Embark on a thought-provoking journey into the heart of theoretical physics with the weekly talks at ETH, organised by students for students!
Join us for our weekly talks and explore the vast and exciting landscape of theoretical physics! Topics range from the quantum realm to cosmology, condensed matter physics, information theory and mathematics.
Our speakers are professors, postdoctoral researchers and PhD students sharing their research and experiences of life as theoretical physicists, including the challenges they face and the exhilarating breakthroughs that drive their fields forward.
The talks are intended to be accessible to physics students in their master’s or in higher semesters of their bachelor’s degree.
Where:
ETH Hönggerberg
HIT E 41.1*
When:
Mondays during the semester at 17:30*
*most of the time. You can find the place and time below for every talk individually.
You can find recordings of past talks here on the ETH Videoportal.
Do you want to recommend a speaker or are you interested in giving a talk yourself? Then contact us via Mail. We’re happy to hear from you!
Upcoming
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A matter of time, gravity and galaxies
Dr. Sveva Castello, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics (Garching, Germany) Our understanding of the Universe relies on two pillars, gravity and dark matter. These are involved in compelling open questions: is the accelerated cosmic expansion due to gravity modifications? And does…
Past Talks
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Emergent Time, Emergent Space
Prof. Dr. Daniele Oriti, Professor of Theoretical Physics, Universidad Complutense de Madrid What is time? What is space? Our best current theory of gravity, i.e. General Relativity, teaches us that gravity is spacetime geometry, thus that spacetime itself is a physical system. Moreover, we have…
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From Scattering Amplitudes to the Cosmological Large Scale Structure: Numerical Methods in the EFTofLSS
Andrea Favorito, PhD Student at Institute for Theoretical Physics, ETH Zürich Surveys of the large-scale structure of the Universe are becoming increasingly precise. A key theoretical framework for interpreting this data and constraining cosmological models is the Effective Field Theory of Large-Scale Structure (EFTofLSS), a…
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Challenges and Breakthroughs in the Mathematics of Plasmas
Prof. Dr. Mikaela Iacobelli, Associate Professor of Mathematics, ETH. This talk will explore some fundamental issues in the mathematics of plasmas, focusing on the stability and instability of solutions to Vlasov-type equations, which are crucial for describing the behavior of charged particles in a plasma.…
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Same, but different: integrals and transforming (career) paths
Dr. Simon León Krug, Postdoc at Dep. of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences, ETH Zürich Theoretical physics is a multi-faceted field encompassing an abundance of disciplines, often times only sharing one language: math. Of particular importance for my research since my Master’s has been complex analysis,…
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Quantum Computing and Simulation in the presence of errors
Prof. Dr. Ignacio Cirac, Director of Max-Planck Institute for Quantum Optics Advancements in quantum computing have enabled the development of small-scale quantum computers and simulators that adhere to the principles of quantum physics. Despite its rapid progress, those devices are not yet flawless and errors…
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Student Talks
Leonardo Valente, MSc Physics at ETH Zürich Alexander Roth, MSc Physics at ETH Zürich, Research Assistant at Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics Bartłomiej Leks, MSc Material Science ETH Zürich Decoherence in Quantum Reference Frames (Leonardo Valente): We explore the phenomenon of decoherence and how…
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Ghost stories: from Faddev-Popov to Batalin-Vilkovisky
Orev Malatesta, PhD candidate with Cattaneo Group, University of Zürich Every gauge symmetry hides a ghost. What begins in quantum field theory as a computational fix – the Faddeev-Popov trick, which introduces extra “unphysical” fields called ghost fields to keep our path integrals well-behaved –…
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Indefinite Causal Order & Quantum Reference Frames
Dr. Viktoria Kabel, Quantum Information Theory Group at ITP, ETH Zürich In this talk, we will explore the interface between quantum theory and gravity through two lenses. The first lens is the study of indefinite causal order. While, classically, the causal order between two events…
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The BV/BFV formalism: tackling field theories with (graded) symplectic geometry
Dr. Filippo Fila Robattino, Postdoc at University of Zürich In this talk I will show how symplectic geometry is ubiquitously needed for the description of (the phase space of) different theories, starting from the familiar case of classical mechanics and moving on to more complicated…
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When Thermalization Fails: Quantum Many-Body Scars in Lattice Gauge Theories
Dr. Joao Carlos Pinto Barros, Computational Lattice Field Theory Group at ITP, ETH Zürich The time dynamics of strongly correlated many-body systems is a notoriously challenging problem, with implications ranging from condensed matter to high-energy physics. Both numerical and analytical techniques remain scarce, limiting our…
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Flavour physics: open problems and recent developments
Prof. Dr. Gino Isidori, Theory of Fundamental Interactions Group at UZH What is the origin of the different masses for quarks and leptons is one of the big open questions in particle physics. I will briefly review this problem, illustrating its central role in achieving…
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Adiabatic charge pumps and Galilei covariance
Prof. Dr. Gian Michele Graf, Mathematical Physics Group at ITP, ETH The Thouless theory of quantum pumps establishes quantized transport per cycle and determines the necessary conditions. When the description is shifted to a moving reference frame, as suggested by recent experiments on ultracold gases,…
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Insights from Quantum Foundations into Black Holes
Prof. Dr. Renato Renner, Quantum Information Theory Group at ITP, ETH Black holes offer a testing ground for the interplay between General Relativity and quantum theory, exemplified by phenomena such as Hawking radiation. Yet, this interplay gives rise to deep puzzles, notably the “firewall paradox”,…
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Gravitational Waves: A New Window to Explore the Universe
Prof. Dr. Philippe Jetzer, Professor of Gravitation and Astrophysics at UZH The discovery in 2015 by the LIGO collaboration of the first gravitational wave signal from coalescing black holes, the detection of many more since than including also the coalescence of two neutron stars event,…
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Dynamical Phase Transitions in Opinion Dynamics
Freya Behrens, PhD student at EPFL The cavity method is a powerful tool from statistical physics that helps us understand complex systems made of many interacting parts, like spin glasses or social networks. Traditionally, it has been used to study the long-term behavior of these…
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Simulating Topological Condensed Matter Phenomena Using Topological Metamaterials
Caroline Tornow, PhD student at ETH Topological insulators behave like insulators in the bulk. At their edges, however, they possess stable, topologically protected conducting states. These characteristics were originally thought to be pure quantum effects. However, about a decade ago, Süsstrunk and Huber showed that…
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Quantum Simulating Holographic Matter
Rahel Baumgartner, PhD student at University of Geneva I am going to present ongoing work on theoretical aspects of quantum simulations of a wide class of random disorder all-to-all interacting many-body quantum systems, with a primary focus on holographic states of matter such as the…
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Locally Finite Scattering Amplitudes in QCD
Julia Karlen, PhD student at ETH Zurich In this talk I will present a method for constructing locally finite amplitudes for high-energy physic scattering process. After a brief review of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), some challenges posed by infrared and ultraviolet singularities in amplitude calculations are…
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Geometry of the Variational Principle
Raffaele Lomartire, PhD student at I-MATH, UZH This talk will introduce the geometric approach to Lagrangian Field Theory. After a review of some concepts from differential geometry, I will show that foliations are the natural geometric structure involved in the study of (nonlinear) PDEs. The…
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Unraveling the Muon’s g-2 with Lattice QCD Simulations
Paola Tavella, PhD student at ETH Zürich The muon’s anomalous magnetic moment is one of the most precisely measured quantities in physics showing a long-standing tension between the experiments and the Standard Model. In recent years, new theoretical and experimental advances have deepened the mystery,…
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Perturbations and Weak Interactions of Black Holes
Prof. Dr. Peter Hintz, Associate Professor of Mathematics and Physics Following an introduction to general relativity, the Einstein field equations, and recent results on the stability of black holes, I will discuss the construction of new spacetimes out of given ones via the insertion of…
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An Introduction to Periodically Driven Systems
Dr. R. Chitra, Senior Scientist in ITP The past decade has seen tremendous developments in the field of non-equilibrium physics. In particular, periodically driven many-body systems, also termed Floquet systems, provide a versatile arena for the exploration of a rich and diverse phenomenology of physics…
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A Monte Carlo Journey Through the 3D XY Model
Roman Kracht, PhD Student at ETH Zürich The XY model describes interacting spins in the plane and captures the essence of the topological Berezinskii–Kosterlitz–Thouless (BKT) transition observed in systems such as superfluid helium or superconducting films. The vortex excitations that drive the BKT transition arise…
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When Quantum Systems Source Gravity: How Can We Do Physics Without Spacetime?
Dr. Flaminia Giacomini, SNSF Ambizione Fellow at ETHZ Spacetime is ubiquitous and is at the foundation of all our physical theories. At the interface between quantum theory and gravity, however, the classical notion of spacetime is no longer adequate to capture the description of physical…
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String Theory and the AdS/CFT correspondence
Prof. Dr. Matthias Gaberdiel, Professor at the ETH Institute for Theoretical Physics I will give a brief introduction into string theory and the AdS/CFT correspondence. I will then describe our recent progress with proving the AdS/CFT correspondence in one specific instance. Resources/References Recording https://video.ethz.ch/speakers/theory/324c887b-06cf-4cab-a30b-07ea0267d928.html
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The reduced phase space of gravity
Dr. Giovanni Canepa, Postdoc at the University of Geneva In this talk I will outline a description of the reduced phase space of gravity, for a space or time-like boundary, with and without gauge and matter fields. The reduced phase space is the space of…
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Zero-threshold superradiance of Pauli crystals
Daniel A. Ortuño-González – PhD student at ETH Zürich Quantum crystals are unique phases of matter that emerge at near-zero temperatures, where quantum fluctuations, rather than thermal fluctuations, drive phase transitions. One of such type of crystals can be obtained in ultra-cold atoms interacting with…
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![Facets of Integr[abil]ity](https://theorytalks.ethz.ch/wp-content/uploads/sites/42/2024/11/beisert.person_image-e1731365358762.jpeg)
Facets of Integr[abil]ity
Prof. Dr. Niklas Beisert – Professor of the Quantum Field Theory and Strings group at ITP, ETH Zurich Integrability is a powerful feature of distinguished models in theoretical physics which makes their observables accessible to exact computational methods. These abstract methods founded in complex analysis…
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Positivity bounds on electromagnetic properties of media
Borna Salehian – Postdoc at ETH Zurich We study the constraints imposed on the electromagnetic response of general media by microcausality (commutators of local fields vanish outside the light cone) and positivity of the imaginary parts (the medium can only absorb energy from the external…
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Almost-i.i.d. States
Giulia Mazzola – PhD student in QIT group, ETH Zurich A common assumption in physics is that the same experiment can be repeated many times independently. More precisely, one often assumes that different rounds of an experiment can be described by independent and identically distributed…
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Quick Talks
Apostolos Giovanakis, Guglielmo Gigante, Yiyuan Chen – MSc students at ETH Zurich Electroweak Baryogenesis in the Standard Model and Beyond – Apostolos Giovanakis The matter-antimatter asymmetry in the Universe remains one of the most profound mysteries in cosmology and particle physics. Electroweak baryogenesis is a mechanism in…
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Freezing and Shielding under Global Quenches
Daniel Arrufat Vicente – PhD student at ETH Zurich Systems with strong non-local interactions exhibit a rich variety of out-of-equilibrium phenomena. One of the distinctive features of classical systems is the emergence of pre-thermal phases, known as quasi-stationary states (QSSs), whose lifetimes grow with system…
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Where is information localised?
Carla Ferradini – PhD student in QIT group, ETH Zurich “Information is Physical” and, at any point in time, physical systems occupy space. Hence, information, being a physical system itself, must also have a location in spacetime. It may seem straightforward to assign a spacetime…
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Positivity Bounds on Effective Field Theories
Matteo Delladio – PhD student ETH Zurich Nearly two decades ago, Adams et al. (2006) demonstrated that the locality and unitarity of UV completions impose surprising constraints on the Wilson coefficients of otherwise healthy-looking, Lorentz-invariant effective field theories. Since then, the field has made significant…
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Quantum Fields on Classical Computers
Dr. Tim Harris – Postdoc at ITP, ETH Zurich I will start by briefly attempting to answer the questions who? what? when? where? why? about lattice field theory. As you shall hopefully see, the lattice approach gives us a unique way to define quantum field…
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Precision Higgs Physics
Prof. Dr. Charalampos Anastasiou – Professor at D-PHYS, ETH Zurich The Higgs particle is the subject of intense experimentation. I will discuss some of our expectations for what we can learn from studying it. Alongside experiments, theory is crucial to deciphering the meaning of Higgs…
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Language Models for the Simulation of Quantum Many-Body Systems
Prof. Dr. Juan Carrasquilla Alvarez – Associate Professor at D-PHYS, ETH Zurich In this talk, I will discuss our work on using models inspired by natural language processing in the realm of quantum many-body physics. I will demonstrate their utility in solving ground states of…
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Quantum field theory and strings: a challenge for modern particle physics
Dr. Johannes Brödel – Senior Scientist at D-PHYS, ETH Zurich While there are still numerous mathematical challenges for particle physicists when calculating scattering amplitudes for the explanation and confirmation of results measured at modern particle accelerators, the theoretical development of quantum field theory and even…
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Universality in long-range quantum systems
Prof. Dr. Nicolò Defenu – Assistant Professor at ETH Zurich Dive into the fascinating realm of quantum systems, the seminar will offer a panoramic view of long-range interactions. Starting with a encompassing tour of critical phenomena in systems featuring power-law interactions 1/r^α at α <…
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New Windows on the Universe through Gravitational Waves
Dr. Davide Racco – Postdoc at ETH and UZH In 2015, the first observations of the gravitational waves emitted by the merger of two black holes occurred 1.4 billion years ago, marked the first direct measurement of these spacetime ripples, and the beginning of the…
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The Physics of Randomness
Prof. Dr. Ramona Wolf – Junior Professor at University of Siegen (Germany) Can you define the term “randomness”? Do you think you know the difference between a classical and a quantum random number generator? Given the fundamental quantum nature of our universe, what even is…
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Quench dynamics in topological and non-Hermitian systems
Karin Sim – PhD student at ETH Out of equilibrium systems are gaining increasing attention in the physics community due to their novel properties compared to their staticcounterpart. In particular, quantum quench is an established method to probe various aspects of out of equilibrium physics,…
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The daily life of a mathematical physicist
Alessandro Tarantola – PhD student at ETH Have you ever wondered where “generalized eigenstates” live, if not in the Hilbert space? Do you often feel uncomfortable exchanging sums and integrals? Are you uneasy if you think something is ill-defined? If so, mathematical physics might be…
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Transformations between perfect and imperfect quantum reference frames
Sébastien Garmier – PhD student in QIT group (Prof. Renato Renner) at ETH Abstract Any observer performing a measurement does so relative to a physical system serving as a reference frame, which, when treated quantum-mechanically, leads to the notion of quantum reference frames. Starting with…
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The road to the Ultraviolet: Effective Field Theories in Particle Physics
Dr. Achilleas Lazopoulos – Senior Scientist at the Particle Physics group of ITP, ETHZ Abstract Our quest for an ultimate theory of elementary particles is taking a new turn as the Large Hadron Collider goes on inspecting the structure of the microscopic world at the…
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Testing Quantum Theory With Thought Experiments
Prof. Dr. Renato Renner – Professor at the ETH Institute for Theoretical Physics Abstract According to quantum theory, objects can be in states without classical analogues. For example, in the famous double-slit experiment, a particle may be in a superposition of passing through two different…