Theoretical Physics - From Outer Space to Plasma

Prof Alexander Mietke discusses recent findings in this field that have linked chirality in living systems to the formation of a left-right body axis in organisms and to a new kind of elasticity that is found in crystals formed by starfish embryos. Chirality describes objects and features that are distinct from their mirror image, a property that can be found in many biological systems ranging from spiral patterns of seashells over helical swimming paths of sperm cells to the shape of our hands and feet. This is rather surprising, given that most organisms develop from a single, round cell which shows no obvious signs of chirality. The physics of chirality in biological systems is a research area within the modern field of living matter that aims to identify the physical principals that underlie how chirality emerges during organism development and how the chiral nature of biological materials contributes to their highly unconventional mechanical properties

Dr Adrien Hallou presents a new methodology called 'spatial mechano-transcriptomics', which allows the simultaneous measurement of the mechanical and transcriptional states of cells in a multicellular tissue at single cell resolution. Over the last 10 years, advances in microscopy and genome sequencing have revolutionised our understanding of how molecular programmes contained in the genome control cellular behaviours such as cell division, differentiation or death, and how these behaviours are influenced by biochemical and mechanical signals from the cell environment. In this talk, I will present a new methodology called 'spatial mechano-transcriptomics', which allows the simultaneous measurement of the mechanical and transcriptional states of cells in a multicellular tissue at single cell resolution. This new framework provides a generic scheme for exploring the interplay of biomolecular and mechanical cues in tissues in a variety of contexts, such as embryonic development, tissue homeostasis and regeneration, but also in diseases such as cancer.

Professor Julia Yeomans describes how mechanical models are being extended to incorporate the unique properties of living systems Epithelial tissues cover the outer surfaces of the body and line the body’s internal cavities. The motion of epithelial cells is key to many life processes: turnover of skin cells, embryogenesis, the spread of cancer and wound healing. Much remains to be understood about the ways in which cells interact and move together. I will describe how mechanical models are being extended to incorporate the unique properties of living systems.

In this talk, Benedikt Placke introduces QEC and explains how the unique interplay between the classical and the quantum world enables us to efficiently correct errors effecting such systems. Quantum computing is a new model of computation that holds the promise of significantly improved performance over classical computing for some problems of interest. However, by its very nature quantum computers are sensitive to disturbance by external noise, most likely necessitating the use quantum error correction (QEC) for useful application.

Furthermore, Benedikt Placke comments on the deep connection between QEC and questions in condensed matter physics.

In this talk Alessio Lerose discusses the seminal idea of simulating Nature via a controllable quantum system rather than a classical computer. He discusses recent advances that brought us closer to the ultimate goal of a universal quantum simulator. Since their birth computers proved invaluable tools for physics research. Quantum mechanics, however, fundamentally challenges the possibility for computers to simulate dynamics of matter. In fact, solving the quantum-mechanical law of motion requires to account for contributions of all possible joint configuration histories of all constituents of a system: a task that quickly becomes unbearable for any imaginable computer. Our understanding of complex phenomena involving important quantum-mechanical effects, such as chemical reactions, high-temperature superconducting materials, as well as the primordial universe evolution, is obstructed by this fundamental technological limitation.

Jasmine Brewer covers recent progress on studying the properties of the quark-gluon plasma, and describe how we can capitalize on lessons learned from high-energy physics to provide new insights on this novel material. Quarks and gluons are the fundamental constituents of all matter in the universe, but they have the unique property that they are always confined inside hadrons. The only situation in which quarks and gluons are deconfined is in extremely high-energy collisions of heavy nuclei, where the temperature is so high that nuclei “melt” into a new phase of matter called the quark-gluon plasma. This exotic state of matter provides a gateway to study the rich many-body physics of free quarks and gluons, including their rapid thermalization to form the most perfect liquid ever observed.

Dr Yonadav Barry Ginat - Possible sources for the gravitational wave background The detection of gravitational waves from the coalescence of black holes has opened a new window for astronomy. Besides individual mergers, one can study the stochastic gravitational-wave background, i.e. the sum of all gravitational waves arriving at Earth, which are not from resolved sources. In this talk I will give an overview of the current predictions for this background, over a range of frequencies -- from binary neutron stars at 100 Hz to the mergers of super-massive black holes at 10^(-8) Hz, and even further to primordial gravitational waves generated during inflation. Of these, none have so far been detected, save for a signal consistent with a background from super-massive black hole coalescences. I will touch on how background sources are modelled, and on how these can be used to extend our understanding of physics.

Prof Bence Kocsis - Searching for the origin of black hole mergers in the Universe with gravitational waves The direct detection of gravitational waves by LIGO and VIRGO and pulsar timing arrays has recently opened a new window to observe the Universe. We can now detect objects which are completely invisible in traditional electromagnetic surveys including black holes and possibly dark matter. The observations show a very frequent rate of black hole mergers in the Universe with unexpected properties. In this talk I will review the astrophysical processes that may be responsible for the formation of the observed events. I will show that the standard astrophysical merger pathways are already in tension with LIGO/VIRGO observations. New ideas may be needed to explain the origin of the detected sources. I will discuss several exotic possibilities including the hypothesis that if dark matter is in part made up of black holes in galaxies they may contribute to the observed events or the possibility that stellar mass black holes may be teeming around supermassive black holes at the centres of galaxies, which may be a possible sight to produce gravitational wave events.

Prof Steven Balbus - Gravitational radiation: an overview General Relativity, Einstein’s relativistic theory of gravity, predicts that the effects of gravitational fields propagate across the Universe at the speed of light. This is very much in the spirit of Maxwell’s theory of electrodynamics, the first fully relativistic theory to enter physics. Einstein’s theory is more complicated, however, because waves of gravity are themselves a source of gravitational radiation! But when the waves are small in amplitude, as they are in contemporary observations, their effects may be understood in terms of concepts very familiar to us: they cause small tensorial distortions of space, carrying energy and angular momentum which can measurably change the orbits of binary stars. First studied by Einstein in 1916, gravitational waves were detected directly in 2015, after a century of technical advancement allowed these incredibly tiny (a fraction of a proton radius!) wave distortions to be measured. In the last eight years, gravitational wave detection has become a powerful tool used by astrophysicists to reveal previously unknown populations of black holes, and perhaps something about the earliest moments of the birth of the Universe.

Archie Bott explains how a promising scheme for fusion relies on a novel feature of hot laser-plasmas: introducing a magnetic field of the correct strength alters the plasma’s fundamental properties in a highly counterintuitive yet beneficial manner. One key scientific breakthrough of 2022 was the achievement of fusion ignition; using the world’s largest laser facility, physicists created a plasma in which nuclear fusion reactions generated around 50% more energy than the laser energy required to get those reactions going. Arguably the hottest question in laser fusion-energy research right now is how to surpass this result.