Physics

The aim of the presentation is to review the beautiful geometry underlying the standard model of particle physics, as captured by the framework of "SO(10) grand unification." Some new observations related to how the Standard Model (SM) gauge group sits inside SO(10) will also be described. 

I will start by reviewing the SM fermion content, organising the description in terms of 2-component spinors, which give the cleanest picture. 

I will then explain a simple and concrete way to understand how spinors work in 2n dimensions, based on the algebra of differential forms in n dimensions.

This will be followed by an explanation of how a single generation of standard model fermions (including the right-handed neutrino) is perfectly described by a spinor in a 10 ("internal") dimensions. 

I will review how the two other most famous "unification" groups -- the SU(5) of Georgi-Glashow and the SO(6)xSO(4) of Pati-Salam -- sit inside SO(10), and how the SM symmetry group arises as the intersection of these two groups, when they are suitably aligned.

I will end by explaining the more recent observation that the choice of this alignment, and thus the choice of the SM symmetry group inside SO(10), is basically the choice of two Georgi-Glashow SU(5) such that the associated complex structures in R^{10} commute. This means that the SM gauge group arises from SO(10) once a "bihermitian" geometry in R^{10} is chosen. I will end with speculations as to what this geometric picture may be pointing to. 

Zoom link:  https://pitp.zoom.us/j/95984379422?pwd=SE1ybktzQzcreWREblhEUkZWWElMUT09

Hank Chen, Perimeter Institute and University of Waterloo

Drinfel’d double symmetry of the 4d Kitaev model

We construct the 2-Drinfel'd double associated to a finite 2-group G, and compute its braided 2-category of 2-representations, in order to characterize the topological excitations in the 4d toric code and its spin-Z_2 variant. This work relates the categorical and field theoretical approaches toward characterizing higher-dimensional topological phases in existing literature. In particular, we show that particular twists of the underlying 2-Drinfel'd double is responsible for much of the higher-structural properties that arise in gapped topological phases in 4d. We emphasize that this work also displays the first ever instance of higher Tannakian duality for 2-categories.

Tensor Processing Units are application specific integrated circuits (ASICs) built by Google to run large-scale machine learning (ML) workloads (e.g. AlphaFold). They excel at matrix multiplications, and hence can be repurposed for applications beyond ML. In this talk I will explain how TPUs can be leveraged to run large-scale density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) calculations at unprecedented size and accuracy. DMRG is a powerful tensor network algorithm originally applied to computing ground-states and low-lying excited states of strongly correlated, low-dimensional quantum systems. For certain systems, like one-dimensional gapped or quantum critical Hamiltonians, or small, strongly correlated molecules, it has today become the gold standard method for computing e.g. ground-state properties. Using a TPUv3-pod, we ran large-scale DMRG simulations for a system of 100 spinless fermions, and optimized matrix product state wave functions with a bond dimension of more than 65000 (a parameter space with more than 600 billion parameters). Our results clearly indicate that hardware accelerator platforms like Google's latest TPU versions or NVIDIAs DGX systems are ideally suited to scale tensor network algorithms to sizes that are beyond capabilities of traditional HPC architectures.

Zoom link:  https://pitp.zoom.us/j/99337818378?pwd=SGZvdFFValJQaDNMQ0U1YnJ6NU1FQT09

Polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) such as acenes have long been studied due to its interesting optical properties and low singlet triplet gaps. Earlier studies have already noticed that use of complete valence active space is imperative to the understanding of its qualitative and quantitative properties. Since complete active space based methods cannot be applied to such large active spaces, we have used density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) based approaches. Further small modification to the PAH topology shows interesting new phases of behaviour in its optical gaps. We have understood the effect of these effects based on spin frustration due to the presence of odd membered rings. In this talk, I will discuss these observations from molecular and model Hamiltonian perspectives.Further developments based on artificial neural network based configuration interaction for strongly correlated systems will also be discussed.5  The similarities between the ANNs and the MPS wavefunctions will be leveraged for 2D systems.

Zoom link:  https://pitp.zoom.us/j/92159136836?pwd=ZFJBcXZ3R3czSUcxcThOci9ueStBZz09

Jacob Barnett, Perimeter Institute

Locality and Exceptional Points in Pseudo-Hermitian Physics

This talk discusses the role of non-Hermitian operators in fundamental and effective theories of physics. An implicit assumption of the tensor product model of locality is that the inner product factorizes with the tensor product. Quasi-Hermitian quantum frameworks can be used to lift this assumption while preserving the reality of spectra and unitarity. After characterizing local observable algebras and expectation values, I will examine Bell's inequality and its generalizations, the nonlocal games, in the setting of quasi-Hermitian theories. Pseudo-Hermitian operators characterize systems with time-reversal symmetry. These operators exhibit rich perturbative and symmetry-breaking properties that are unparalleled in the Hermitian regime. I will convey some geometric and topological aspects of these features, with emphasis placed on non-interacting many-body systems.
 

In this colloquium, I will review how the notion of quantum error-correction has transformed our understanding of quantum gravity in the past decade.

Zoom link:  https://pitp.zoom.us/j/94349082665?pwd=OFdJdkpHU1NEcmlNeW5pWlg4WmNBZz09

 I will present a novel behavior developed by scattering amplitudes in certain regions of the kinematic space, in which amplitudes factorize into 3 pieces without becoming singular. This is opposed to what happens in standard factorization or soft limits. We call this behavior a 3-split, and it is "semi-local" in nature. As 3-splits cannot be obtained from standard unitarity arguments, they represent a new phenomenon in QFT. I will introduce 3-splits in their simplest version, i.e. for the biadjoint scalar theory (which I will also introduce). If time allows, I will also comment on how 3-splits arise in other QFTs and how they lead to the discovery of more general theories.

Zoom link:  https://pitp.zoom.us/j/95575818902?pwd=V1RKYW9WMmZQNElVL2VyUGFGMFgxQT09