This week, the Simons Foundation announced the launch of the Simons Collaboration on the Virtue of Defects. Jaume Gomis, research faculty at Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, will direct the new collaboration, which also includes Perimeter faculty member Yin-Chen He, and more than a dozen other leading experts internationally.
The two pillars of modern physics – quantum mechanics and gravity – exhibit phenomena that are inherently nonlocal. This includes quantum entanglement, ubiquitous in many domains of physics and in emerging technologies, and the fascinating fact that gravity is fundamentally nonlocal. This hints that a deeper understanding of known phenomena, as well as genuinely new phenomena, can be achieved by analyzing nonlocal observables.
These observables are ubiquitous in nature and often express themselves, for example, as inhomogeneities or defects in materials or lattice structures, or in the unusual interactions between heavy and light particles. A better understanding of them promises to enable new insights across several fields of physics, and would not be possible by only studying local observables.
“To find the nonlocal observables, you really have to look under the hood of the theory,” said Gomis. “But once you find them, you are able to diagnose new phenomena that local variables are not able to discern.”
The collaboration brings together world-leading experts across mathematical and computational physics working on quantum field theory and many-body systems. In recent years, breakthroughs have made the study of defects more feasible, and the impact is cross-disciplinary, making this collaboration particularly timely. The members aim to push the boundaries of the emerging study of defects and nonlocal observables in a way no single research program could do in isolation.
Simons Collaborations in Mathematics and the Physical Sciences bring together groups of outstanding researchers to address topics of fundamental scientific importance. Collaborations receive up to $2 million per year for an initial period of four years, including indirect costs, and may be extended for an additional three years. The collaboration will be funded by grants from Simons Foundation International administered by the Simons Foundation.
The members of the new collaboration are:
- Jaume Gomis - Director; Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics
- Fakher Assaad - PI; Physik Uni Würzburg
- Fiona Burnell - PI; University of Minnesota
- Horacio Casini - PI; Centro Atomico Bariloche, Instituto Balseiro
- Meng Cheng - Deputy Director; Yale University
- Gabirel Cuomo - PI; Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati (SISSA)
- Simone Giombi - PI; Princeton University
- Yin-Chen He - PI; Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics
- Marina Huerta - PI; Centro Atomico Bariloche, Instituto Balseiro
- Anton Kapustin - PI; California Institute of Technology
- Zohar Komargodski - PI; Simons Center for Geometry and Physics (SCGP)
- Charlotte Kristjansen - PI; Nils Bohr Institute
- Marco Meineri - PI; Turin University
- Max Metlitski - PI; Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Yifan Wang - PI; New York University
About PI
Perimeter Institute is the world’s largest research hub devoted to theoretical physics. The independent Institute was founded in 1999 to foster breakthroughs in the fundamental understanding of our universe, from the smallest particles to the entire cosmos. Research at Perimeter is motivated by the understanding that fundamental science advances human knowledge and catalyzes innovation, and that today’s theoretical physics is tomorrow’s technology. Located in the Region of Waterloo, the not-for-profit Institute is a unique public-private endeavour, including the Governments of Ontario and Canada, that enables cutting-edge research, trains the next generation of scientific pioneers, and shares the power of physics through award-winning educational outreach and public engagement.
