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"Field Theory Dualities and Strongly Correlated Matter"
March 18-24, 2018
Strong interactions cause electrons in high magnetic fields to fractionalize,
currents to pass unimpeded through copper oxide layers, quarks and gluons to
bind into mesons and nuclei, and even space itself to emerge from more
fundamental underlying degrees of freedom. However, strong interactions also
cause traditional perturbative techniques to fail and ask for the developments
for new tools.
A particularly powerful approach to strong coupling is based on the idea of duality: two very different quantum field theories can actually describe the same physics. What appears to be strongly coupled in one description is weakly coupled in the other. Recent years have shown the power of this idea in the context of three-dimensional field theories, bringing together ideas from the particle physics and condensed matter physics communities. For the latter, thinking in terms of topological defects such as vortices and hedgehogs formalized by duality transformations contributed significantly to understanding of phases of strongly interacting many-body systems, in particular of fractionalized phases including fractional quantum Hall states and spin liquids, complex charge ordering patterns in Mott insulators, and more recently symmetry-protected topological phases. For the former, using supersymmetric field theories as toy models has led to an understanding of intricate webs of dualities between theories with different matter content and even different dimensions, that has guided the search for non-supersymmetric dualities.
The last year has seen the high-energy and condensed matter communities coming together following dramatic developments in our understanding of (2+1)-dimensional field theories, connecting an astonishing array of ideas from condensed matter physics, particle physics and string theory. Our conference will bring together leading experts from both communities to take the next steps in this exciting journey.
Organizers:
Confirmed speakers:
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Program , Monday March 19 - Friday March 23, 2018
Registration and application
Aspen Center for Physics
Application information
Registration and hotel
Cost and funding
Travel and visas
Winter in Aspen
Computing facilities
National Science Foundation