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NORDITA NEWSLETTER. 2008, ISSUE 2

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The director

As announced in newsletter #1 2008, Risto Nieminen from Helsinki, will leave NORDITA on July 1st, 2008. A new director, Larus Thorlacius from Iceland, will take up his duties on August 1st , 2008. The deputy director Ulf Wahlgren, is appointed until July 1st, 2009, and will continue in this position.

Recruitment

NORDITA is presently recruiting two new assistant professors. Two candidates have been offered the positions. Conditions etc. are presently discussed.

The recruitment process for both the assistant professor and the fellow positions is now completed.

Six applicants to the fellow positions have accepted to join Nordita:

  • Kristina Giesel (Cosmology)
  • Jonas Larson (Cold atomic gases)
  • Mats Horsdal (Condensed matter physics)
  • Alexander Hubbard (Astrophysics)
  • Yassir Roudi (Biological physics)
  • Diego Chialva (String theory)

Jonas Larson has already started at Nordita, and the remaining fellows will arrive during 2008

Programs and workshops


Nordita in April

The schedule for programs from fall 2008 to spring 2010 has now been finalized.

  • Geometrical aspects of string theory (U. Lindström and Maxim Zabzine) October 15th to December 15th, 2008
  • Computational engineering across length and time scales (H. Ågren, K. Ruud and A. Laaksonen) February 2nd to February 28th , 2009
  • Assessment of the biological and environmental effects of nanomaterials (I. Vattulainen, E. Salonen) March 6th to March 28th , 2009
  • Astroparticle physics- pathfinder to new physics (J. Edsjö, S. Hannestad, S. Hofmann, T. Ohlsson) March 30th to April 30th , 2009.
  • Physics of relativistic flows (J. Poutanen, F. Ryde) May 4th to June 13th 2009
  • Electroweak phase transitions (M. Hindmarsh, S. Huber, K. Rummukainen) June 15th to July 29th 2009
  • Quantum Hall physics (E. Ardonne, H. Hansson,A. Karlhede, S. Viefers) August 16th to September 12th, 2009.
  • Solar and stellar dynamos (Kosovichev, Korpi) September 28th to October 25th 2009
  • Turbulent combustion (A. Brandenburg, N. Haugen, A. Johansson) April 5th to May 29th, 2010

In addition there will be two 2-week workshops, one in 2008 and one in 2009:

  • Ice and Water in the Universe. From Astrobiology to Terrestrial Bodies. Organizers: John S. Wettlaufer, Axel Brandenburg and Roland Kjellander, 15-27 September 2008
  • Neutron Stars. The Crust and Beyond Organizers: Lars Samuelsson and Nils Andersson, 14-26 September 2009

All information can be found on http://www.nordita.org/events/index.php

Workshops, conferences and summer-schools

A number of workshops and conferences are planned for 2008:

  • Ultracold gases and quark-gluon plasmas. This conference is organized by C. Pethick and P.H. Damgaard. It will take place June 16 through July 4 in Copenhagen and it is a joint venture between NORDITA and NBI.
  • Ice and water in the Universe: from astrobiology to terrestrial bodies. This is a two-week workshop during the fall of 2008 organized by J.S. Wettlaufer, who is a visiting scientist at NORDITA, and A. Brandenburg
  • Conformal field theory approach to quantum Hall physics - non- Abelian statistics and quantum computing, organized by Eddy Ardonne and H. Hansson. The workshop will take place in late August, 2008.
  • A workshop on accretion disks, organized by A. Brandenburg.
  • A series of NORDITA colloquia is organized by Stefan Hofmann during the spring 2008 http://agenda.albanova.se/categoryDisplay.py?categId=17
  • A Summer-school for PhD students in cosmology will take place during 10 days in August, 2008. It is organized by Stefan Hofmann, Oysten Elgaroy and Torsten Bringmann, with the topics covering advanced inflation and the cosmological constant problem. More information will be available on NORDITAs homepage later.

Ultracold Atoms and Quark-Gluon Plasmas

Held in Copenhagen from 16 June 2008 to 4 July 2008, this workshop is organized by the Niels Bohr International Academy and Nordita. It will consider a number of problems common to strongly interacting cold atomic gases and systems of quarks and gluons. Two such themes are cold gases in optical lattices, and Fermi gases with resonant interactions.

Web site: http://indico.nbi.ku.dk/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=6

idm2008 - identification of dark matter 2008

August 18-22, 2008. The main topics of the conference are

* Dark matter candidates * Dark matter direct searches * Dark matter indirect searches * Connections with accelerator searches * Halo models and structure formation * Weak lensing * Neutrino physics * Cosmology and dark energy

Web site: http://agenda.albanova.se/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=355

Ice & Water in the Universe: from Astrobiology to Terrestrial Bodies

Extended workshop (15 Sept - 30 Sept) and conference (24-26 Sept). Registration is now open.

Web site: http://agenda.albanova.se/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=683

Turbulence and Oscillations in Accretion Discs

Extended workshop (1 - 15 October) and conference (9-10 October).

Web site: http://agenda.albanova.se/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=682

The programs this year

Scientists interested in participating any of these programs are encouraged to register on the respective websites. These programs are intended to forster new reseach directions in the Nordic countries, so our Nordic participants are often not experts in the specific field of the program, but are interested to learn about them and to talk to the experts in the field.

All Nordita programs are listed together with other Nordita events on:
http://agenda.albanova.se/categoryDisplay.py?categId=3

Other meetings in the Nordic countries

The Galaxy Disk in Cosmological Context

This meeting is getting a lot of attention and there are presently 260 registered participants. The web site is http://iau254.nbi.dk/. The organizers are hoping for a strong Nordic participation. The meeting is dedicated to Professor Bengt Strömgren (1908 - 1987).

Scientific rationale:

Numerical simulations based on 'concordance cosmology' have made impressive progress towards a consistent explanation of the formation and evolution of structure in the Universe. The paradigm of hierarchical mergers has also been successful in reproducing the properties of galaxy spheroids. However, a number of fundamental discrepancies remain between the predictions of such models and the disk galaxies we observe throughout the universe today.

Spiral galaxies are key ingredients of the universe. Moreover, we live in one that can be studied in unique detail, and dramatic advances have recently been made in studies of the Milky Way and the galaxies of the Local Group. It is timely, therefore, to review our knowledge of the galaxy disk in the global context, focusing on the Milky Way and its neighbours, and to identify key questions and promising avenues for progress. Discussions at the Symposium will focus on formulating specific projects that can lead to major progress in the near future, using new observational and modelling tools.

Outcome of recent programs

Origins of homochirality

1 - 29 February 2008. The actual Program ran during the first 3 weeks and then there was a 1 week conference at the end.

During the program we had 1 regular lecture per week (Friday afternoons) in the framework of the usual Stockholm astrobiology seminars, 1 scheduled discussion session per week (Tuesday mornings), and informal discussions during morning and afternoon coffees at 10 am and 3 pm.

During the program we also had 1 talk that was announced to all Nordita staff as a talk of general interest. This was the talk by Laurence Barron on symmetries in physics and applications to Raman optical spectroscopy. This talk attracted a large number of people from theoretical chemistry.

The emergence of one chirality during crystallization formed a major aspect of the discussions. In fact, Mike McBride wrote a News and Views article that he finalized during the program, which asks Did life grind to a start?

Web site: http://agenda.albanova.se/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=322

Final Report: http://www.nordita.org/~brandenb/programs/homochirality/report/

Turbulence and dynamos

17 March - 11 April 2008. The program started with a 4 day conference on the same topic. The actual program ran during the following 3 weeks. The total number of participants was 51, and 8 of them were women. Of the 51 participants, 12 came from the Nordic countries, 24 from Europe, 7 from America, 3 from India, 3 from Russia, 2 from Israel, and one from Australia. During the program we had 21 people, of whom 14 stayed for more than about 3 weeks. Additional funding for the conference was attracted from the Swedish Science Foundation (VR) and the European Science Foundation (ESF) through the AstroSim program.

One of the big scientific questions in dynamo theory that was still quite open by the end of the conference concerned the possibility of magnetic Reynolds number-dependent quenching of the turbulent diffusivity. Several aspects to this question were known, but nothing conclusive yet. A breakthrough came in the third week when several participants came to the conclusion that the testfield method does give valid results also in the nonlinear regime. This and other such highlights can be regarded as great signs of achievement of any program.

Web site: http://agenda.albanova.se/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=325

Final report: http://www.nordita.org/~brandenb/programs/turbulence/

Nordita Preprints

→ Link to electronic preprints: www.nordita.org/preprints

2008-008
Boundary layer on the surface of a neutron star
N. Babkovskaia, A. Brandenburg, J. Poutanen
Monthly Notices Roy. Astron. Soc. (in press)
2008-009
Punctuated Chirality
Marcelo Gleiser, Joel Thorarinson, and Sara Imari Walker
2008-010
An Extended Model for the Evolution of Prebiotic Homochirality: A Bottom-Up Approach to the Origin of Life
Marcelo Gleiser and Sara Imari Walker
2008-011
Elastic Anisotropy of Earth
Anatoly B. Belonoshko, Natalia V. Skorodumova, Anders Rosengren, Börje Johansson
Science 319, 797 (2008)
2008-012
Decomposition of Complex Reaction Networks into Reactons
Raphaël Plasson, Hugues Bersini, Axel Brandenburg
2008-013
LHC signals for neutrino mass model in bilinear R-parity violating mAMSB
F. de Campos, M.A. Diaz, O.J.P. Eboli, M.B. Magro, W. Porod, S. Skadhauge
Phys.Rev.D (submitted)
2008-014
Collisional Properties of a Polarized Fermi Gas with Resonant Interactions
G.M. Bruun, A. Recati, C.J. Pethick, H. Smith, and S. Stringari
2008-015
Cold Fermi atomic gases in a pumped optical resonator
Jonas Larson, Giovanna Morigi, Maciej Lewenstein

Items for Nordita News

If you have information about meetings or other items that would be useful to include in Nordita News, please send it to Anne Jifält, Nordita, email: anne@kth.se.

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