Events

In 1995, James Dolan and I formulated a series of “hypotheses” about topology and higher categories, before the theory of higher categories was sufficiently developed to make these into precisely stated conjectures. In 2009 Jacob Lurie reformulated one of these using infinity-categories, called it the “cobordism hypothesis”, and gave a ...

Natural ecosystems display an extraordinary diversity of species, a phenomenon that has recently attracted the interest not only of ecologists but also of theoretical physicists. In this talk, I will introduce a Generalised Lotka–Volterra model of ecological communities that accounts for random interactions among species and finite noise. Remarkably ...

New Directions in Theoretical Physics is a series of international conferences organised by the Higgs Centre for Theoretical Physics, aiming to highlight the outstanding issues and stimulate an exchange of ideas across all areas of contemporary theoretical physics. All talks are plenary reviews aimed at a broad audience of theoretical ...

The Universe at All Scales: New Observations and Models from Nearby Galaxies to High Redshift The frontiers of modern astronomy are being pushed by transformative observations and increasingly predictive simulations and theory. JWST’s high‑redshift breakthroughs, together with imminent wide‑field imaging from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory (LSST ...

As a physical theory, thermodynamics is somewhat unique in that its development was driven largely by practicality, and in particular, the need to optimise the efficiency of the first thermal machines which appeared in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The subsequent refinement and developments in classical thermodynamics and ...

More to be announced soon...

Astrophysical black holes can be entirely described by just two properties: their mass and their spin. While masses of black holes have been extensively studied, black hole spin remains poorly understood. This is because spin is both much more difficult to observe and more complex to model. Nevertheless, spin is ...

The Higgs Centre will be running a three-day workshop on Factorization in QCD and Beyond on 6-8 May, 2026. This is an in-person event, starting on Wednesday the 6th at 9am and ending on Friday the 8th at 5pm. The workshop addresses recent progress and open problems related to factorization ...

Gradient flow is a diffusion-like smearing transformation that smoothly suppresses short-distance ultraviolet fluctuations, thus introducing a simple non-perturbative method to renormalise strongly-coupled theories such as Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). It has become an invaluable tool in lattice simulations of both QCD and theories beyond the Standard Model, providing a method for ...

This workshop will celebrate the career and research accomplishments of Lance Dixon, whose decisive impact has been felt across many areas of theoretical physics. More details will be added shortly. If you are interested in attending, please inquire with the organizers. For information please contact: andrew.mcleod@ed.ac.uk All participants in HCTP ...