Preliminary Program
Program
8:30 Registration and coffee
9:00 – 12:30 Plenary session
9:00 Welcome address
9:10 Plenary lecture 1 – Dr Antoine Browaeys: Assembling quantum matter one atom at a time
10:00 Plenary lecture 2 – Prof. Tim Palmer: Chaos, noise and uncertainty: enemies or allies for predicting weather and climate?
10:50 Coffee break
11:15 Young speaker contest
12:30 – 14:30 Walking Lunch and Posters
14:30 – 16:45 Parallel sessions
- Astrophysics, Earth and Planetary Sciences, and Plasma Physics
- Condensed Matter and Nanostructure Physics
- Fundamental Interactions, Nuclear and Particle Physics
- Atoms, Molecules, Optics and Photonics
- Biological, Medical, Statistical and Mathematical Physics
- Physics and Education
16:45 – 17:15 Poster Session
17:15 – 18:30 Closing ceremony: prizes and reception
Plenary lectures
Dr Antoine Browaeys, Research Director CNRS, Laboratoire Charles Fabry, Institut d’Optique and Université Paris-Saclay (France)
“Assembling quantum matter one atom at a time”
Over the last twenty years, physicists have learned to manipulate individual quantum objects: atoms, ions, molecules, quantum circuits, electronic spins… It is now possible to build “atom by atom” a synthetic quantum matter. By controlling the interactions between atoms, one can study the properties of these elementary many-body systems: quantum magnetism, transport of excitations, superconductivity… and thus understand more deeply the N-body problem. More recently, it was realized that these quantum machines may find applications in the industry, such as finding the solution of combinatorial optimization problems.
This seminar will present an example of a synthetic quantum system, based on laser-cooled ensembles of individual atoms trapped in microscopic optical tweezer arrays. By exciting the atoms into Rydberg states, we make them interact, even at distances of more than ten micrometers. In this way, we study the magnetic properties of an ensemble of more than a hundred interacting ½ spins, in a regime in which simulations by usual numerical methods are already very challenging. Some aspects of this research led to the creation of a startup, Pasqal.
Antoine Browaeys is a research director of the CNRS at the Charles Fabry laboratory, Institut d’Optique, France. He is one of the pioneers of quantum computing and simulation with arrays of individually controlled ultracold atoms excited to very high Rydberg states. The start-up Pasqal, which he co-founded in 2019, is now steering fundamental research in quantum simulation towards industrial applications. The French Academy of Sciences has awarded Antoine Browaeys the Alfred Verdaguer – Fondation de l’Institut de France 2021 prize, and elected him as a member of the Institut de France in 2023. He also received the CNRS Silver Medal in 2021.
Prof. Tim Palmer, Oxford University, Royal Society Research Professor in Climate Physics, Senior Alumni Fellow, Oxford Martin Institute; Professorial Fellow at Jesus College (United Kingdom)
“Chaos, noise and uncertainty: enemies or allies for predicting weather and climate?”
The solutions to the physical equations that govern the dynamics of weather and climate exhibit chaotic behavior. In this lecture, Prof. Palmer will explore how chaos, noise, and uncertainty, initially seen as obstacles, can be exploited as constructive resources to enhance prediction capabilities from days to decades.
Prof. Tim Palmer is a Royal Society Research Professor in Climate Physics and a Senior Fellow at the Oxford Martin Institute. He has significantly contributed to advance our understanding of climate predictability and extreme event forecasting. He pioneered ensemble methods for uncertainty prediction and has developed practical applications of climate forecasts for public health, agriculture, and flood management. Tim Palmer’s recent work focuses on high-resolution climate simulations. He has been recognized by his election to the US National Academy of Sciences in 2020. He recently authored “The Primacy of Doubt: From Quantum Physics to Climate Change, How the Science of Uncertainty Can Help Us Understand Our Chaotic World” (Oxford University Press, 2022).