Events

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 ...

I have always tried to pick research problems that are simply stated and have an experimental feel to them, subject to the constraint that I have some possibility of solving them. In short, I do what I can. I will talk about my recent forays into optimization problems related to ...

I will start with an overview of equilibrium statistical mechanics. Then we'll consider the myriad ways a system can be out of equilibrium and why equilibrium is a special place. I'll then present a few simple models that have been used to describe various nonequilibrium scenarios: nonequilibrium stationary ...

A measure of similarity or overlap between different configurations or individuals appears in many complex systems such as spin glasses, evolving populations, optimization problems and neural networks. In the context of spin glasses, the concept was introduced by Edwards and Anderson 50 years ago and gives a measure of similarity ...

I was a postdoctoral research associate working with Dr Sergey Koposov at the Institute for Astronomy (IfA) from 2021 to 2024. My project was to analyse the kinematics and chemical properties of a few million stars in the Solar neighbourhood using the DESI Milky Way Survey data compiled with Gaia ...

More to be announced soon..

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 ...

An electroweak weakly interacting particle (WIMP) with TeV scale mass constitutes a minimalistic dark matter candidate. Extensive work in recent years has uncovered physical effects which -- despite the intrinsic weak interaction strength -- can dramatically change the signatures of dark matter annihilation. Owing to the large dark-matter mass, the relevant electroweak ...

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 ...

Lattice QCD permits the strong coupling constant alpha_s to be determined from the masses and decay constants of the light hadrons. The precision achieved in these computations is competitive with the one of the world average of the experimental measurements of the coupling and is likely to improve in the ...

More to be announced soon...

The Nordic Lattice meeting is an annual event designed to foster collaboration between and beyond the Nordic countries. Previously, it was held in Denmark (Odense 01/2022), Finland (Helsinki 08/2022), Norway (Stavanger 06/2023), Sweden (Lund 06/2024) and Switzerland (CERN 05/2025). The Nordic lattice community is actively ...

More to be announced soon.... Please note if you join through the Microsoft Teams link, your name and profile photo appear on the recording. If you have any issues with this, please contact hctp@ed.ac.uk.

The 11th edition of the Higgs Centre School of Theoretical Physics will take place from the 25th-29th of May 2026. The scientific programme starts at 9:00 on Monday the 25th, and ends at 17:00 on Friday the 29th. The School comprises two in-depth lecture series, each involving five ...

To be announced.

General Relativity is naturally treated as a quantum field theory using the techniques of effective field theory. In this colloquium, I will review the simple ideas behind this treatment and provide examples. This will lead to a discussion of the lessons learned and the limits of the theory. Overall I ...

If you would like to attend this workshop, please register by clicking on the "register" button to the left.  Registration is open until May 1, 2026. This meeting is generously hosted by the Higgs Centre for Theoretical Physics. There will be no registration fee, and coffee breaks and lunches will ...

This workshop will celebrate the career and research accomplishments of Lance Dixon, whose decisive impact has been felt across many areas of theoretical physics. The event will involve three days of talks from some of Lance's long-time collaborators, including: Babis Anastasiou Benjamin Basso Zvi Bern Ruth Britto Francis Brown ...

More to be announced soon... Please note if you join through the Microsoft Teams link, your name and profile photo appear on the recording. If you have any issues with this, please contact hctp@ed.ac.uk.

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More to be announced soon....

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