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Calendar of Physics Talks Vienna
| Positivity in the Sky (online) |
| Speaker: | Claudia De Rham (Imperial College London) |
| Abstract: | I will discuss the subtle interplay between low-energy effective descriptions relevant for our âeveryday experimentsâ, and their embeddings within an ultimate high energy completion, and how these notions are affected by gravity. I will then discuss low-energy scatterings including loops from the Standard Model in the presence of gravity and their imprints on the high energy Regge behaviour, highlighting the implications to other gauge fields and to the Weak Gravity Conjecture. |
| Date: | Tue, 13.01.2026 |
| Time: | 14:00 |
| Duration: | 60 min |
| Location: | Erwin-Schroedinger-HS, Boltzmanngasse 5, 1090 Wien, 5.Stock + online on Zoom |
| Contact: | S. Fredenhagen, M. Sperling |
| Spin @ 100: How spin was discovered 100 years ago |
| Speaker: | Peter van Nieuwenhuizen (Stony Brook University, New York) |
| Abstract: | How the Zeeman (1896) and Stark (1913) puzzles of spectra were solved by Goudsmit and Uhlenbeck’s concept of spin in 1925; and how spin found its natural place in the new quantum mechanics of Heisenberg (1925), Schrödinger (1926), Pauli (1927) and Dirac (1928).
After thirty years of utter confusion and despair, in 1925 several discoveries in rapid succession solved the problems of the “normal” and “anomalous” Zeeman effect: Pauli’s exclusion principle (January), Heisenberg’s first paper on quantum mechanics (July), Goudsmit and Uhlenbeck’s spin (October), and the first paper on quantum field theory by Born, Heisenberg and Jordan (November). In January 1926 Schrödinger published his first of six papers on quantum mechanics, still without spin, but in February the Thomas factor of 2 confirmed the necessity of spin.
We shall recount this fascinating history and explain the physics. |
| Date: | Tue, 13.01.2026 |
| Time: | 16:00 |
| Duration: | 60 min |
| Location: | TU Wien, Wiedner Hauptstr. 8-10, Lecture Hall FH HS 6, 2nd floor, green area (Buffet will be offered at 15:30) |
| Contact: | Anton Rebhan |
| Higgs mechanisms in supersymmetric quiver gauge theories |
| Speaker: | Chiara-Renata Horak (University of Vienna) |
| Abstract: | Quantum Field Theory is the cornerstone of modern physics, providing the fundamental framework to describe particle interactions, but its perturbative methods fail for strongly coupled systems. Supersymmetry, by relating bosons and fermions, enables exact cancellations of divergent quantum corrections. These supersymmetric theories possess a moduli space of vacua arising from flat directions in the scalar potential. The choice of a specific point in this space spontaneously breaks the symmetries of the theory, in a generalized version of the Higgs mechanism.
This talk will compare the key ideas of various new and already established algorithms and methods looking at the Higgs Mechanism on different branches of the moduli space of vacua in 3 dimensional N=4 supersymmetric theories. |
| Date: | Tue, 13.01.2026 |
| Time: | 16:15 |
| Duration: | 60 min |
| Location: | Erwin-Schroedinger-HS, Boltzmanngasse 5, 1090 Wien, 5.Stock |
| Contact: | A. Hoang, M. Procura, J. Pradler |
| sw1+infinity asymptotic symmetries: Carrollian & Celestial lessons |
| Speaker: | Nicolas Cresto (Perimeter Institute) |
| Abstract: | I'll give an overview of the current understanding of asymptotic higher spin symmetries (an infinite dimensional graded extension of GBMS in General Relativity) from a Noetherian perspective, with an emphasis on their algebraic structure and the complementary interplay between celestial and Carrollian viewpoints. |
| Date: | Thu, 15.01.2026 |
| Time: | 14:00 |
| Duration: | 60 min |
| Location: | DA08E10, Green tower, 8th floor, Wiedner Hauptstrasse 8-10 |
| Contact: | Ankit Aggarwal, Daniel Grumiller |
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