Nordita Newsletter. 2008, Issue 1

Issue 1, 2008

The "Owners"

NORDITA is since January 1st, 2007 located in Stockholm under the auspices of Stockholm University (SU) and the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH). The then President of KTH, prof. Anders Flodström, resigned (also as Chairman of the NORDITA Board) on August 1st 2007 to take up the duties as University Chancellor for the Swedish universities. In November a new President, Peter Gudmundsson, took up the duties. Peter Gudmundsson's background is professor in solid mechanics at KTH. Issues concerning NORDITA will be discussed with the Presidents at SU and KTH later this month.

The director

Unfortunately the present director, Risto Nieminen from Helsinki, will leave NORDITA on July 1^st, 2008. The process to recruite a new director is in progress. The deputy director Ulf Wahlgren, is appointed until July 1^st, 2009, and will if necessary take over the director responsibilities from July 1^st, 2008 until a new director can begin.

Recruitment

NORDITA is presently recruiting two new assistant professors. The committee in charge of the recruitment is:

Risto Nieminen (Chairperson)
Per Osland (Deputy member of the board)
Cecilia Jarlskog (Member of the board)
Sven Stafström (Deputy member of the board)
John Hertz (Staff representative)

In addition there are four external experts:

Prof. Fabio Zwirner (High energy physics)
Prof. Ruth Durrer (Cosmology)
Prof. Julia Yeomans (Condensed matter)
Prof. Eytan Domany (Statistical physics)

who are also members of the committee. The committee reports to the Board. The aim is to reach the final decision in the Board meeting on March 28.

The recruitment process for fellow positions is almost completed. Up to seven fellows (post-docs) will be hired, and presently five applicants have accepted the offer from NORDITA:

Kristin Giesel (Cosmology)
Jonas Larson (Cold atomic gases)
Mats Horsdal (Condensed matter physics)
Alexander Hubbard (Astrophysics)
Yassir Roudi (Biological physics)

Programs

The Program Committee, chaired by Risto Nieminen, with input from the NORDITA Subfield Committees, has considered the submitted applications for NORDITA Programs. At the Board meeting on January 24^th, 2008, nine of the applications were endorsed. The new program activities for 2008-2009 are:

Geometrical aspects of string theory
(U. Lindström and M. Zabzine)
Computational engineering across length and time scales
(H. Ågren, K. Ruud and A. Laaksonen)
Biological and environmental effects of nanomaterials
(I. Vattulainen, E. Salonen)
Astroparticle physics - pathfinder to new physics
(J. Edsjö, S. Hannestad, S. Hofmann, T. Ohlsson)
Electroweak phase transitions
(M. Hindmarsh, S. Huber, K. Rummukainen)
Quantum Hall physics
(E. Ardonne, H. Hansson, A. Karlhede, S. Viefers)
Solar and stellar dynamos
(Kosovichev, Korpi)
Turbulent combustion
(A. Brandenburg, N. Haugen, A. Johansson)
Physics of relativistic flows
(J. Poutanen, F. Ryde)

Workshops, conferences and summer-schools

A number of workshops and conferences are planned for 2008:

Ultracold gases and quark-gluon plasmas
This conference is organized by Chris Pethick and Poul Henrik Damgaard. It will take place June 16^th through July 4^th in Copenhagen and it is a joint venture between NORDITA and NBI.
Ice and water in the Universe: from astrobiology to terrestrial bodies
This is a two-week workshop during the fall of 2008, organized by J.S. Wettlaufer, who is a visiting scientist at NORDITA, and Axel Brandenburg
Conformal field theory approach to quantum Hall physics ? non-Abelian statistics and quantum computing
This workshop, organized by Eddy Ardonne and Hans Hansson, will take place in late August, 2008.
Accretion disks
A workshop organized by Axel Brandenburg.
A series of NORDITA colloquia is organized by Stefan Hofmann during the spring 2008. See http://agenda.albanova.se/categoryDisplay.py?categId=17
A Summer-school for PhD students in cosmology will take place during 10 days in August, 2008. It is organized by Stefan Hofmann, Øystein Elgarøy and Torsten Bringmann, with the topics covering advanced inflation and the cosmological constant problem. More information will be available on NORDITAs homepage later.

Nordita Preprints

→ Link to electronic preprints: www.nordita.org/preprints

2007-033: Turbulent viscosity and Lambda-effect from numerical turbulence models; Petri Käpylä, Axel Brandenburg; Astron. Nachr. 328, 1006-1008 (2007)

2007-034: Theoretical investigation of the energies and geometries of photo-excited uranyl(VI) ion: a comparison between wavefunction theory and density functional theory; Florent Réal, Valérie Vallet, Christel Marian, Ulf Wahlgren; J. Chem. Phys. 127, 214302 (2007)

2007-035: Kinematic alpha effect in isotropic turbulence simulations; S. Sur, A. Brandenburg, K. Subramanian; Monthly Notices Roy. Astron. Soc. (in press)

2007-036: The helicity constraint in spherical shell dynamos; A. Brandenburg, P. J. Käpylä, D. Mitra, D. Moss, R. Tavakol; Astron. Nachr. 328, 1118-1121 (2007)

2007-037: Phase diagram of nuclear "pasta" and its uncertainties in supernova cores; Hidetaka Sonoda, Gentaro Watanabe, Katsuhiko Sato, Kenji Yasuoka, Toshikazu Ebisuzaki; submitted to PRC

2007-038: Manifestly Gauge-Invariant General Relativistic Perturbation Theory: I. Foundations; K. Giesel, S. Hofmann, T. Thiemann and O. Winkler

2007-039: Manifestly Gauge-Invariant General Relativistic Perturbation Theory: II. FRW Background and First Order; K. Giesel, S. Hofmann, T. Thiemann and O. Winkler

2007-040: Cascading DGP; C. de Rham, G. Dvali, S. Hofmann, J. Khoury, O. Pujolas, M. Redi and A. J. Tolley

2007-041: Comment on The Water-Exchange Mechanism of the [UO2(OH2)5]2+ Ion Revisited: The Importance of a Proper Treatment of Electron Correlation [F. P. Rotzinger Chem. Eur. J., 2007, 13, 800]; Valérie Vallet, Ulf Wahlgren, Ingmar Grenthe; Chemistry - A European Journal, Volume 13, Issue 36 , Pages 10294 - 10297

2007-042: Spin-orbit configuration interaction study of the electronic structure of the 5f2 manifold of U4+ and the 5f1 manifold of U5+; C. Danilo, V. Vallet, J-P. Flament, U. Wahlgren; Submitted to J.Chem.Phys

2007-043: Exact ground states of extended t-J_{z} models on a square lattice; Z. Nussinov and A. Rosengren; Phil. Mag. Lett.87, 515 (2007)

2007-044: Origin of the low rigidity of the Earth; A. B. Belonoshko, N. V. Skorodumova, S. Davis, A. N. Osiptsov, A. Rosengren and B. Johansson; Science 316, 1603 (2007)

2007-045: On the Ising model for the simple cubic lattice; R. Häggkvist, A. Rosengren, P. H. Lundow, K. Markström, D. Andrén, and P.J. Kundrotas; Adv. Phys. 56, 653-755 (2007)

2007-046: Transition from a two-dimensional superfluid to a one-dimensional Mott insulator; S. Bergkvist, A. Rosengren, R. Saers, E. Lundh, M. Rehn, and A. Kastberg; Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 110401 (2007)

2007-047: Properties of the fcc Lennard-Jones crystal model at the limit of superheating; A. B. Belonoshko, S. Davis, N. V. Skorodumova, P. H. Lundow, A. Rosengren, and B. Johansson; Phys. Rev. B 76, 064121 (2007)

2007-049: Isotope effect on superconductivity in Josephson coupled stripes in underdoped cuprates; A. Rosengren, P. H. Lundow, and A. Balatsky; Submitted

2007-050: An investigation of the accuracy of different DFT functionals on the water exchange reaction in hydrated uranyl(VI) in the ground state and the first excited state.; P. Wåhlin, C. Danilo, V. Vallet, F. Réal, J.-P. Flament, U. Wahlgren

2008-001: Alpha-effect dynamos with zero kinetic helicity; Karl-Heinz Rädler, Axel Brandenburg; Phys. Rev. E 77, 026405 (2008)

2008-002: Scale dependence of alpha effect and turbulent diffusivity; A. Brandenburg, K.-H. Rädler, M. Schrinner; Astron. Astrophys. (in press)

2008-003: Core Mass Function: The Role of Gravity; Sami Dib, Axel Brandenburg, Jongsoo Kim, Maheswar Gopinathan, Philippe Andreg; Astrophys. J. Lett. (submitted)

2008-004: Collective states of interacting Fibonacci anyons; Simon Trebst, Eddy Ardonne, Adrian Feiguin, David A. Huse, Andreas W.W. Ludwig, Matthias Troyer

2008-005: Degeneracy of non-abelian quantum Hall states on the torus: domain walls and conformal field theory; Eddy Ardonne, Emil J. Bergholtz, Janik Kailsvuori, Emma Wikberg

2008-007: Learning more about what can be concluded from the observation of neutrinos from a galactic supernova; Solveig Skadhauge, Renata Zukanovich Funchalg; Phys.Rev.D (submitted)

2008-008: Boundary layer on the surface of a neutron star; N. Babkovskaia, A. Brandenburg, J. Poutanen

Items for Nordita News

Seasonal view of Nordita

If you have information about meetings or other items that would be useful to include in Nordita News, please send it to Anne Jifält, Nordita, email: anne@kth.se.

NORDITA NEWS

NORDITA NEWSLETTER. 2008, ISSUE 1