Issue 1, 2014
Issue 3, 2013
The spatial arrangement of some large molecules can exist in two different versions which are mirror images of each other, yet their chemical composition is entirely identical. These mirror versions of molecules are said to have a different "chirality" and are called "enantiomers." The image to the right shows the two chiralities of alanine, known as L-alanine and D-alanine. Many chemical reactions depend not only on the atomic composition of...... [Read more]
Nordita Professor Konstantin Zarembo has been awarded an ERC Advanced Grant to fund a five-year research project on Integrable...
Our congratulations go to Nordita Professor Alexander Balatsky and his collaborators at KTH Royal Insitute of Technology,...
On 4th September, Prof. Natsuo Sato of the Nationational Institute of Polar Research in Japan, gave a talk on research...
A novel magnesium carbonate material has been synthesized by researchers from Uppsala University, Sweden. The new material,...
Former Nordita PhD student and soon-to-be Nordita affiliated postdoc Fabio Del Sordo was one of four astronomy enthusiasts who...
The spatial arrangement of some large molecules can exist in two different versions which are mirror images of each other, yet their chemical composition is entirely identical. These mirror versions of molecules are said to have a different "chirality" and are called "enantiomers." The image to the right shows the two chiralities of alanine, known as L-alanine and D-alanine.
Many chemical reactions depend not only on the atomic composition of molecules but also on their spatial arrangement, and thus enantiomers can have very different chemical behaviors. Since organisms are not chirally neutral, medical properties of drugs made from enantiomers depend on which chirality of the active ingredient is present. One enantiomer might have a beneficial effect, while the other one is harmful. This is the case for example for Ethambutol (one enantiomer treats tuberculosis, the other causes blindness), or Naproxen (one enantiomer treats arthritis pain, the other causes liver poisoning).
The chemical synthesis of molecules however typically produces molecules of both chiralities in approximately equal amounts, which creates the need to separate them. One way to do this is to use chemical reactions that are sensitive to the molecules' chirality. Such a procedure has the disadvantage though that it is specific to one particular molecule and cannot be used for any other.
Now Ralf Eichhorn from Nordita and his collaborators have shown, by experimental and numerical analysis, that there may be a universal way to separate enantiomers.
It's strikingly simple: chiral particles swim differently in a stream of water that has a swirl to it. How fast they travel with the stream depends on whether their chirality is the same or the opposite of the water swirl's orientation. Wait far enough downstream, and the particles that arrive first will almost exclusively be the ones whose chirality matches that of the water swirl.
They have shown this as follows.
Molecules are typically of the size of some nanometers or so, and the swimming performance for molecules of different chirality is difficult to observe. Instead, the authors used micrometer-sized three-dimensional particles made of a type of polymer (called SU-8) by a process called photolithography. The particles created this way are the simplest example of configurations of different chirality. They labeled the right-handed particles with a blue fluorescent dye, and the left-handed particles with a green fluorescent dye. This allows taking images of them by a fluorescent microscope. Below you see a microscope image of the particles.
Next you need a narrow channel through which water flows under some pressure. The swirl is created by gratings in the wall of the channel. The length of this channel is about a meter, but its height and width is only of the order 150 μm. Then you let bunches of the mixed chiral particles flow through the channel and photograph them on a handful of locations. From the amount of blue and green that you see in the image, you can tell how many of each type were present at a given time. Here's what they see:
This figure is an overlay of measurements at 5 different locations as a function of time (in seconds). The green shade is for molecules with the chirality that matches the water swirl orientation, the blue shade is for those with the opposite chirality. They start out, at x=32.5mm, in almost identical concentration. Then they begin to run apart. Look at the left tail of the x=942.5 mm measurement. The green distribution is almost 200 seconds ahead of the blue one.
If you aren't impressed by this experiment, let me show you the numerical results. They modeled the particles as rigidly coupled spheres in a flow field with friction and torque, added some Gaussian white noise, and integrated the equations. Below is the result of the numerical computation for 1000 realizations:
I am seriously amazed how well the numerical results agree with the experiment! I'd have expected hydrodynamics to be much messier.
The merit of the numerical analysis is that it provides us with understanding of why this separation is happening. Due to the interaction of the fluid with the channel walls, the flow is slower towards the walls than in the middle. The particles are trying to minimize their frictional losses with the fluid, and how to best achieve this depends on their chirality relative to the swirl of the fluid. The particles whose chirality is aligned with the swirl preferably move towards the middle where the flow is faster, while the particles of the opposite chirality move towards the channel walls where the flow is slower. This is what causes them to travel at different average velocities.
This leaves the question whether this study of particles of micrometer size can be scaled down to molecules of nanometer size. To address this question, the authors demonstrate with another numerical simulation that the efficiency of the separation (the amount of delay) depends on the product of the length of the channel and the velocity of the fluid, divided by the particle's diffusion coefficient in the fluid. This allows one to estimate what is required for smaller particles. If this scaling holds, particles of about 120 nm size could be separated in a channel of about 3cm length and 3.2 μm diameter, at a pressure of about 108 Pa, which is possible with presently existing technology.
Soft matter is not anywhere near by my area of research, so it is hard for me to tell whether there are effects at scales of some hundred nanometers that might become relevant and spoil this simple scaling, or whether more complicated molecule configurations alter the behavior in the fluid. But if not, this seems to me a tremendously useful result with important applications.
International Cooperation
On 4th September, Prof. Natsuo Sato of the Nationational Institute of Polar Research in Japan, gave a talk on research activities on conjugate aurora borealis done in cooperation between the Japanese National Institute of Polar Research and the Science Institute, University of Iceland for the past 30 years.
A conjugate point pair is defined as the intersection of a given magnetic field line with the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Magnetic field lines, linking the Earth's polar regions, connect either to the opposite hemisphere (closed field lines) or to the interplanetary magnetic field (open field lines). Charged particles in the magnetosphere move along magnetic field lines and thus it is commonly assumed that the aurora borealis (Northern Hemisphere) and aurora australis (Southern Hemisphere) are mirror images of each other. However, 30-year conjugate observations show that occurrences of mirror image aurora are rare. In general, Optical observations of these events are difficult since the observations at two conjugate points must be done simultaneously, but for that to happen, both observatories must be in darkness and both should have fine weather. In spite of these limitations, Icelandic and Japanese scientists have obtained many interesting auroral events. Measurements of inter-hemispheric conjugate aurora provide a unique opportunity to investigate how and where the invisible geomagnetic field lines connect the two hemispheres, the influence of the solar wind on the Earth's magnetosphere and the nature of the auroral acceleration process. [Read more...]
Former Nordita PhD student and soon-to-be Nordita affiliated postdoc Fabio Del Sordo was one of four astronomy enthusiasts who spent three weeks in September in Uganda, the Land of Beauty (after the Ugandan national anthem), in the most recent GalileoMobile expedition. This Nordita-sponsored project is a traveling science education programme that brings astronomy closer to young people around the world, and mainly across regions that have little or no access to outreach actions. The expedition to Uganda was the first on the African continent, following expeditions to Chile, Bolivia, Peru, India and Nepal. The Galileans visited five schools for two days each, held workshops with teachers and lots of activities with the students. A documentary is in preparation (watch teaser), but you can already now watch the preparations for the expedition on YouTube. Next expedition under the same sky will be to Bolivia and Brazil. [Read more...]
Physics, Astronomy
If you plan to travel to Mars, you should first go to Iceland, the next best thing. In July, a team of four UK scientists, combining expertise in geology, remote sensing and engineering, decided to test this old adage. They took a prototype of the Panoramic Camera (PanCam) instrument, which will form a major component of the European Space Agency's 2018 ExoMars rover, with them to the Krafla volcanic region of northern Iceland. Here the terrain and the mineral composition is similar to some that have been identified on Mars, and some of the terrestial environments are home to thriving microbial communities. This makes this location an ideal site for testing instruments that will be on future astrobiology missions, like the ExoMars mission. The wide-angle and high-resolution cameras of the PanCam were tested, as well as the mineral sampling and spectroscopic analysis capabilities. These various data source will enable planetary scientists to carry out geological investigations of terrain surrounding the rover, once it is on the surface of Mars. [Read more...]
Physics
A novel magnesium carbonate material has been synthesized by researchers from Uppsala University, Sweden. The new material, named Upsalite, has shown to possess very high water adsorption abilities, and is foreseen to reduce the amount of energy needed to control environmental moisture in the electronics and drug formulation industry as well as in hockey rinks and ware houses. It can also be used for collection of toxic waste, chemicals or oil spill and in drug delivery systems, for odor control and sanitation after fire. Perhaps even more spectacular is the record breaking surface area of this magnesium carbonate, a stunning 800 square meters per gram. For over a century is has been claimed that amorphous magnesium carbonate cannot be made in a very simple, low-temperature process. The researchers at the Uppsala Nanotechnology and Functional Materials division have made the impossible possible. [Read more...]
Physics
In September, the Nobel laureate David Gross, professor of physics at the Kavli Institute of California-Santa Barbara, gave a public lecture at the University of Iceland on the outstanding success of quantum mechanics and quantum field theory since their discovery. In this context, David Gross discussed string theory, which is not yet a fully developed theory, but a framework where all the fundamental forces of Nature are unified. String theory is based on the same principles as quantum mechanics, and is thus part of quantum field theory. Despite of all the impressive achievements of modern theoretical physics, numerous conceptual key-questions should be still answered. Among the most interesting ones, he mentioned the issue of the nature of space-time. Indeed, the model of space-time we have now, although extremely useful, might not be fundamental: perhaps space-time emerges from more fundamental physical processes, as the gauge/gravity duality seems to suggest. [Read more...]
Awards
Professor Risto Nieminen, Dean of the School of Science at Aalto University, was Director of Nordita in 2007-2008. On October 9, he received an award of honour of € 30 000 from the Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation in recognition of his important work in scientific research in the fields of nanoscience and technology and computational modelling of material physics, and his diverse and influential role in the Finnish science community. [Read more...]
Research Evaluations
The Swedish Higher Education Authority has recently evaluated the BSc and MSc programs in physics and mathematics (although not including the MSc in Engineering Physics programs) at all universities in Sweden. In general the quality is good in both subjects but a few universities will have to correct some deficiencies within the next year in order to keep the right to grant degrees. More information can be found at kvalitet.hsv.se/resultatsok (in Swedish) where it is possible to search all subjects that has undergone review.
Science and Society
KTH Royal Institute of Technology, one of Nordita's host universities, presented state-of-the-art fuel cell research during the brief visit of U.S. President Obama in September. "You're doing great work," the President told the three KTH researchers.
Taking advantage of the long warm fall, the Astrophysics group at Nordita have moved a whiteboard and the group meeting out to the lawn in front of the Nordita West building.
Nordita Professor Konstantin Zarembo has been awarded an ERC Advanced Grant to fund a five-year research project on Integrable Systems in Gauge and String Theory (with the acronym INTEGRAL) starting in March 2014.
The ERC Advanced Investigator Grant funding scheme targets exceptional research leaders across all fields of science and enables them to pursue frontier research of their own choice.
We congratulate Professor Zarembo on this honor and look forward to an even stronger Nordita presence in an important and rapidly developing field of research.
Theoretical particle physics has long since entered the age of precision. The accuracy of experimental measurements and theoretical calculations have reached unprecedented levels - twelve significant digits for select QED observables (anomalous magnetic moment of the electron), four significant digits for the majority of electroweak observables. In case of the strong interaction, perturbative methods give reliable predictions at asymptotically high energies, but for observables sensitive to the low-energy scale theory lags behind.
The standard calculational tools in quantum field theory are the Feynman diagrams of perturbation theory. As far as the non-perturbative, strongly-coupled regime is concerned, there is no general method of addressing conceptual problems that arise there. Any new non-perturbative result in quantum field theory requires substantial effort and non-trivial insights.
Integrable systems, and integrable field theories in particular, play a distinguished role in physics, by providing insight into genuinly non-perturbative dynamics in the strongly-coupled regime, where other available methods fail. For a long time, integrability was associated with (1+1)-dimensional systems, where it allows one to find the exact spectrum, to study thermodynamics and to compute correlation functions for a number of strongly-interacting field theories. The discovery of integrability in the AdS/CFT correspondence in 2002 opened an avenue for applying powerful methods of integrability to four-dimensional quantum field theories and ever since this has been a very active area of research worldwide. Impressive progress has been made, enabling computations that go far beyond perturbation theory and interpolate between weak and strong coupling regimes. For instance, the spectral problem in the AdS/CFT correspondence has been solved exactly with the help of the Thermodynamic Bethe Ansatz (TBA) and integrability has been successfully applied to computing scattering amplitudes and Wilson loops. The aim of the ERC funded project is to further develop methods and concepts in this area and extend the application of integrability to new systems in quantum field theory and string theory.
Our congratulations go to Nordita Professor Alexander Balatsky and his collaborators at KTH Royal Insitute of Technology, Uppsala University, and Chalmers University of Technology, who have been awarded a major grant from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation (KAW) to fund a five-year research project on Functional Dirac Materials starting in July 2013. The total grant of 32 million SEK will go towards both theoretical and experimental work at the participating institutions.
Presentation (in Swedish) of the project on the KTH web site.
The project aims to achieve new functionalities by design of nanostructures, films and interfaces of Dirac Materials. The project is of basic scientific nature.
It involves novel concepts that will elucidate our understanding of Dirac Materials and their functionalization. The outcome of the proposed research may have technological implications; for instance, understanding the nature of high-Tc superconductivity may lead to materials with higher transition temperatures; the spin oriented edge states may find use in spintronics, and the prevented scattering of edge states may increase the coherence times of q-bits. At the same time there might also be effects leading to standards with higher precision - the quantum Hall effect is one example.
Research on manipulation of Dirac nodes in topological insulators (TI) will yield new states of matter like TI excitons and spin pumping of TI. The demonstration of the predicted effects and novel concepts requires processing of superconducting structures that are smaller than the state-of-the-art today, depositing topological insulators of higher quality, further improving electron structure characterization, using new spin transfer torque configurations, and further development of modeling.
Tomi Koivisto
Nordita Assistant Professor in Theoretical Astro-Particle Physics or Cosmology
Tomi took up his Assistant Professorship at Nordita in October 2013. His field of research is gravitation and cosmology, with main emphasis on quantum and classical extensions of the theory of general relativity and their cosmological and astrophysical implications.
He has worked extensively on dark energy, early universe inflation and alternative cosmologies. His contributions have established new connections between large scale structure observations and fundamental physical theories, and he is a member of the Euclid consortium theory group.
In the field of gravity theories, his main foci are the gravitational aspects of higher dimensional theories such as D-brane scenarios in type II string theory, and nonlocal approaches to the problems of renormalisability and the cosmological constant.
David Abergel
Assistant Professor in Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics
David's research is centered on the theory of electronic properties of two-dimensional materials. Most of David's past work has been on graphene - an atomically thin layer of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb lattice - but he has also worked on 3D topological insulators and other monolayer systems. These materials all exhibit a Dirac-like dispersion relation for the quasiparticles near the Fermi surface and a chirality which locks the momentum to a spin (or pseudospin) degree of freedom. This leads to a rich landscape of exciting fundamental physics, but also to many potential applications.
Recently, David was involved in an effort to describe the impact of realistic disorder on the functionality of proposed graphene devices, and especially the role of charged impurities (which are an inescapable byproduct of the fabrication processes) on experimentally measurable quantities such as transport characteristics and the electronic compressibility.
In the future David plans to continue working on Dirac materials, and particularly on trying to propose new and exciting applications for these materials through functionalizing them with dopants, by changing their geometry, and by combining these two-dimensional "building blocks" to create layered structures.
Nordita Fellow Jonathan Edge
Condensed Matter Physics
In the past Jonathan has worked on ultracold Fermi gases, in particular on how collective modes can be used to probe the properties of these systems. He has also worked on transport in quantum systems, mostly studying localisation properties at transitions between different topological phases. This has led, amongst other things, to studies on the plateau transition in the integer quantum Hall effect using what is known as the quantum kicked rotator. He is continuing this line of research and now also investigating problems in superconductivity.
Nordita Fellow Sven Bjarke Guðnason
Subatomic Physics
Bjarke received his PhD in theoretical physics at the University of Pisa in 2010. He is interested in field theories and especially gauge theories, their behavior at strong coupling and confinement. In the course of understanding the real physical problems, as many theoreticians his interest was caught by toy problems and tools along the way, such as (extended) supersymmetry, topological solitons, lower-dimensional theories, AdS/CFT, and non-perturbative methods, etc.
Nordita Fellow Bidya Binay Karak
Astrophysics
Bidya did his PhD at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore under the supervision of Arnab Choudhuri. Bidya has been working on various aspects of the solar activity cycle including the origin of grand minima and solar cycle prediction. In the near future he plans to focus on three-dimensional simulations of turbulent dynamos.
Nordita Fellow Alexander Krikun
Subatomic Physics
The main subject of interest for Alexander is the application of the gauge/string duality (AdS/CFT) to various strongly coupled systems such as quantum chromodynamics (AdS/QCD) or high temperature superconductivity in condensed matter (AdS/CMT). The gauge/string duality is a modern approach to deal with strongly coupled theories and can provide new insight onto longstanding unsolved problems of physics.
Postdoctoral Fellow Nishant Singh
Astrohysics
Nishant did his PhD at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore under the supervision of Sridhar with whom he worked on the dynamo problem with non-helical turbulence in the presence of shear. He then moved to the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics in Pune, India. He has already registered a Nordita preprint (2013-86) on the time variability of the viscosity parameter in differentially rotating discs.
PhD Student Xinyi Chen
Subatomic Physics
Xinyi graduated from the University of Barcelona and did her master in high-energy physics at ETH (Zurich) and École Polytechnique (Paris), where she worked on properties of arbitrary dimension conformal field theories for her master thesis. She joined Nordita in September 2013 to pursue her PhD studies under the supervision of Konstantin Zarembo. She will investigate the integrability of quantum field theories as well as the holographic principle.
PhD Student Raffaele Marino
Statistical Physics
Raffaele obtained his master degree in April 2013 from the University of Rome "La Sapienza", where he studied optimization problems (K-SAT), statistical mechanics, econophysics and stochastic methods. He started his PhD in October 2013 in the condensed matter and statistical physics group at Nordita, working under joint supervision of Ralf Eichhorn (Nordita) and Erik Aurell (KTH). He works on the project "Optimal processes in small systems under thermal noise".
Visiting PhD Student James Gordon
Subatomic Physics
James will be visiting Nordita for one year supported by the Marie Curie Initial Training Network GATIS. He is a PhD student at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.
Visiting PhD Student Stojan Janović
Biophysics
In 2012 Stojan became a PhD student in the EuroSPIN joint European doctoral programme in computational neuroscience. Stojan's current research interests include the evolution of statistics of self-exciting point processes and the emergence of higher-order correlations through synaptic interactions in neural networks.
Visiting Postdoc Harsha Raichur
Astrophysics
Harsha comes to Nordita from the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics in Pune, India, where she has worked on X-ray astronomy with a focus on stellar mass binaries. She will be visiting Nordita for three years and plans to interact also with scientists at the Astronomy Department at Stockholm University.
Assistant Professor Stephen Powell left Nordita in October to take up a tenured faculty position at the University of Nottingham, UK.
Nordita Fellow Dmitri Bykov left at the end of September for a postdoctoral position at the Albert Einstein Institute in Potsdam, Germany.
Nordita Fellow Oliver Gressel left a the end of August for a five-year research position at the Niels Bohr International Academy in Copenhagen, where he plans to work on the physics of accretion disks and galactic magnetic fields.
Nordita Fellow Dmytro Volin left in October for a faculty position at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland.
Nordita Fellow Donovan Young left at the end of September to take up a junior faculty position at Queen Mary University London, UK.
PhD Student Jörn Warnecke defended his PhD thesis "Combining Models of Coronal Mass Ejections and Solar Dynamos" at Stockholm University on May 31 and is now a post-doctoral fellow at the Sun and Heliosphere department of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Katlenburg-Lindau near Göttingen, Germany.
Long-term visitors Ebru and Ahmet Devlen return to the University of Ege, Turkey, after having spent 12 months at Nordita collaborating with members of the astrophysics group. During her stay, Ebru Devlen found that the so-called Roberts-IV flow exhibits large-scale dynamo action based on the negative magnetic diffusivity effect. Such an effect was predicted for various other flows, but it is now the first time that such an effect has been conclusively verified using the test-field method (see Nordita preprint 2012-100). Ahmet Devlen has been working the analysis of stellar activity cycles.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank these scientists for their time at Nordita and for their contribution to the vitality of the institute. They have our best wishes for their future careers.
Left to right: Jonas Larson (supervisor, Stockholm U.), Fernanda Pinheiro (licentiate), Magnus Johansson (opponent, Linköping U.) and Jani-Petri Martikainen (supervisor, U. of Helsinki); absent are opponents Per-Erik Tegnér (Stockholm U.) and Stephen Powell (Nordita).
Fernanda Pinheiro, PhD student at Nordita and Stockholm University, successfully defended her licentiate thesis "From weakly to strongly correlated physics of bosons in the p band" on 4 September 2013.
Nordita invites the international scientific community to submit proposals for Nordita programs for year 2015 and early 2016. A Nordita Scientific Program is an extended workshop where scientists come together to work on specific topics for a period of 4 to 6 weeks. Program topics can range beyond the traditional borders of theoretical physics and scientists in related areas of the natural sciences are encouraged to submit proposals. Normally, two or three principal investigators are responsible for coordinating a program and up to 25 participants can be accommodated at any given time. Program can include focus events (conferences, workshops or schools) with a higher number of participants for shorter periods.
The deadline for submitting program proposals is 15 November, 2013. For further information, please consult our Program Proposal Guidelines.
The visiting PhD student program at Nordita is open for applications for visits during 2014. The program offers selected students the opportunity to spend time at Nordita and take advantage of the research environment and ongoing scientific activities at the institute and the AlbaNova University Center in Stockholm. This can, in particular, include collaboration on research projects with Nordita academic staff and participation in Nordita Scientific Programs in areas of interest for the students. Visiting PhD students may also be interested in taking PhD-level courses offered at Stockholm area universities.
A Visiting PhD Student Fellowship will be awarded for a period of one to three months, providing accommodation and a contribution towards travel and living expenses in Stockholm. Priority will be given to applicants who are registered PhD students in theoretical physics or a related subject at a university in the Nordic countries at the time of the fellowship visit to Nordita, but students from other universities will also be considered.
Appointments are for two years starting 1 September, 2014 or some other date to be agreed upon. The fellowships are intended for scientists who have a recent PhD, completed less than 5 years before the starting date of the fellowship, and wish to carry out research in fields represented at Nordita. Candidates working in other areas will be considered when it is scientifically justified.
The current call includes the possibility of applying for a joint fellowship with the Aalto Science Institute (AScI) at Aalto University in Finland. Interested applicants should indicate this in their Nordita application and also in their application to the AScI Fellowship program.
Nordita invites applications for an Assistant Professor position in connection with the ERC Advanced Grant recently awarded to Professor Konstantin Zarembo. The position is open to all qualified candidates in the field of theoretical high-energy physics, broadly defined. The appointment will be for a period of four years, fixed term, starting in September 2014 or at some other date to be agreed on.
The position is open to all qualified candidates working in theoretical high-energy physics, including quantum field theory, string theory and integrable systems. The appointment is for two years, starting 1 September, 2014, or some other date to be agreed upon. The deadline for applications is 1 December, 2013
This position is independent from the Nordita Fellowships (online at jam.nordita.org). Applications for both positions are possible and are in fact encouraged.
To mark the 25th anniversary of its existence, the science journal Physics World has dedicated a special issue (No. 10, October 2013) to a look back to some of the highlights in physics in the past quarter century and also to a look ahead to the future of the subject
"Can we unify quantum mechanics and gravity?" In a section on the five biggest unanswered questions in physics, Nordita assistant professor Sabine Hossenfelder describes how physicists are working to unite these two perspectives in a theory of quantum gravity. Sabine remains optimistic that this can be done, but emphasizes the necessity of making connection to experiment, not only because that would be helpful, but is is also necessary for any prospective theory of quantum gravity to be scientific.
"Physics in Kungsträdgården" is a local biannual outreach project which this year it took place on 7 September. On that Saturday the central Stockholm park Kungsträdgården was filled with students and scientists from Nordita, the KTH and Stockholm University departments of physics, astronomy, metereology, radiation physics, and joined by science educators from the House of Science. The public is invited to explore and experience the many facets of physics, ask questions, listen to talks, and try hands-on demonstrations. Nordita has inspired discussions on the formation of sunspots and super-cooled water, the geometry of soap bubbles and self-healing graphene, and the hidden secrets of quantum gravity, chaotic double pendulums and the inner structure of neutron stars.
Apostolos Vasileiadis, master student at Nordita, documented the event:
Apostolos Vasileiadis, an aspiring young movie-maker, produced the below short film situated at Nordita. It tells the story of a student's quest for truth in science. We hear that a sequel is planned and look forward to it.
We know that physics is awesome, but not everybody does, and so we're now on
facebook and twitter to spread word about it. With our presence on these social media platforms,
we want to bring our research closer to the public and to actively engage with our audience. Our Facebook and Twitter pages give you the chance to follow what is happening at Nordita, and in the
world of Theoretical Physics in general. By sharing scientific news from all around the globe we want
to spark interest in physics and invite you to discuss recent developments.
→ See List of all Nordita Events: www.nordita.org/events
Meeting
7—9 November 2013
The program during this meeting will consist of three lecture series by invited speakers (on 'Holographic entanglement entropy', 'Recent advances in conformal bootstrap', and 'Rigid supersymmetry on curved manifolds'), as well as short talks by students and young researchers who wish to contribute.
Coordinators: Daniele Marmiroli, Alexander Krikun, Sven Bjarke Gudnason, Lárus Thorlacius, Blaise Goutéraux, Konstantin Zarembo, Paolo Di Vecchia
School
6—17 January 2014
The aim of this research training course is to give to the participants an overview of current trends in condensed matter physics and at the same time provide them with the tools to enter into rapidly developing areas of research. The school is addressed to PhD students and young post-docs, and will last two weeks with 10 full days of teaching. As well as the basic topics fundamental to condensed matter physics, the school will cover the fields of magnetism, topological states of matter, and the physics of low-dimensional structures and interfaces.
Coordinators: Eddy Ardonne, Stephen Powell, David Abergel, Alexander Balatsky
Program
7 April — 2 May 2014
The focus of this program is the theory and phenomenology of neutrino physics and the role of neutrinos in astrophysics and cosmology. Important issues include extended versions of the Standard Model of particle physics including massive neutrinos, using neutrinos for probing astrophysical environments, and confronting theories with measurements. We intend the program to be a workshop in the real sense of the word, with informal discussion meetings and ample opportunities for research and discussion of common projects.
Coordinators: Thomas Schwetz, Mattias Blennow, Tommy Ohlsson, Rikard Enberg
Program
5—30 May 2014
The nature of Dark Matter is one of the most important outstanding problems in modern physics. Many Dark Matter models exhibit high dimensional parameter spaces with many degeneracies and considerable expected backgrounds, and therefore a combination of all experimental data available will likely be necessary to arrive at robust conclusions regarding the nature of dark matter. The aim of the program is to bring together experimentalists, phenomenologists and theorists in order to discuss ideas, methods and models for interpreting the vast amount of data available.
Coordinators: Lars Bergström, Timur Delahaye, Joakim Edsjö, Jan Conrad
Program
2—27 June 2014
The question of the dynamics of particles in flows has a wide range of applications. Examples are the dispersion of pollutants in the atmosphere, fuel injection in a car engine, rain formation in clouds, and planet formation in circumstellar accretion disks. These examples have in common that the fundamental processes (collisions, coalescence, or breakup of particles) are determined by similar microscopic equations.
Coordinators: Federico Toschi, Bernhard Mehlig, Dhrubaditya Mitra, Fredrik Lundell
Program
14 July — 8 August 2014
In a frustrated system, competition between interactions hinders the tendency towards forming an ordered state, allowing for the emergence of new physical phenomena. This programme will bring together experts in the field of frustrated and critical magnetism as well as younger researchers, to discuss recent developments, explore connections between different areas of research, and generate new ideas.
Coordinators: Anders Sandvik, Stephen Powell, Eddy Ardonne
→ See Current Open Postitions: www.nordita.org/positions
