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NORDITA NEWSLETTER. 2007, ISSUE 6

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Long-term Visitor

Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek from MIT, U.S.A, is currently at Nordita as a visiting professor during the fall of 2007. Among his many research interests are the application of field theory techniques to condensed matter physics.

Deadlines

New Staff

Nordita welcomes three new assistant professors:

  • Eddy Ardonne, the Netherlands, comes to Nordita from ?Microsoft station Q? at UC Santa Barbara, and works in theoretical condensed matter, including topological phases and quantum computation. He will join us in December 2007.
  • Stefan Hofmann, Germany, comes from the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, Ontario, and works in cosmology, in particular dark matter and dark energy.
  • Jani-Petri Martikainen, Finland, comes from the University of Helsinki, and is active in the field of ultracold gases. He will join us in January, 2008.

as well as four new fellows:

  • Petri Käpylä, Finland, works in astrophysics with turbulence and dynamo theory.
  • Raphaël Plasson, France, works in prebiotic chemistry and astrobiology. He is one of the organizers of the 2008 program on the origins of homochirality.
  • Lars Samuelsson, Sweden, works in astrophysics investigating elastic and superfluid properties of neutron stars.
  • Solveig Skadhauge, Denmark, works in high energy physics, in particular supersymmetry and neutrino phenomenology.

Nordic subfield committees

Nordic subfield committees have been appointed:

Astrophysics/astrobiology

  • Denmark: Anja Andersen, NielsBohr Institute
  • Finland: Juri Poutanen, University of Oulu
  • Iceland: Gunnlaugur Björnsson, University of Iceland
  • Norway: Øystein Elgarøy, University of Oslo
  • Sweden: Claes Fransson, Stockholm University
  • Nordita: Axel Brandenburg

Condensed matter/biological physics

  • Denmark: Hans Fogedby University of Aarhus
  • Finland: Ilpo Vattulainen, Tampere University of Technology
  • Iceland: Viðar Guðmundsson,University of Iceland
  • Norway: Eirik Grude Flekkøy, University of Oslo
  • Sweden: Stephanie Reimann Lund University
  • Nordita: Christopher Pethick

Subatomic physics

  • Denmark: Charlotte Kristjansen NielsBohr Institute
  • Finland: Kari Eskola, University of Jyväskylä
  • Iceland: Larus Thorlacius, University of Iceland
  • Norway: Per Osland, University of Bergen
  • Sweden: Gunnar Ingelman, Uppsala University
  • Nordita: Paolo di Vecchia, Nordita

Newsletter mailing list

To get email announcements when a new edition of the Nordita Newsletter is available, please sign up on the mailman website: http://lists.albanova.se/AlbaNova/listinfo/nordita-newsletter

Open Positions

For details see: www.nordita.org/positions

Two Assistant Professors

Priority will be given to applicants in high energy theoretical physics and soft condensed matter physics/biological physics. Appointments are for three years, normally extended to five years.

Research Fellows

Nordita Fellowships are intended for younger scientists who have an interest in the research fields represented at Nordita. Fellows normally stay for two or exceptionally three years.

Upcoming meetings

Joint Nordic Astrobiology and SWAN Meeting

The purpose of this Astrobiology meeting is to bring together people from the Nordic countries in general and Sweden in particular. There will be time for formal presentation and plenty of time for discussion. The meeting is organized jointly with the Swedish Astrobiology Network (SWAN).

Registration and further details: http://agenda.albanova.se/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=418

Local organizing committee: Axel Brandenburg (chair), Nils Holm, Raphael Plasson, Anthony Poole

Limited support for travel subsistence is available. Please email Axel Brandenburg for details.

Upcoming programs

Scientists interested in participating any of these programs are encouraged to register on the respective websites. These programs are intended to foster new research 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.

Origins of homochirality

Homochirality is a unique property of living matter. It is a property that gradually disappears after the death of living matter. The origin of homochirality is therefore closely linked to the origin of life, which makes this topic a prominent research field in astrobiology.

The problem of the possible origins of homochirality in living matter is frequently discussed in the literature. On the one hand, physical and external factors (e.g., the electroweak parity breaking, enhanced for example by heavy Cu complexes, as well as magnetic fields and polarized light) are hard to rule out. On the other hand, the possibility of a bifurcation process is quite plausible, but there is no unique mechanism. Possible candidates include autocatalysis combined with enantiomeric cross-inhibition in the RNA world and the activation-polymerization-epimerization-depolymerization reaction.

One purpose of this program is to establish the viability of these two different pathways, and to discuss the possibility of an interplay between them. Also the significance of crystallization experiments with stirring either for just demonstrating the effects of growth combined with competition, or as a primitive mechanism under prebiotic conditions should be discussed. Finally, quantitative aspects of approaches of involving physical and external factors should be discussed. Can some quantitative agreement be established regarding the subsequent role of amplification mechanisms and the enantiomeric excess that can be achieved? It is anticipated that such a program can be an important mile stone in this field, which is currently being attacked from the many different angles, without there being sufficient interaction between them.

The program extends over four weeks, where the last week is devoted to a symposium. Although long-term participation is strongly encouraged, it is also possible to stay for shorter periods. The number of program participants is limited to a maximum of about 20 at any time. Funding will be available to accommodate program participants in apartments, whenever possible. Desks and shared office space will be available in the Nordita building.

Organizers: Axel Brandenburg, Raphaël Plasson, Anja C. Andersen

Information and registration: http://agenda.albanova.se/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=322

Turbulence and dynamos

16 March - 19 April 2008

The program will start with a one-week conference in order to highlight the most recent results, identify common interests and initiate discussions. This meeting may attract a much broader audience than the long-term participants alone (about 50 participants in total). Two general discussions per week will be organized, on topics listed above, each facilitated by two mediators appointed in advance. Regular seminars (about 1 hour long), in particular presented by those participants who were unable to present a talk at the start-off conference.

Organizers: Anvar Shukurov (Newcastle UK), Kandaswamy Subramanian (Pune India), Maarit J. Korpi (Helsinki)

Further information and registration: http://agenda.albanova.se/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=325

Physics of Distributed Information Systems

The Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics (NORDITA), since last year located in Stockholm, Sweden, will sponsor a four-week program "Physics of Distributed Information Systems", from May 5, 2008 to May 31, 2008. The main scientific theme is the application of physics in this cross-disciplinary area, ranging from algorithms to the design and dynamics of both processes and networks, the interplay with computer science, communication science and related fields of mathematics, and the statistical mechanics needed in this endeavour.

The main program will be similar in style to those run at KITP Santa Barbara and the Newton Institute in Cambridge, and follows upon a program on a similar theme at the Kavli Institute of Theoretical Physics in China (KITPC), Beijing, China.

The program includes a workshop May 15-17 bringing together a larger set of participants. This will have a later deadline for participation.

Confirmed participants of the program include

Petter Holme, KTH, Sweden Supriya Krishnamurthy, Swedish Institute of Computer Science, Sweden Joachim Krug, Cologne, Germany Satya Majumdar, Orsay, France Matteo Marsili, Abdus Salam ICTP, Trieste, Italy Heiko Rieger, Saarbrucken, Germany Olav Tirkkonen, HUT Communication Science, Helsinki, Finland and Nokia Corp. Bing-Hong Wang, Hefei, China

For further, continuously updated, information, see http://agenda.albanova.se/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=296

There will be some funds available to support the participation in the related disciplines. A fraction will be use do further the involvement of Nordic scientists.

Please note that to be considered for financial support, the application must be received by December 15, 2007.

Looking forward to seeing you at this exciting program in Stockholm, in the spring of 2008!

The Organizing Committee

Erik Aurell, Stockholm Mikko Alava, Helsinki Haijun Zhou, Beijing

TeV scale physics and dark matter

Two months during the spring 2008

Organizers: Katri Huitu (Helsinki), Per Osland (Bergen)

Further information and registration: http://agenda.albanova.se/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=425

Nordita Preprints

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

2007-026
Instanton effects in N=1 brane models and the Kaehler metric of twisted matter
M. Billo, M. Frau, I. Pesando, P. Di Vecchia, A. Lerda and R. Marotta
2007-027
Polar multiplets, Hermitian symmetric spaces and hyperkähler meterics
Masato Arai, Sergei M. Kuzenkob, and Ulf Lindström
2007-028
Wrapped magnetized branes: two alternative descriptions?
P. Di Vecchia, A. Liccardo, R. Marotta, F. Pezzella and I. Pesando
2007-029
Uncovering the Chemical Signature of the First Stars in the Universe
Torgny Karlsson, Jarrett L. Johnson, and Volker Bromm
2007-030
Magnetic diffusivity tensor and dynamo effects in rotating and shearing turbulence
A. Brandenburg, K.-H. Rädler, M. Rheinhardt, P. J. Käpylä
2007-031
Carter's constant revealed
K. Rosquist, T. Bylund and L. Samuelsson
2007-032
Modeling a Maunder Minimum
Axel Brandenburg & Edward A Spiegel

Items for Nordita News


Seasonal view of Nordita

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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