A day with talks from Stefan Vandoren, Laura Filion, Huib de Swart and Raimond Snellings, with drinks and dinner at the end! All that for free!

Stefan Vandoren - Black Holes, from theory to observation and back.

Abstract: black holes are perhaps the most mysterious objects in the universe. It is hard to observe them directly and to describe them theoretically. We review some of their mysterious properties and discuss outstanding challenges for future research.

Laura Filion - Hiding in a fluid: Autonomously revealing hidden local structures in colloidal systems

Developments in machine learning have opened the door to a new generation of methods for studying phase transitions, due to their ability to efficiently and autonomously identify complex patterns in many-body systems. Applications of machine learning techniques in statistical physics vary from locating phase transitions in spin systems to pinpointing weak spots in colloidal glasses. The rapid emergence of machine learning applications in both statistical mechanics and materials science demonstrates that these techniques are destined to become an important tool for soft matter physics.

One problem this tool seems ideally suited to solve, both experimentally and in simulations, is the identification of different (crystalline) phases – even on the level of a single particle. For example, when we use either experiments or simulations to look at crystallization at the microscopic level, it is always a challenge to determine which particles are part of the fluid, and which ones have already crystallized. In this talk I will describe how machine learning techniques can automatically figure this out for us, even if we do not know in advance what crystal structure to look for. We will also examine how such methods might reveal new structural insights in “purely” disordered systems like glasses.

Huib de Swart - Nonlinear dynamics of tides in coastal and inland seas

When inspecting tidal curves (time series of water level or velocity) of stations in coastal waters, it becomes evident that these curves are asymmetric and that the degree of asymmetry differs from location to location. This asymmetry does not result from direct astronomical forcing, but it is due to the nonlinear hydrodynamics of tides. In this presentation, various sources of tidal asymmetry will be identified and it will be demonstrated, by using simple mathematical-physical models, that each of them generates a different kind of asymmetry. Finally, the possibility of multiple tidal attractors and chaotic tides will be touched upon, as well the implications of nonlinear tides for transport of matter and for the formation of bottom patterns.

Raimond Snellings - What are the properties of matter at a few trillion degrees?

In heavy-ion collisions at the CERN Large hadron Collider droplets of extremely hot quark gluon plasma are produced. In this presentation I will give an accessible introduction how we study these smallest and hottest droplets of matter here on earth. I will show why this is so interesting for our understanding of the early universe,  the properties of neutron stars and for the least understood fundamental force in nature, the strong force.