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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.

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.

Contacts

Sam TEALE

STAMP Organiser

Person
Sam TEALE
Email address
sam.teale@ed.ac.uk
Subrabalan MURUGESAN

STAMP Organiser

Person
Subrabalan MURUGESAN
Email address
v1smurug@ed.ac.uk

This event is a Event.

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Supersymmetry and Spencer cohomologyAndrew BECKETT

Bosonic backgrounds in supergravity theories are classical solutions in which all fermionic fields vanish. Such a solution is said to be supersymmetric if it is preserved by a supersymmetry transformation of the theory. Apart from their intrinsic interest as the simplest solutions in supergravity theories, supersymmetric backgrounds arise in a ...
Higgs Centre Seminar Room, JCMB

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Classification of Aristotelian Lie algebras and SpacetimesJarah FLUXMAN

Homogeneous spaces provide a formalism for understanding symmetries and dynamics. Arguably the simplest dynamical homogeneous spaces are those of the Aristotelean type. We show there are precisely five Aristotelean Lie algebras up to isomorphism and investigate the spaces generated by quotienting these algebras by a rotational subalgebra.
Higgs Centre Seminar Room, JCMB

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Diffusion boundary layer theoryFreya BULL

When we consider the flow of fluid over a surface, our boundary condition at the surface (no slip - surface velocity is zero) results in the formation of a thin layer of fluid in which the velocity increases rapidly from zero at the surface to a value comparable to the bulk ...
Higgs Centre Seminar Room, JCMB

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Lessons from the Black Hole Information ProblemBenjamin STRITTMATTER

Hawking's information puzzle offers a unique perspective on how the effects of quantum gravity are imprinted on the low energy limit of the theory. Crucially, unitarity of black hole evaporation demands that the entropy of Hawking radiation follows a Page curve. In this talk, I aim to give a ...
Bayes Centre 5.45

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From Landau-Ginzburg to Matrix factorisations and TQFTBenjamin HAAKE

Landau-Ginzburg models have been used in various areas of mathematical physics. For example, there is a close link between them and sigma models with Calabi-Yau targets, thus making them interesting for String theory. Without going into details on these motivations, I will present Landau-Ginzburg models as an interesting example of ...
Bayes Centre 5.45

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Semi-Infinite Cohomology and Potential Applications to Non-Lorentzian PhysicsGirish VISHWA

Semi-infinite cohomology, first introduced by Boris Feigin in 1984, was shown to be an invaluable tool in the computation of string theory spectra, since it provides the mathematical setting for BRST cohomology. In this talk, I will provide an elementary introduction to the semi-infinite cohomology of graded Lie algebras, with ...
Higgs Centre Seminar Room, JCMB

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3d gravity as a source of integrable systems and hierarchiesJuan Carlos MORALES PARRA

In 1988 Witten showed the theory of (pure) General Relativity in 3 dimensions is exactly solvable, using an “equivalent” Chern-Simons formulation. In this talk we will describe the theory using the Newman- Penrose formalism and explicitly show how the equations of motion reduce to an AKNS system, proving in this ...
Bayes Centre 5.45

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Algebraic structures in higher-spin gravitySimon PEKAR

UNUSUAL LOCATION (due to clash with MSc presentations): JCMB 1501 Higher-spin gravity refers to an extension of general relativity involving fields with spin higher than two. The problem of finding a consistent interacting theory of higher-spin gravity can be reformulated into algebraic terms, whose solution is surprisingly simple and rigid ...

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An Introduction to QCD Sum RulesMatthew ROWE

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 ...
Bayes Centre 5.45

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A look at some "Axioms for the category of Hilbert spaces (and linear contractions)"Nesta VAN DER SCHAAF

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 ...
Higgs Centre Seminar Room, JCMB

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Chasing Motes: A Physicist's introduction to Hopf AlgebrasSam TEALE

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 ...
Bayes Centre 5.45

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The Bethe ansatz in practice: an application to a minimal model in nonequilibrium statistical physicsIvan LOBASKIN

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 ...
Higgs Centre Seminar Room, JCMB

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Pedagogical Introduction to Higher Principal BundlesDominik RIST

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 ...
Bayes Centre 5.45

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Skyrmions in the gauged Sigma model of chiral magnetsPeter GERLAGH

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 ...
Bayes Centre 5.45