Within the framework of QTSpace, the workshop will bring together experts in quantum mechanics, cosmology and quantum gravity, to discuss questions like: Does gravity need to be quantum? What are possible routes to quantum gravity? What are possible quantum effects in cosmology? Does quantum gravity eliminate space-time singularities like a big bang? Is space-time relational? Can alternatives to quantum mechanics be tested by cosmological observations?

Registration open till January 31st, 2020.

The workshop will take place at:
Savoia Excelsior Palace,
Riva del Mandracchio 4,
Trieste.

Program committee:
Angelo Bassi (UniTs- INFN), Ward Struyve (KU Leuven).

Local organizers:
Matteo Carlesso (UniTs – INFN)
Luca Ferialdi (UniTs – INFN).

Confirmed speakers (to be completed):
Giovanni Amelino-Camelia (University of Naples, Italy)
Julian Barbour (University of Oxford, UK)
Sougato Bose (University College London, UK)
Caslav Brukner (University Vienna and IQOQI Vienna, Austria)
Thibaut Demaerel (KU Leuven, Belgium)
Lajos Diosi (Wigner Research Centre for Physics, Hungary)
Domenico Giulini (University of Hannover, Germany)
Henrique Gomes (University of Cambridge, UK)
Adrian Kent (DAMPT, Cambridge, UK)
Claus Kiefer (Institute for Theoretical Physics Cologne, Germany)
Tim Koslowski (University Wuerzburg, Germany) – TBC
Jean-Luc Lehners (Max-Planck-Institute for Gravitational Physics, Potsdam, Germany)
Stefano Liberati (SISSA Trieste, Italy)
Christian Maes (KU Leuven, Belgium) TBC
Jerome Martin (Institut d’astrophysique de Paris, France)
Flavio Mercati (Universita di Napoli, Italy)
Daniele Oriti (Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics – Potsdam, Germany)
Mauro Paternostro (Queen’s University Belfast, UK)
Roger Penrose (Oxford University, UK)
Alejandro Perez (CPT Marseille, France)
Patrick Peter (IAP Paris, France)
Antoine Tilloy (Max-Planck-Institute of Quantum Optics, Germany)
Hendrik Ulbricht (University Southampton, UK)
Nino Zanghi’ (University of Genova, Italy)

The “Remnants of the Big Bang” workshop at ASU, January 23-24, 2020, will bring together leading cosmologists to discuss recent advances in our understanding of the big bang and the emergent universe, and new prospects for testing fundamental physics with astrophysics and cosmology.

The workshop will focus on the nonlinear and out-of-equilibrium processes that occurred in the early universe. Topics will include the quantum origin of the universe, the origin of matter-antimatter asymmetry, the nature of dark matter, astrophysical black holes and their fundamental consequences, phase transitions, primordial magnetic fields, and cosmic defects. A particularly timely topic is the properties of gravitational waves produced in cosmological phase transitions and prospects of their detection with next generation experiments. Cosmological phase transitions can also generate magnetic fields that affect the anisotropy and spectral properties of the cosmic microwave background, and affect the propagation of extragalactic cosmic rays, providing a valuable observational window into particle physics in a regime that is beyond the reach of particle accelerators.

The aim of the workshop is to facilitate exchange of ideas and new collaborations, and to expose young researchers working on related topics to the state of the art of the field.

After a few years hiatus, the GCGM returns! The 9th Gulf Coast Gravity Meeting will be held at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, MS, on March 13 and 14, 2020. In keeping with its tradition, this will be an open, relaxed, and informal conference. We are inviting researchers and students interested in all areas of gravitational physics: classical and quantum gravity, general relativistic astrophysics and cosmology, quantum cosmology, gravitational waves, and experimental gravity. Because this is a regional meeting, many attendees will be from the southeastern United States, but all are welcome.

Talks
Following the usual tradition all participants, and especially postdocs and graduate students, are encouraged to contribute short, introductory talks on their current research, with the aim of fostering communication and understanding among gravitational physicists with different backgrounds. A prize (sponsored by the APS Division of Gravitational Physics) will be awarded for the best talk given by a student at the meeting.

Deadlines
Prospective speakers should register by February 14 to receive full consideration. Late applicants will be considered at the discretion of the organizers. A block of rooms has been reserved at the Inn at Ole Miss. Reserve your room by February 11 to receive a reduced rate. See the website for details: https://www.phy.olemiss.edu/gcgm9/.

The focus of this workshop will be on different aspects of modern theoretical cosmology, the challenges of the theory being consistent with experimental data, and the unavoidable connection of cosmological models with the quantum nature of the vacuum. A basic question in modern cosmology is: why we do not see vacuum fluctuations at cosmological scale? In addition, should the singularities of cosmological theories be treated as necessary ingredients of the classical theory or should them be considered as indicators of an underlying quantum theory, yet to be discovered? We aim to bring along to this workshop all the leading scientists working on those problems and discuss state of the art results on the above, strongly interdependent, areas of fundamental physics.

The workshop will hence cover topics related to modified theories of gravity, theories of dark energy and inflation, the description of the universe’s evolution according to these theories and the incipient but compulsory modification of those within the theoretical frameworks of quantum gravity, including loop quantum cosmology, an elegant theory providing up to date a singularity free cosmological evolution.

Describing and understanding the quantum vacuum is always a challenge to all these theories, as is also the comprehension of the main manifestation available of the quantum vacuum at nanometric scales, namely the Casimir effect (e.g., when confronted with van der Waals forces).

FEBRUARY 03-07, ISTANBUL UNIVERSITY, TURKEY
3RD WORKSHOP ON HIGH ENERGY PHYSICS, ASTROPHYSICS AND COSMOLOGY 2020

Topics
Welcome to the 3RD WORKSHOP ON HIGH ENERGY PHYSICS, ASTROPHYSICS AND COSMOLOGY 2020 webpage. This is a workshop series organized by the Istanbul University (IU).

This year’s conference will be co-organized and hosted by the IU and aims at bringing together active researchers and graduate students, interested in the area of gravitation and cosmology, to share their latest ideas and discuss the recent developments in the field.

The focus topics of the conference are as follows,

– Particle Physics
– High Energy Physics
– String Theory
– Astronomy
– Astrophysics
– Black hole Physics,
– Dark matter and Dark Energy,
– Exoplanets,
– Gravitational Waves,
– Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation,
– Classical and Quantum Gravity,
– The Early Universe and High Energy Physics,
– Cosmic Structure Formation and Galaxies.

Registration
To register for the conference and submit the abstract of your contribution, please fill the registration form. In order to guarantee a full consideration to your submission, please register before the early bird deadline 15 December 2019.

Accommodation
Participants should sort out their own accommodation in Istanbul.

Venue

Faculty of Science, Istanbul University

The SIGRAV International School 2020, organised by the Italian Society of General Relativity and Gravitation (SIGRAV), aims at providing robust and deep knowledge of General Relativity and its possible modifications, with particular attention to phenomenological consequences in astrophysics and in cosmology. The following courses will be offered:

– General Relativity and its Modifications – Lecturer: Lavinia Heisenberg (ETH, Zurich)
– Testing Gravity – Lecturer: Paolo Pani (Sapienza University of Rome)
– Cosmology beyond General Relativity – Lecturer: Tessa Baker (Oxford University)
– Cosmological Perturbation Theory and Structure Formation – Lecturer: Sabino Matarrese (University of Padova)

For further informations see the school’s web page

Dear Colleagues,

We would like to bring the following school on Gravitational Waves to your attention. Please share with your students and postdocs.

31st Chris Engelbrecht Summer School on Gravitational waves
Cape Town, 20 January – 29 January 2020
www.chrisengelbrecht2020.com

SECOND ANNOUNCEMENT

The Cosmology and Gravity Group Group at the University of Cape Town is pleased to be hosting the 31st Chris Engebrecht Summer School. This specific Summer School is motivated by recent advances in the field of gravitational wave science. The lecturer series will cover a broad range of topics related to gravitational wave science, such as numerical simualtion of gravitational wave sources, gravitational waves in modified gravity, cosmology and the gravitational wave background.

The school will take place from 20 January 2020 – 29 January 2020 at the university of Cape Town

Confirmed Speakers (in alphabetical order) include

Rituparno Goswami (UKZN)
Lavinia Heisenberg (EHT Zurich)
Denis Pollney (Rhodes University)
Alicia Sintes (UIB LIGO collaboration)
and more to be confirmed.

There is limited funding to support students to attend the school. To qualify for financial support, please visitwww.chrisengelbrecht2020.com and fill out the registration form by 01 November 2019. Due to budgetary constraints, we would like to encourage Institutions and supervisors to financially support their students where possible.

We look forward to seeing you in Cape Town,

THE LOCAL ORGANIZING COMMITTEE (LOC):

Alvaro de la Cruz Dombriz
Peter K. S. Dunsby
Julien Larena
Bishop Mongwane
Anne Marie Nzioki
Chris Stevens

We would like to invite you to a semester program at ICERM, Brown University in Providence titled “Advances in Computational Relativity”.

https://icerm.brown.edu/programs/sp-f20/

This semester program aims to foster cross-disciplinary collaborations involving mathematicians, statisticians and the relativity community with the goals of:
(i) work towards solving some of the most pressing mathematical modeling, numerical simulation, and data analysis issues facing the gravitational wave community,
(ii) fostering an environment for the deep collaboration and cross-pollination of ideas between mathematicians, statisticians, and the relativity community,
(iii) creating new subfields within computational mathematics that focus on important, pressing issues related to gravitational waves.

Although the program will run over the entire Fall 2020 semester with several researchers staying the semester at ICERM, you are welcome to participate at any convenient time for as long you can. In addition, there will be a week-long workshop once every month organized by topic. Dates and workshop titles appear below:

9/14: Workshop 1 (https://icerm.brown.edu/programs/sp-f20/w1/): “Advances and Challenges in Computational Relativity.” (with a focus on gravitational waves from compact objects)
10/5: Workshop 2 (https://icerm.brown.edu/programs/sp-f20/w2/): “Mathematical and Computational Approaches for solving the source-free Einstein field equations.”
10/26: Workshop 3 (https://icerm.brown.edu/programs/sp-f20/w3/): “Mathematical and Computational Approaches for the Einstein field equations with matter fields”
11/16: Workshop 4 (https://icerm.brown.edu/programs/sp-f20/w4/): “Statistical methods for the detection, classification, and inference of relativistic objects”

ICERM has funding available to cover travel and accommodation for faculty, postdocs and students. Please apply using the link “Apply with Cube” at the program website. Please let Scott Field (sfield[AT]umassd.edu) or Gaurav Khanna (gkhanna[AT]umassd.edu) know if you have any questions about the program.

Scientific Organizing Committee —
Stefanos Aretakis, UToronto
Doug Arnold, UMN
Manuela Campanelli, RIT
Scott Field, UMass Dartmouth
Jonathan Gair, AEI
Jae-Hun Jung, SUNY Buffalo
Gaurav Khanna, UMass Dartmouth
Stephen Lau, UNM
Steve Liebling, LIU
Deirdre Shoemaker, GTech
Jared Speck, Vanderbilt
Saul Teukolsky, Cornell

The Women in Mathematical Physics Workshop at Banff International Research Station will have multiple research groups. One of them is on the topic of “Mathematical relativity: static Lorentzian length spaces”. It is led by Carla Cederbaum (Tuebingen University) and Melanie Graf (University of Washington).

Women of all stages of careers are welcome (at least you should be already doing research towards a master thesis or a PhD).

Thanks to the advent of gravitational wave astronomy (LIGO, Virgo, KAGRA, LISA), as well as to high-angular-resolution observations of black hole vicinity (EHT, VLTI/GRAVITY), new tests of gravity in the strong field regime are becoming available. They offer the potentiality to discriminate between general relativity and alternative theories (generically designed as modified gravity) that are currently developed, notably to address the issue of dark energy in cosmology.

This workshop is devoted to the properties of compact objects (black holes, neutron stars, boson stars, etc.) in these theories and will allow ample time for discussions.

Registration is free but we ask all participants to register on the workshop’s webpage.

30th Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics
Sunday 15 to Friday 20 December 2019, Portsmouth, UK

Deadline for abstract submission extended to 7th October

We look forward to seeing you in Portsmouth this December!
Marco Bruni and David Wands
on behalf of the Scientific and Local Organising Committees

Scientific discussion meeting organised by Dr Maxime Jacquet, Dr Silke Weinfurtner and Dr Friedrich Koenig.

The discussion meeting brings together scientists who reproduce effects of the interplay between general relativity and quantum physics in the laboratory. From the foundational ideas of the research programme to its latest experimental breakthroughs and their philosophical implications, participants will discuss the present state of the field and possible routes to the future.

There will be a poster session at 17.00 on Monday 9 December. If you would like to apply to present a poster, please submit your title, your abstract (no more than 200 words and in third person), author list, name of the proposed presenter and authors’ institutions to the Scientific Programmes team (scientific.meetings[AT]royalsociety.org) no later than Friday 11 October 2019. Please include the text ‘Poster abstract submission’ and the meeting title in the subject heading. Please note that places are limited and are selected at the scientific organisers’ discretion. Poster abstracts will only be considered if the proposed presenter is registered to attend the meeting.

This meeting is free to attend but advance registration is essential.

The governing idea is to bring together researchers from mathematics and physics which are working on these topics. The main aim of the event is to intensify the fruitful interactions between the researchers in these and related communities which have been more and more converging in the recent years in order to make significant progress on the outstanding problems at the interface of random geometry and quantum gravity.

This workshop is part of the IHP trimester “Random Geometry and Quantum Gravity”. If you wish to request financial aid from IHP, you need to register on the trimester website

https://indico.math.cnrs.fr/event/4620/overview

before September 30, 2019.

The governing idea is to bring together researchers from mathematics and physics which are working on these topics. The main aim of the event is to intensify the fruitful interactions between the researchers in these and related communities which have been more and more converging in the recent years in order to make significant progress on the outstanding problems at the interface of random geometry and quantum gravity.

This workshop is part of the IHP trimester “Random Geometry and Quantum Gravity”. If you wish to request financial aid from IHP, you need to register on the trimester website

https://indico.math.cnrs.fr/event/4620/overview

before September 30, 2019.

The governing idea is to bring together researchers from mathematics and physics which are working on these topics. The main aim of the event is to intensify the fruitful interactions between the researchers in these and related communities which have been more and more converging in the recent years in order to make significant progress on the outstanding problems at the interface of random geometry and quantum gravity.

Lectures:
Luigi Addario-Berry (McGill University, Montreal) – “Discrete random geometries and optimization”
Jan Ambjorn (Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen) – TBA
Bruno Benedetti (University of Miami) – “Discrete Morse theory and the number of triangulated manifolds”
Vincent Rivasseau (Universite’ Paris-Saclay) – “Random Tensors and Applications”