Quantum Anomalies and Hydrodynamics: Applications to Nuclear and Condensed Matter Physics: February 17 – 21, 2014

Organized by Chris Herzog, Kristan Jensen, Dmitri Kharzeev, Shinsei Ryu, and Dam Son.

Dates: February 17 – 21, 2014

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The past decade has seen an unexpected revolution in both our understanding of and interest in relativistic hydrodynamics (RH). This revival was originally motivated by applications to the phenomenology of relativistic heavy-ion collisions as well as by surprising connections to advanced topics in theoretical physics, including topology and the physics of black holes in string theory. There has been a considerable amount of new theoretical work with novel experimental applications in this field in the past few years. This workshop will review and summarize recent achievements, address open issues, and map out promising directions for future developments.

The focus of this workshop will be on applications of RH to nuclear and condensed matter physics along with two cutting edge theoretical tools used in these applications — anomaly induced transport and the AdS/CFT correspondence. One of the main reasons for the resurgence of interest in RH is the success of the hydrodynamic description of the Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP) formed in high-energy nuclear collisions. The hydrodynamic model has gradually become a paradigm of heavy-ion phenomenology. At the same time, the study of transport is a powerful approach in condensed matter physics. There has been a surge of recent interest in the transport and collective behavior of novel materials, including for instance quantum gases, unconventional superconductors, graphene, quantum Hall systems and other topologically non-trivial phases of matter. Anomaly induced transport can provide a RH description of the chiral magnetic and chiral vortical effects, as well as order parameters which characterize and classify topologically non-trivial phases. The AdS/CFT correspondence, and holography more generally, provides a unique setting both to apply hydrodynamics to strongly interacting systems as well as to address formal questions about the structure of the hydrodynamic effective theory.

This workshop is a part of the Spring 2014 program, Quantum Anomalies, Topology, and Hydrodynamics, which is organized by Alexander Abanov, Dmitri Kharzeev, Boris Khesin, Dam Son, and Paul Wiegmann. This program takes place from January 17 – June 13, 2014.

*All workshop talks and discussion periods will be held in the Simons Center Lecture Hall (Room 102)
*The SCGP/Physics Colloquium (Dam Son) on Tuesday February 18th at 4:15pm will be in the Simons Center Auditorium (Room 103). Please note that tea time starts later on this day, at 3:45pm.
*Cancelled talk: Mike Stone “Classical and Quantum Anomalies.” Slides can be seen here.