Students in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics (STAMP)
STAMP is a cross-disciplinary student seminar which launched in
August 2022 to bring together PG students working in theoretical
and mathematical physics in Edinburgh. It seeks to repair links
between the different research groups which were broken during
the Covid pandemic, forge new ones, and give PG students a
friendly environment to share their research and hear about what
their peers are working on.
STAMP is primary aimed at PhD students in EMPG (University of
Edinburgh and Heriot-Watt) and the Higgs Centre, but we welcome
any students and junior researchers who wish to join us.
The seminars take place at 4pm every Thursday and the
locations currently alternates between the Bayes Centre on the
central UoE campus and the Higgs Centre, on the 4th floor of
the JCMB, on the Kings Buildings campus. As of February 2023,
STAMP is hybrid, with Zoom links shared via the mailing list.
The STAMP organisers are grateful for the funding they have
recieved from the Higgs Centre and from the School of
Mathematics at University of Edinburgh.
STAMP is currently organised by
Andrew Beckett,
Linden Disney-Hogg and
Conor Elrick.
Keeping up with STAMP
You can sign up to our mailing list by
following the instructions here.
(You may need to enable pop-ups for this link to work.)
You can also
join our Slack workspace
where we post the talk schedule and share slides, notes etc.
We now have our own page on the Higgs Centre Website!
While we're getting things worked out over there, we'll continue to post all information here,
but the plan is to migrate everything over there eventually and just keep this as a pointer page.
Talk Schedule
-
30th March 2023
Bayes Centre 5.45 (Central Campus)
An Introduction to QCD Sum Rules
Matthew Rowe (UoE, SoPA)
Abstract: QCD sum rules provide an elegant way of accessing non-
perturbative physics using the tools of perturbation theory. In this
talk I will attempt a relatively self-contained introduction to QCD
sum rules using the classic example of pseudoscalar correlators to
calculate meson decay constants. I will then discuss some practical
matters and complications and, if time permits, some new applications
from my own work.
-
6th April 2023
Higgs Centre (JCMB, Kings Buildings)
TBA
TBA
Abstract TBA
Previous Talks (Since Jan 2023)
-
16th February 2023
Bayes Centre 5.45 (Central Campus)
Skyrmions in the gauged Sigma model of chiral magnets
Peter Gerlagh (HWU, EMPG)
We characterise skyrmions in Bogomolny models of chiral magnets without axisymetry.
We show a duality between these Bogomolny models and the specific Bogomolny model wherein the so-called DMI tensor is rank one.
The potential in these models have two separate minimums and corresponding stationary vacuums.
Exact solutions with skyrmions are built around a domain wall which separates these vacuums.
The domain walls themselves can be characterised by a position and an angle.
-
23rd February 2023
No Event (Reading week + SoPA student retreat)
-
2nd March 2023
Bayes Centre 5.45 (Central Campus)
Pedagogical Introduction to Higher Principal Bundles
Dominik Rist (HWU, EMPG)
From the Standard Model of particle physics to condensed matter systems,
gauge theories form a powerful framework to understand Nature. Mathematically, gauge fields
correspond to connections on principal bundles, which are described by Lie algebra valued
1-forms. String theory considerations motivate the lift of this picture to a categorified
setting. Principal bundles are lifted to higher principal bundles (or gerbes) and higher
connections are then described by higher degree forms valued in some L-infinity algebra. In
this lecture, I will introduce these notions underpinning the geometric framework of higher
gauge theory, reviewing elements of higher category theory along the way. In particular, the
emphasis in this lecture will be on the cocycle description of gerbes with connection.
Click here for Dominik's notes.
-
9th March 2023
Higgs Centre (JCMB, Kings Buildings)
The Bethe ansatz in practice: an application to a minimal model in nonequilibrium statistical physics
Ivan Lobaskin (UoE, SoPA, Institute for Condensed Matter and Complex Systems)
Integrable systems are, loosely speaking, models that can be solved exactly
using certain standard methods. For quantum and stochastic 1D lattice models, this method is the
Bethe ansatz. Despite this, in physics, integrability techniques have a reputation of being
excessively formal and opaque. Indeed, even when a formal exact solution is given, it can be a
nontrivial task to translate this into meaningful statements regarding physical observables. In
an effort to challenge this stigma, in this seminar, I will present a classic calculation, in
which the Bethe ansatz is used to directly calculate physical observables for a toy model of
nonequilibrium statiscial mechanics. Specifically, I will calculate the long time current
statistics in a totally asymmetric simple exclusion process -- the ``Ising model of
nonequilibrium statistical physics".
Ref: arXiv:cond-mat/9809044
-
16th March 2023
Bayes Centre 5.45 (Central Campus)
Chasing Motes: A Physicist's introduction to Hopf Algebras
Sam Teale (UoE, SoPA, PPT)
Hopf Algebras are examples of bialgebras, being both an algebra and coalgebra and
are additionally equipped with an endomorphism known as an antipode which is analogous to the map of
groups that takes elements to their inverse. These structures have been studied since 1941 first in
the field of algebraic topology and have since spread to many fields of mathematics. More recently they
have been applied to quantum mechanics and the combinatorics of renormalization of quantum field theories.
In this talk I will introduce Hopf algebras for a very general audience; work through a couple of simple
examples; and finally, discuss the Motic Hopf algebra and its relevance to my work in renormalization.
-
23rd March 2023
Higgs Centre (JCMB, Kings Buildings)
A look at some "Axioms for the category of Hilbert spaces (and
linear contractions)"
Nesta van der Schaaf (University of Edinburgh, School of
Informatics, LFCS)
We'll have a look at a new result that characterises Hilbert
spaces (and linear contractions) in terms of categorical axioms that do
not refer to probabilities, complex numbers, inner products,
continuity, convexity, or dimension. To avoid going into too many
technical details, I will try to motivate the axioms and broader
research landscape (categorical quantum mechanics) by drawing analogies
to familiar terminology of sets and Hilbert spaces. (Based on joint
work with Chris Heunen and Andre Kornell.)
Ref: arXiv:2211.02688
a.d.k.beckett at ed.ac.uk