General 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
11:15-12:25 Young Speaker Contest
11:15 Introduction of the European Physical Journal (EPJ)
11:25 Elena Petrova (KULeuven) High-frequency waves in the upper solar atmosphere as observed by Solar Orbiter/EUI
11:45 Anupama K Xavier (KMI) Comparative predictability of eastern and western north pacific blocking events
12:05 Jonathan Mauro (UCLouvain) Model-agnostic interpretation of the first KM3NeT Ultra-High-Energy event within the Global Neutrino Landscape
12:25 Conference picture
12:30 – 14:30 Walking lunch and posters
14:30 – 17:15 Parallel sessions (14:30-15:45 & 16:00-17:15)
(see below for the full programme of the parallel sessions)
- Earth and Planetary Sciences, and Plasma Physics
- Condensed Matter and Nanostructure Physics
- Astroparticle Physics and Cosmology
- Fundamental Interactions, Nuclear and Particle Physics
- Atoms, Molecules, Optics and Photonics
- Biological, Medical, Statistical and Mathematical Physics
- Physics and Education
17:30 – 18:30 Closing ceremony: Master Thesis, Best Poster & Young Speaker 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).
Parallel sessions - click on the session to see the full programme
Please click on the titles below to see the full programme of that session.
Earth & Planetary Sciences and Plasma Physics
Chairs: Kristel Crombé (UGent) and François Massonnet (UCLouvain)
Parallel session
14:30 Laurent Masse (CEA, France) Inertial Confinement Fusion: Ignition and What Next?
15:00 Yangyang Zhang (UGent) Bayesian Techniques for Optimization of Nuclear Diagnostics: A Case Study on the WEST Tokamak
15:15 Alexander Haumann (Alfred Wegener Institute/Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany) What goes around comes around: A changing Southern Ocean
15:45 break
16:00 Benjamin Richaud (UCLouvain) Does increased spatial resolution improve the simulation of Antarctic sea ice?
16:15 Eva Lemaire (UCLouvain) Investigating Iceberg–Sea Ice Interactions in the Southern Ocean Using NEMO-ICB
16:30 Jerome Sauer (UCLouvain) Extreme Arctic sea ice lows investigated with a rare event algorithm
16:45 Noé Pirlet (UCLouvain) Impact of a representation of Antarctic landfast ice on the shelf water properties simulated by NEMO4-SI³
17:00 Antoine Honet (ULB) Estimation of atmospheric lifetime and emissions of NH3 sources from 15 years of satellite data
Posters
Feba Francis (UCLouvain) Antarctic Sea Ice Response to Wind Perturbation Experiments
Annelies Sticker (UCLouvain) Drivers of Arctic Rapid Sea Ice Loss Events in CESM2
Alison Delhasse (UCLouvain) Towards improved seasonal to interannual predictions of Arctic sea ice through Data Assimilation and dedicated reanalysis
Alexandre Tytgat (UCLouvain) Block minima modeling of Antarctic’s sea ice extent extremes
Michel Crucifix (UCLouvain) The WarmAnoxia project
Augustin Lambotte (UCLouvain) Arctic landfast ice simulation with brittle rheology and probabilistic grounding
Patricia DeRepentigny (UCLouvain) How predictable was the recent decade-long pause in Arctic summer sea ice retreat?
Pierre Dumortier (ERM/KMS) 40 Years of ICRF Operation on JET: Achievements and Challenges
Dirk Van Eester (ERM/KMS) Almost-off-the-shelf tools for ICRH modelling
Dirk Van Eester (ERM/KMS) ICRH modelling of the Baseline D-T scenario in JET
Bernard Reman (ERM/KMS) Integral dielectric kernel implementation to model RF heating in toroidal plasmas
Arthur Adriaens (ERM/KMS) Predicting Wall Conditioning
Luis Daniel López Rodríguez (ERM/KMS) Characterization of a microwave reflectometer for edge density profile measurements at the ICRH antenna on Wendelstein 7-X
Cyrille Sepulchre (EPFL) Suprathermal ion transport and toroidal helicon wave studies in the low-temperature plasma device TORPEX
Condensed Matter and Nanostructure Physics
Chairs: Clément Merckling (KULeuven/IMEC) and Benoît Hackens (UCLouvain)
Parallel session
14:30 Maëlle Kapfer (Univ. Paris-Saclay, France) Programming twist angle and strain gradient in two-dimensional materials
15:00 Oriane de Leuze (UCLouvain) Charge transport in 2D flakes networks: the case of Ti3C2Tx
15:15 Yaojia Wang (KU Leuven) Supercurrent interference in a kagome superconductor
15:30 Amirmostafa Amirjani (KU Leuven) Inverse design of plasmonic metasurface using machine learning
15:45 break
16:00 Vincent Meunier (Pennsylvania State University, USA) Electromechanical coupling at the nanoscale: The ubiquitous case of flexoelectricity
16:30 Danny Vanpoucke (U Hasselt) Straining group-IV color centers in diamond: Using density functional theory to model the Zero-Phonon-Line shift
16:45 Matthew Houtput (U Antwerpen) First principles theory of nonlinear long-range electron-phonon interaction
17:00 Simon Dubois (UCLouvain) Inference based model Hamiltonians balancing accuracy, interpretability and data efficiency
Posters
Serghei Klimin (U Antwerpen) Analytic Methods for Polarons in a Non-Parabolic Conduction Band
Wu Heng (KU Leuven) The global critical current effect of superconductivity
Diego Fossion (UCLouvain) Properties of Kondo cloud modulations in quantum dots coupled to cavities
Pauline Castenetto (U Hasselt) Identification and characterisation of the reaction path of β-O-4 dimerisation of monolignols by means of first-principles calculations
Aylin Melan (U Hasselt) From DFT to GW: Benchmarking the Electronic Structure of Diamond
Lisa Siciliani (Sciensano/U Antwerpen) Physicochemical characterisation of iron oxides and hydroxides applied as food additive E 172
Emerick Y. Guillaume (U Namur) Multiscale modelling of LTO PVD growth
Fernando Massa Fernandes (UCLouvain) Real-time gas sensing with lead-sulfide quantum-dots
Thijs van Wijk (U Hasselt) Calculating the vibrational spectrum of the GeV defect in Diamond
Célia Delaive (ULiège) Creating NOON states with ultracold atoms using time crystals
Michael Tzvetkov (UCLouvain) Study of out-of-plane electronic transport in multilayer graphene films by C-AFM
Sofiane Arib (UCLouvain) Estimation of electrical conductivity anisotropy in MXenes by CAFM modeling
Arnaud Dochain (UCLouvain) Observation of fast atom diffraction through suspended graphene
Valentin Fonck (UCLouvain) A Scanning Thermal Microscope at cryogenic temperatures
Astroparticle Physics and Cosmology
Chairs: Juan Antonio Aguilar Sánchez (ULB/WISC) and Gwenhaël Wilberts Dewasseige (UCLouvain)
Parallel session
14:30 Aart Heijboer (NIKHEF/University of Amsterdam) Observation of the first ultra-high energy cosmic neutrino
15:00 Soumen Roy (UCLouvain) Parametrized test of general relativity with gravitational waves including higher harmonics and precession
15:20 Leonardo Ricca (UCLouvain) Multi-Messenger Search for Neutrino and Gravitational-Wave Emissions from Binary Black Holes Near Active Galactic Nuclei
15:40 Jef Heynen (UCLouvain) Using the null stream to detect strongly lensed gravitational waves
16:00 break
16:15 Emile Moyaux (UCLouvain) Neutrino energy distributions of astrophysical sources: the GRB example
16:35 Nhan Chau (ULB) Dark matter search in the Galactic Center with IceCube Upgrade
16:55 Guillaume Lhost (UMons) Late inspiral of eccentric asymmetric binaries
Posters
Eliot Genton (UCLouvain) Prospective Sensitity to WIMP Dark Matter with the IceCube Upgrade
Christoph Raab (UCLouvain) Low-latency neutrino follow-up combining diverse IceCube selections
Mathieu Lamoureux (UCLouvain) Multi-messenger astrophysics with the ACME consortium
Marco Scarnera (UCLouvain/Université Paris Cité) Probing neutrino yield from different gamma-ray burst populations using the entire ANTARES data set
Thomas Delmeulle (ULB) Studying Muon Bundles for Improved EHE Neutrino Identification in IceCube
Marine Vilarino (ULB) Cosmic Ray Simulation for Background Rate Estimation in the ARA Detector using the FAERIE Framework
Fundamental Interactions, Nuclear and Particle Physics
Chairs: Nick Van Remortel (UAntwerpen) and Alberto Mariotti (ULB)
Parallel Session
14:30 Agi Koszorus (KULeuven, invited) Laser spectroscopy of radioactive probes: study of the nuclear force and searches for new physics
15:05 Martin Delcourt (CERN) How Belgium is ensuring the CMS tracker data performance
15:25 Aloke Kumar Das (ULB) The Belgian contribution to the CMS Silicon Strip Tracker Upgrade
15:45 break
15:55 Sumaira Ikram (UCLouvain) Development of a portable particle detector for imaging with cosmic ray muons
16:15 Felipe Figueroa Vilar del Valle (UMons) Dual Models revisited: A bootstrap perspective
16:35 ZeQiang Wang (UCLouvain) The Brief Talk of τ g-2 for Future Colliders
16:55 Cyrille Chevalier (UMons) Glueballs with two and three constituent gluons within the helicity formalism
Posters
Arjun Chaliyath (CERN) High precision automated metrology of the 2S modules for the CMS phase-II tracker upgrade
Dora Geeraerts (VUB) The ScIDEP Muon Radiography Project at the Egyptian Pyramid of Khafre
Zahraa Zaher (UCLouvain) Differentiable Optimization of Muon Scattering Tomography Detector Designs
Atoms, Molecules, Optics and Photonics
Chairs: Tatevik Chalyan (VUB) and Matthieu Génévriez (UCLouvain)
Parallel session
14:30 John Fourkas (University of Maryland, USA) Is visible light the way forward for cutting-edge nanolithography?
15:00 Spencer Jolly (ULB) Propagation of space-time optical beams in multimode fibers
15:15 Sélim Chaabani (Uliège) Going to 2.1 µm for Space Quantum Key Distribution
15:30 Julien Grondin (UCLouvain) Construction and Characterization of a Ca Magneto-Optical Trap for Rydberg Physics
15:45 break
16:00 Robbe Van Duyse (KU Leuven) High precision optical spectroscopy using trapped Sr ions
16:15 Alexandr Bogomolov (UCLouvain) High resolution spectrum of D2O-CO2 van der Waals complex around the 3OD vibrational excitation
16:30 Mhamad Hantro (UMons) Impact of Higher Order Effects in the Far-field for Dipole‐Forbidden Transitions near Plasmonic Structures
16:45 Adrien Debacq (UNamur) Finite-Difference Time-Domain Analysis of Stimulated Emission in NZI Materials
17:00 Sébastien Mouchet (UMons) Nature-Inspired Strategies for Infrared Control and Thermal Insulation
Posters
Arthémise Altman (UCLouvain) Spectroscopy of methanol in the near-infrared at the 10-13 level
Yves Caudano UNamur) Weak values as stereographic projections
Simon Dengis (ULiège) NOON states creation with ultracold atoms via geodesic counterdiabatic driving
Julien Bouchat (UNamur) Weak measurements and Goos-Hänchen effects in the case of uniaxial anisotropic media
Alisée Bouillon (UCLouvain) Electron transfer between ultra-long range Rydberg molecules and heavy-Rydberg molecules
Steve Smeets (UMons) Two-photon molecular emitters enhanced with nanoantennas
Hippolyte Stassart (Uliège) Study of the optical coupling between luminescent quantum dots and gold nanorods
Loris Cavenaile (UMons) Achieving Optical Transparency: Simulations of Light Scattering in Biological Tissues
Simon Collignon (UCLouvain) Rest frequency determination of the 12.2 GHz methanol maser line with sub-kHz accuracy
Xavier Urbain (UCLouvain) Resolving the fine structure branching ratio in K– photodetachment
Biological, Medical, Statistical and Mathematical Physics
Chairs: Bart Cleuren (UHasselt) and Edmond Sterpin (UCLouvain)
14:30 Enrico Carlon (KU Leuven) DNA Topology: from single molecules to chromosomal structure
15:00 Bram Carlier (KU Leuven) Towards in vivo radiation sensing using radiation-sensitive ultrasound contrast agents
15:30 Charlotte Rossi (U Namur) TOF-SIMS as a tool to study the alteration of membrane lipids in breast cancer cells after X-Ray and UHDR proton irradiation
15:45 Khalil El Achi (UCLouvain) Design of a new 2D amorphous Silicon-based detector for Particle Therapy
Posters
Éléonore Martin (UMONS) Monte Carlo study of high-field transverse relaxation induced by iron oxide nanoparticles coated by a slow water diffusion layer
Gijs Vanoppen (U Hasselt) Electrical stress on metallic nanoring based networks for flexible transparent electrodes
Physics and Education
Chair: Gabriel Dias de Carvalho Junior (UCLouvain)
14:30 Michaël Lobet (UNamur) Interaction between students and AI in a physics course: Towards modelling a learning practice
15:00 Carlos Fiolhais (Coimbra University) “The Fun of Physics”: a book for informal education
15:45 break
16:00 Anna Benecke (UCLouvain) The Physics Project Days – A workshop to promote gender equality in physics
16:25 Brigitte Van Tiggelen (Science History Institute, Philadelphia)
“Women in their element” – What happens when the history of the periodic system focuses on women?
16:50 Gabriel Dias de Carvalho Junior (UNamur, UCLouvain) and Elsa Tartinville (UCLouvain)
Understanding Nuclear Physics at different stages or education: looking for operational invariants
The Belgian Physical Society General Scientific Meeting 2025 is supported by
