Page 41 - 2013 Annual Report

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Participants at “Loops 13” conference
Conference Highlight:
Emergence and
Entanglement II
Forty brilliant physicists from around the globe
converged on Perimeter Institute in spring 2013
to sort out what’s the matter – specifically, what’s
the
quantum
matter.
The study of quantum matter – that is, stuff
that exhibits quantum effects not merely at the
tiny scale of individual particles, but at the big
scales of our everyday world – is one of the most
dynamic and potentially transformative areas of
contemporary physics. Whereas most states of
matter are described by patterns of their atoms or
electrons, quantum states of matter are described
by patterns of quantum properties, particularly
entanglement. It’s a bit like describing a city not
with a map of its streets, but with the ideas being
exchanged in phone calls between its citizens.
The international group of experts that assembled for
five days at Perimeter discussed new mathematical
approaches to understanding and describing exotic
phases of quantum matter. Like any good sequel, the
2013 conference picked up where its predecessor,
the inaugural “Emergence and Entanglement” of
2010, left off. Speakers and panelists (including eight
Perimeter Distinguished Visiting Research Chairs – one
of the largest single gatherings of these eminent minds)
offered perspectives from string theory, condensed
matter, quantum information, and computational
physics – each providing important new insights about
what’s the quantum matter.
COLLOQUIA AND SEMINARS
Perimeter provides a rich environment for knowledge exchange, with
257 seminars and 44 colloquia held over the last year. Talks were
presented by some of the world’s most eminent scientists, including
Perimeter Distinguished Visiting Research Chairs Ganapathy
Baskaran
,
Ted Jacobson
,
Renate Loll
,
Subir Sachdev
,
Paul
Steinhardt
,
Steven White
,
and
Mark Wise
.
PERIMETER INSTITUTE RECORDED
SEMINAR ARCHIVE
Perimeter’s searchable and citable video library of more than
6,700 scientific seminars, conferences, workshops, and courses
attracted over 80,000 unique visitors from 170 countries over the
past year. The free online resource, www.pirsa.org, was developed
by the Institute to share knowledge with the international scientific
community and has become an important resource in the
theoretical physics community.
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