University

Event Official Language: English

Colloquium

iTHEMS Colloquium

Chemical and isotopic analyses of samples returned by the Hayabusa2 mission from the asteroid Ryugu

August 1 (Fri) 14:00 - 15:30, 2025

Tetsuya Yokoyama (Professor, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, School of Science, Institute of Science Tokyo)

The recent success of asteroid sample return missions has led to significant advances in Solar System science. JAXA's Hayabusa2 successfully retrieved and returned to Earth a total of 5.4 grams of samples from the C-type asteroid Ryugu. Sample return missions are critical to the scientific community, as they provide pristine, terrestrially unaltered extraterrestrial material. The analytical data obtained in laboratories for samples collected by space missions will facilitate the understanding of the formation and evolution of the Solar System. I was appointed deputy leader of the Initial Analysis Chemistry team of Hayabusa2 project, and was heavily involved in analyzing the chemical and isotopic compositions of Ryugu materials. A series of analyses of these samples indicated that the mineral, chemical, and isotopic compositions of Ryugu bear a strong resemblance to those of the Ivuna-type (CI) carbonaceous chondrites. CI chondrites have been recognized as a unique group of meteorites with a chemical composition similar to that of the solar photosphere except for highly volatile elements and Li. In the seminar, I will present the meaning and significance of the compositional similarity between Ryugu and CI chondrites. I will also present our recent activities in a new project called the Ryugu Reference Project, which was initiated to maximize the potential value of the returned samples.

Venue: 2F Large Conference Room, Administrative Headquarters, RIKEN Wako Campus / via Zoom

Event Official Language: English

Workshop

iTHEMS-NCTS Workshop

August 18 (Mon) - 21 (Thu) 2025

This workshop aims to strengthen collaboration between researchers at RIKEN iTHEMS and the National Center for Theoretical Sciences in Taiwan. It will be a four-day event, with the first two days dedicated to interdisciplinary topics. The last two days will focus on specialized areas, with one day devoted to condensed matter physics and the other to high-energy physics, including quantum gravity.

Venue: via Zoom / RIKEN Wako Campus

Event Official Language: English

Conference

Integrated Innovation Building (IIB) venue photo

Supported by iTHEMS

XIIIth International Symposium on Nuclear Symmetry Energy (NuSym25)

September 8 (Mon) - 13 (Sat) 2025

[Scientific scope]
The symposium will address experimental and theoretical investigations of the equation-of-state (EoS) of nuclear matter at various isospin asymmetries. Such investigations include efforts in nuclear structure, nuclear reactions and heavy-ion collisions, as well as in astrophysical observations of compact stars and associated phenomena. An important role of the symposium is to unify efforts of the nuclear physics and astrophysics communities in addressing common research challenges.

Venue: Integrated Innovation Building (IIB), Kobe Campus, RIKEN

Event Official Language: English

Person of the Week

Keiya Hirashima thumbnail

Self-introduction: Keiya Hirashima

2025-06-12

Hi! My name is Keiya Hirashima, and I am a Special Postdoctoral Researcher at iTHEMS, working on galaxy formation and evolution using AI and large-scale simulations.
My research focuses on modeling the effects of individual stars and stellar feedback in high-resolution galaxy simulations. To reduce computational costs, I have developed AI-based surrogate models that efficiently replace expensive physical simulations.
I’m particularly interested in connecting different physical scales to study the hierarchical evolution of galaxies and the universe through numerical methods, deep learning, and high-performance computing.
I also explore how fractal structures and foundation models can help extract general representations from complex physical systems.

[My academic history]
I began my position as a Special Postdoctoral Researcher at iTHEMS in April 2025. Prior to that, I studied computer science and mathematical science at Kyoto University in March 2020, and received my Ph.D. in Astronomy (sub: Information Science) from the University of Tokyo in March 2025. I have also worked on research on deep foundation models for (astro)physics at PolymathicAI and Flatiron Institute (USA).

Person of the Week

Robert Baird thumbnail

Self-introduction: Robert Baird

2025-06-12

Hi, I'm Robert Baird. I'm from the UK and completed my undergraduate degree Zoology at the University of Sheffield, followed by a Masters in Biology at LMU Munich in Germany. I then completed my PhD in Evolutionary Biology at the University of Edinburgh. I'm currently a postdoctoral scientist at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Science at MIT, where I combine cytology with evolution to understand species with unusual genetics and what this can tell us about more fundamental biological questions. I am a visiting researcher at iTHEMS, working with Thomas Hitchcock to try to develop ideas and predictions for how some of the unusual genetic systems that I study evolved.

Paper of the Week

Week 3, June 2025

2025-06-12

Title: Charge symmetry breaking effects of $ω$-$ρ^0$ mixing in relativistic mean-field model
Author: Yusuke Tanimura, Tomoya Naito, Hiroyuki Sagawa, Myung-Ki Cheoun
arXiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/2506.06629v1

Title: Revealing long-term multi-factor climate impacts on antarctic phytoplankton: a trend-based approach using STL and piecewise SEM
Author: Hitomi Tanaka, Hideyuki Doi, Ryosuke Iritani
Journal Reference: bioRxiv
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.06.03.657605

Title: Free Probability approach to spectral and operator statistics in Rosenzweig-Porter random matrix ensembles
Author: Viktor Jahnke, Pratik Nandy, Kuntal Pal, Hugo A. Camargo, Keun-Young Kim
arXiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/2506.04520v1

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