Quantum Anomalies, Topology, and Hydrodynamics

Quantum Anomalies, Topology, and Hydrodynamics

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Organized by Alexander Abanov, Dmitri Kharzeev, Boris Khesin, Dam Son, and Paul Wiegmann
February 17-June 13, 2014

Recent developments in relativistic hydrodynamics place it at the crossroads of nuclear physics, condensed matter physics and string theory. Hydrodynamics is known to be very effective in describing the long-wavelength behavior of many body systems regardless of the strength of inter-particle interactions. It encapsulates general conservation laws and symmetries of the system.

Quantum anomalies can break some of the symmetries of the underlying theory. While it was known for a long time that anomalies induce observable effects in quantum field theories, only quite recently it has become clear that anomalies also have important macroscopic manifestations and affect transport and hydrodynamics — in particular, anomalies make possible non-dissipative transport and bring to the existence novel collective excitations. The effects of anomalies are especially important in the systems that possess chiral fermions (e.g. quantum Hall systems, graphene or quark-gluon plasma) and where topologically non-trivial configurations are present (e.g. vortices, skyrmions or sphalerons).

An important advantage of hydrodynamics is that it is formulated explicitly in terms of physical observables. Therefore, the hydrodynamical approach usually leads directly to the predictions for the experiment, both in condensed matter and nuclear physics. Furthermore, topological methods in hydrodynamics could shed some light on the search for new symmetries related to quantum anomalies. Topological fluid dynamics is a young branch of mathematics which studies group symmetries of various equations of hydrodynamical origin, as well as geometric and topological properties of their solutions and of the corresponding magnetic and vortex fields. The interaction of the relativistic and topological approaches in hydrodynamics might also lead to new insights into the turbulence and singularity problems.

The goal of the program is to develop hydrodynamic descriptions in condensed matter physics and QCD at finite temperature and density with an emphasis on the effects of quantum anomalies and topology. Among these effects is the non-dissipative transport of charges and energy — with a wide range of applications in science and technology, from quantum computing to the detection of topological fluctuations of QCD in heavy ion collisions. We aim at advancing quantum hydrodynamics through the use of topological and geometric methods.

Speaker and Seminar Schedule:

The weekly talks take place on Mondays at 4pm (beginning Monday January 27) and Thursdays at 1:00pm (beginning Thursday January 16) in room 313.

 

Date and Time Title Presenters
1/16 at 1:00pm – Room 313 Intro: Holographic fluids and superfluids Tigran Kalaydzhyan More Details
1/23 at 10:30am – Room 313 Chiral anomaly, kinetic theory, and the Chiral Magnetic/Vortical Effect  Gökçe Basar More Details
1/27 at 4:00pm – Room 313 Relativistic Hydrodynamics in the presence of Anomalies Gustavo Monteiro More Details
1/30 at 10:30am – Room 313 An Introduction to Holographic Superconductivity Chris Herzog More Details
2/10 at 4:00pm – Room 313 Chiral and Gravitational Anomalies on Fermi surfaces Ismail Zahed More Details
2/17/14 – 2/21/14 WORKSHOP: Quantum Anomalies and Hydrodynamics: Applications to Nuclear and Condensed Matter Physics More Details
2/24/14 – 2/28/14 WORKSHOP: Strongly Coupled Systems Away From Equilibrium More Details
3/6 at 1:00pm – Room 313 Quantum Lax pair for the deformed Calogero-Moser systems Alexander Veselov More Details
3/10 at 4:00pm – Room 313 Deriving anomaly-induced response from thermal equilibrium Kristan Jensen More Details
3/17 at 4:00pm – Room 313 Anomalous Zero Sound Alexander Gorsky More Details
3/20 at 1:00pm – Room 313 Deriving anomaly-induced response from thermal equilibrium. Part II Kristan Jensen More Details
3/24 at 2:00pmYITP Common Room 6-125
Momentum Dissipation and Charge Transport in Holograpy
Richard Davison
YITP Seminar
3/27 at 1:00pm – Room 313 Lorentz invariance in chiral kinetic theory Mikhail Stephanov More Details
3/31 at 4:00pm – Room 313 Torus knot invariants from Calogero model Ksenia Bulycheva More Details
4/3/14 at 1:00pm – Room 313 Thermal Corrections to Entanglement Entropy for Conformal Field Theory Chris Herzog More Details
4/7/14 at 4:00pm – Room 313 Chiral superfluidity in QCD Tigran Kalaydzhyan More Details
4/10/14 at 2:30pm – Room 313 The role of anomaly inflow in the theory of chiral quantum fluids Juerg Froehlich More Details
4/14/14 at 4:00pm – Room 313 Q&A seminar:  Loewner evolution and integrable systems Alexander Vasiliev More Details
4/21/14 at 4:00pm – Room 313 Quantum Hall effect and Kähler metrics
Semyon Klevtsov 
More Details
4/22/14 at 1:00pm – Room 102 Fractional Quantum Hall Effect on Riemann Surfaces Paul Wiegmann More Details
4/24/14 at 1:00pm – Room 313 Towards experimental characterisation of topological order at a fractional quantum Hall edge Vadim Cheianov More Details
4/28/14 at 4:00pm – Room 313 Quantum Hydrodynamics of Weyl Fermions Dmitri Kharzeev More Details 
5/1/14 at 1:00pm – Room 313 Holography and Equilibration Edward Shuryak More Details
5/5/14 at 4:00pm – Room 313 On the generating functional in dissipative hydrodynamics Pavel Kovtun More Details
5/6/14 at 2:30pm – Room 102 Quantum impurity problems and conformal field theory Ian Affleck More Details 
5/7/14 at 2:30pm –  YITP Common Room 6-125 Topological Superconductor – Luttinger liquid Junctions Ian Affleck More Details
5/8/14 at 1:00pm – Room 313 Spectral theory of periodic triangular difference operators and its applications Igor Krichever More Details
5/12/14 at 4:00pm – Room 313 Exact Solutions to the Navier-Stokes Equations Oleg Bogoyavlenskij More Details
5/13/14 at 4:00pm – Room 313  A universal correction to higher spin entanglement entropy Justin David More Details
5/14/14 at 1:00pm – Room 313 Controlling quantum flux through measurement: an idealised example Denis Bernard More Details
5/15/14 at 1:00pm – Room 313 Critical phenomena in weakly dispersive nonlinear Hamiltonian PDEs and universality Boris Dubrovin More Details
5/19/14 – 5/23/14 WORKSHOP: Geometrical Aspects of Hydrodynamics More Details
5/27/14 at 1:00pm – Room 313
Stability of two-dimensional topological insulators Andrea Cappelli More Details
5/29/14 at 1:00pm – Room 313
Casimir Effect: Diffraction and general boundary conditions Dimitra Karabali More Details
6/5/14 at 10:30am – Room 313
OPE in statistical mechanics – what is it good for? Alexander Zamolodchikov More Details
6/9/14 at 4:00pm – Room 313
Maxwell Electrodynamics on 4 torus as a topologically ordered system Ariel Zhitnitsky More Details