Monday 21st to Friday 25th November 2005

John T. Lewis Lectures by Professor J. Fröhlich, from E. T. H., Zurich

The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (DIAS) and the Hamilton Mathematics Institute at Trinity College (HMI) recently jointly established a distinguished lecture series dedicated to the late Professor John T. Lewis, former Director of the School of Theoretical Physics at DIAS and formerly one of the patrons of HMI.
The first John Lewis lectures will be given by Prof. J. Fröhlich and are sponsored by DIAS and by Dr. Raymond Russell at Corvil Networks with a donation to HMI.
Lectures are aimed at an audience of graduate students and active researchers, not necessarily experts.

Monday, 21st November 11:30

Thermodynamics and statistical mechanics

Abstract:    I review recent results in the quantum theory of open systems that represent encouraging progress towards understanding origins of irreversible behaviour and transport phenomena. In particular, I sketch how thermodynamic processes can be understood from the point of view of nonequilibrium quantum statistical mechanics. As an application, I present derivations of the 0th, 1st and 2nd Law of thermodynamics from results in nonequilibrium quantum statistical mechanics. (A tribute to the “Einstein Year”)

Monday, 21st November 14:00

Bose gases and boson stars

Abstract:   I discuss the dynamics of gases of very many weakly coupled bosonic atoms. For this purpose, I analyze the mean-field limit of such systems. In this limit, the effective dynamics is given by a Hartree- or a Gross-Pitaevsky equation. I discuss recent results on these equations, mainly for systems with attractive two-body interactions. When the kinematics of the bosons is relativistic and the two-body interaction is given by the Newtonian gravitational potential I obtain an effective description of boson stars made from dark, bosonic matter. I study the gravitational collapse of heavy boson stars and the motion of light boson stars in the gravitational field of another object.
This analysis has some conceptual upshots: It shows that the passage from a continuum theory of matter (the theory obtained in the mean field limit) to atomism (N-body quantum mechanics) can be understood as a “deformation”. (A tribute to John Lewis, who had a life-long interest in Bose gases and Bose-Einstein condensation)

Wednesday, 23rd November 17:00

CFT, TFT and others

Abstract:   I review recent results on the connections between 2D conformal field theory, in particular boundary CFT, and 3D topological field theory. (This is work in collaboration with or by Felder, Fuchs, Runkel and Schweigert.) I then outline some applications including a general formulation of Kramers-Wannier duality. If time permits it I will sketch applications to the quantum Hall effect, which displays some of these connections in a pure form and has motivated some of our general results. (A tribute to the “Zeitgeist” at DIAS)

Friday, 25th November 11:30

Theory of atoms and molecules coupled to the quantized radiation field

Abstract:   I review recent progress in our understanding of a non-perturbative, mathematically precise description of the radiation theory (spectroscopy) of atoms and molecules. I present results on how to overcome infrared divergencies in processes such as Rayleigh scattering. I outline applications of some of these results to processes such as “Sisyphos cooling”.
(A tribute to analysis-driven mathematical physics and hard work)

All are welcome