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Brandeis IGERT Summer Institute Scheduled for June 25-28

June 13, 2018 By

The Brandeis IGERT program in “Geometry and Dynamics” is holding its Summer Institute from June 25-28. This is a series of lectures aimed at graduate students on the mathematical & theoretical side of the sciences, on a broad spectrum of topics — of course, postdocs, faculty, and sufficiently advanced undergraduates should enjoy these as well.

Once again we have an excellent list of speakers from inside and outside of Brandeis, on subjects including quantum computing, blockchain technology, origami, and the carbon cycle and mass extinction.  A full schedule is available. All are welcome and coffee and lunch will be provided: please RSVP here or by selecting the button at the bottom of the schedule page, so that we have an accurate headcount.

We hope to see you there!

Filed Under: events, labs, Physics Tagged With: ,

IGERT Summer Institute – July 27 to August 7, 2015

June 17, 2015 By

IGERTBrandeis is hosting a two-week summer institute for graduate students in the mathematical sciences from July 27-August 7.  This will combine the annual summer institute of Brandeis’ Geometry and Dynamics IGERT program, with a sequel to the US-India Advanced Studies Institute on thermalization, held two years ago in Bangalore.

Topics:

  • Large deviation theory
  • Statistics of extreme events
  • The large N expansion in statistical and quantum physics
  • Statistical fluid dynamics
  • Quantum information and quantum gravity
  • Thermalization in Quantum Systems

Lecturers:

Sumit Das (U. Kentucky)
Chandan Dasgupta (IISC, Bangalore)
Rajesh Gopakumar (HRI, Allahabad and ICTS)
Alex Maloney (McGill University)
Satya Majumdar (LPTMS, Paris)
Sanjib Sabhapandit (Raman Research Institute, Bangalore)
Peter Weichman (BAE systems)

Organizers:

Albion Lawrence
Bulbul Chakraborty

Registration:

There will be no registration fee, but the venue will have limited capacity, so interested students should register by sending an email to Catherine Broderick (cbroderi@brandeis.edu) by July 4. Please list your affiliation, your year in graduate school, any publications, and the name of your PhD advisor.

Additional information can be found at www.brandeis.edu/igert/.

Filed Under: Mathematics, Physics, seminars Tagged With: , , ,

Brandeis IGERT Summer Institute June 16 – June 26, 2014

June 12, 2014 By

The second Brandeis IGERT Summer Institute begins this Monday, June 16th in Goldsmith 300 and runs through Thursday, June 26th. This will consist of a variety of talks by faculty and students on subjects in the mathematical sciences. While this is part of the IGERT training program, aimed at graduate students working across the spectrum of the mathematical sciences, we invite the Brandeis community to attend any of the talks that catch their eye. Speakers include:

  • Chris Santangelo (U Mass Amherst)– “Shape and mechanics of origami folding”
  • Matthew Headrick — “Introduction of quantum information theory”
  • Bulbul Chakraborty and Blake Lebaron — “Applications of Statistical Mechanics to Finance”
  • Daniel Ruberman — “Introduction to Knot Theory”
  • Paul Miller — “Feedback control in neural firing”
  • Albion Lawrence — “An introduction to inflation and gravity waves”
  • Eli Putzig — TBA
  • Honi Sanders — TBA
  • Tony Ng — TBA

and a schedule can be found at http://www.brandeis.edu/igert/calendar/index.html  or in the Brandeis Science Seminars listings.

We will be having lunch in the Volen bridge; please bring your own and join us!

Filed Under: events, Mathematics, Physics, seminars Tagged With: , ,

New team-taught course offered spring 2014: “Differential geometry in classical and quantum mechanics”

December 23, 2013 By

1) Introduction and Motivation

We would like to call attention to a new class offered this winter/spring 2014 quarter, being taught jointly by Prof. Daniel Ruberman in Mathematics and Prof. Albion Lawrence in Physics.  This is being listed jointly as Physics 202a (Quantum Field Theory) and Math 221b (Topics in Topology).  It is being team-taught under the auspices of the Brandeis Geometry and Dynamics IGERT program.

This course aims to introduce basic notions of fiber bundles and connections on them, and their application to basic physical examples in classical and quantum mechanics: especially the mechanics of deformable bodies, and Berry’s phase.  The target audience is mathematics and physics students, and mathematically inclined students in physical chemistry, neuroscience, computer science, and economics.  The essential principles here find applications to chemical and neural oscillators and control theory; there have even been suggestions that it is a useful language for describing currency trading.

The mathematics covered here typically appears in advanced courses on quantum and statistical field theory.  However, it has much broader applicability, and the instructors felt that studying more elementary physics examples better highlighted the essential mathematics and lead to a broader perspective that would better prepare students to find new and creative uses for the mathematics.  Furthermore, they allow us to teach a broader audience, as the essential physics background is straightforward and can be explained without the student needing two years of graduate-level physics courses.

This course is essentially a graduate course, but it is certainly appropriate for senior undergraduates with a solid mathematical background (math and physics majors especially).  The modern mathematical language of manifolds and vector bundles will be introduced and used throughout, but with reference to physical and geometric notions.  This will provide physics students with an appropriate vocabulary for further study, while mathematics students can try to grasp the intuition behind the formalism.  Note that the course satisfies one of the IGERT course requirements; however, we strongly encourage non-IGERT students to enroll.

The course is scheduled to take place Mondays and Wednesdays from 2-3:20pm. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Mathematics, Physics Tagged With: ,

Thermalization From Glasses to Black Holes

December 5, 2013 By
bangalore2Textbook thermodynamics treats equilibrium states of large systems, in which macroscopic variables (temperature, pressure and so on) remain static, and how small perturbations of such systems relax with time.  There have been a number of exciting recent developments in studying (a) how such equilibrium states are reached in a closed quantum or classical system, and (b) generalizations of thermodynamics to small systems and to systems that are intrinsically out of equilibrium.  This work spans both classical and quantum mechanics, and ties together biological systems, soft matter (such as glasses and granular systems), quantum matter, nuclear physics, quantum information, quantum gravity, and string theory.
This is clearly an area of inquiry in which contact between these different fields will lead to important advances, much as contact between condensed matter and particle physics did for the study of symmetry breaking (the source of multiple Nobel prizes, including this year’s and of the renormalization group.  We (Brandeis Physics  faculty Aparna Baskaran, Bulbul Chakraborty, Matthew Headrick, and Albion Lawrence) felt that an ideal way to promote this was to put together an intensive series of pedagogical lectures covering recent results in the aforementioned fields.  With the encouragement of the National Science Foundation (due in large part to Brandeis’s IGERT program in Geometry and Dynamics  we took advantage of our deep contacts with the Indian physics community to put together an Advanced Studies Institute (ASI) on thermalization, under the auspices of the new International Center for the Theoretical Sciences (ICTS)  in Bangalore, and co-organized by Chandan Dasgupta  (Indian Institute of Science), Gautam Mandal (TIFR, Mumbai), Sanjib Sabhapandit  (Raman Research Institute and ICTS), and Krishnendu Sengupta  (IACS , Kolkata).
The school was extremely successful, with beautiful lectures on cutting-edge physics from the leading experts in their respective areas.  We recommend these lectures highly to those interested in these subjects.  Links to the lecture notes, and to some related review articles, can be found here:
and there is a YouTube channel for the lectures here:
Filed Under: Physics Tagged With: ,

Quantum Field Theory: An Interdisciplinary Study Group

September 16, 2013 By

William Hicks, a grad student in Physics, writes:

    This semester, graduate students from a wide range of departments will be coming together to study quantum field theory (QFT) as part of the interdisciplinary IGERT program. QFT is a subject whose mathematical underpinnings crop up in a wide range of seemingly unrelated fields, and the study group hopes to take advantage of the varied backgrounds of its members. Mathematicians in the group can help provide mathematical rigor, while physicists can help supply the physical intuition for many of the otherwise abstruse corners of the subject.  Students from other disciplines will be able to broaden the discussion by showing how some of the techniques discussed also show up in their fields.

The study group will meet from noon to 1:00 every Wednesday in Goldsmith 226. All are welcome!

Filed Under: grad students, Mathematics, Physics, seminars Tagged With: , , , , , ,

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