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CECAM's Past events

----2022----

----2019----

Condensed Matter Analogies in Mechanics, Optics and Cold Atoms

From Monday 01 April 2019
To Thursday 04 April 2019

Outstanding conceptual breakthroughs in science are often rooted in the exchange of knowledge between disciplines. Seemingly unrelated fields of research can sometimes find common themes that are not easily unraveled, yet these common concepts can plant the seeds for revolutionary ideas. A particularly exciting example is the emerging field of topological phases of matter, where concepts from the mathematical theory of topology have revolutionized the understanding of the solid state and electronic properties in crystalline materials [1-7]. Additionally, high energy physics and relativistic effects have recently been linked to the low energy physics in such materials, tying together theories of traditional condensed matter, special and general relativity, and even cosmology [8-10].

Recently it has been shown that topological phases of quantum matter such as topological insulators and semimetals, can be realized in acoustic, optical and mechanical systems as well as ultra-cold atoms in designed potentials [11-15]. These artificial materials - or metamaterials - raise considerable interest in the hard-condensed-matter community, as they offer the ability to control the potential and image the internal dynamics in ways that are hard to realize in electronic systems [16,17]. Moreover, metamaterials offer a way of introducing new physical elements such as nonlinearities and interactions, thus enriching the scope of topological phenomena and possibly shedding some light on the role of interactions in electronic topological systems [18-20]. From the metamaterials perspective, motivation for drawing ideas from the condensed-matter community has increased due to the notion that topological effects may introduce new mechanical, acoustic or photonic properties, and that topological band theory can be applied to the classification of Hamiltonians and band structures in both systems [21,22]. This correspondence between fields raises profound questions regarding the similarities and differences between quantum mechanical phenomena occurring on a microscopic scale and classical phenomena occurring at the macro scale, on the role of interactions and more.

The purpose of this workshop is to bring together leading scientists from the fields of electronic systems and mechanical, optical and quantum metamaterials, to exchange ideas in order to facilitate rapid progress in these distinct fields. The interface between disciplines can have far-reaching effects not only on the conceptual level, but also on the practical and applied level. Systems in which phenomena can arise naturally and are well understood can also be such in which effects are difficult to isolate, measure or utilize. Therefore, finding analog phenomena in other systems can be beneficial. For example, the state of the art engineering of metamaterials recently enabled direct access to analogs of exotic effects predicted to appear in electronic systems where they are not easily accessed due to material limitations [23-25].

Frontiers in Multiscale Modelling of Photoreceptor Proteins

From Tuesday 03 September 2019
To Thursday 05 September 2019

From a technological viewpoint photoreceptor proteins, the light-sensitive proteins involved in the sensing and response to light in a variety of organisms, represent biological light converters. Hence they are successfully utilized in a number of technological applications, e.g. the greenfluorescent protein used to visualize spatial and temporal information in cells. However, despite the ground-breaking nature of this utilization in life science and other disciplines, there are still open questions and challenges in the simulation of photoreceptors that can be addressed using multiscale modelling.

The proposed workshop will bring together the leading scientists in the field of multiscale modelling of light-sensitive proteins who will identify grand challenges as well as discuss the development of new tools to address them. In particular two different research area will be addressed: 1) Spectral tuning, describing how the absorption of the chromophore is regulated by the protein environment and 2) characterization of photochemical reactions such as photoisomerization, excited state proton transfer etc. 

Protein Simulations – Current State of the Art

From Tuesday 22 October 2019
To Thursday 24 October 2019

Technological and theoretical development enable researcher to follow on protein dynamics directly by experiments, not only by NMR but also by (sub)terahertz spectroscopy (J Chem Phys 142:055101, 2015) and X-ray free electron lasers (Struct Dynamics 4:044003, 2017). Moreover, stronger synchrotron sources make sub-atomic resolution X-ray crystallography more common (IUCrJ 2:464–474, 2015) whereas room-temperature crystallography sheds light on the dynamics of enzymes (J. Med. Chem., 2018–2025, 2017).

In this workshop, we will discuss the role of computer simulations of proteins in light of these exciting developments. The aim of the workshop is to come up with an understanding of what is necessary in order to push the boundaries of the simulations, and enable us to provide useful predictions and useful analysis for experimental studies of protein dynamics.

Specific questions to be addressed in the meeting:

• What is the current state-of-the-art in terms of force-fields, timescales and enhanced sampling methods?

• How do we improve the modelling of cofactors and metal ions?

• Can we estimate anisotropic displacement factors and the location of hydrogen atoms directly from simulations?

• Where should we put more effort in order to advance the field in the next three years and beyond (improved classical forcefields, polarisable forcefields, coarse grained simulations, enhanced sampling methods, or something else)?

Interface Dynamics and Dissipation Across the Time and Length-Scales

From Tuesday 21 May 2019
To Thursday 23 May 2019

Interface dissipative phenomena take place across a wide spectrum of time and length scales, from atomistic processes, as in the gliding motion of a nanocluster or a nano-motor, to mesoscale nonequilibrium physics of colloidal suspensions and micro-swimmers, up to extreme macroscopic mechanisms, as in fault dynamics and earthquake events. Due to the ubiquitous nature of this kind of dissipative processes and the enormous practical relevance, friction-related problems have been investigated over the centuries. Especially nowadays where controlling and reducing friction is increasingly important in nanotechnological device miniaturization, the physics of dissipative dynamics at interfaces is gaining impulse in nanoscale and mesoscale experiments, simulations, and theoretical modeling.

In this workshop we will focus on different methods to simulate interfacial dynamical processes responsible for energy dissipation. The purpose of the proposed workshop is to bring together researchers working on theory, simulation and experiments of dynamics and dissipation at interfaces, and to discuss whether it is possible to go beyond phenomenological approaches and thus go beyond the existing paradigm. The key aim is to exchange new ideas, concepts, and technical (computational) means which can be used for this purpose. Further the interaction with leading experimentalists will help theoreticians and simulators to gain an appreciation of the key time and length scales that computational approaches need to target, and therefore will guide the efforts to develop such approaches. In addition, this exchange of ideas will create a new interface for researchers working on different types of problems.

From Quantum Computing to Quantum Chemistry: Theory, Platforms, and Practical Applications

From Sunday 15 September 2019 To Wednesday 18 September 2019

The great 20th century physicist, Richard P. Feynman, stated in his famous 1981 lecture titled “Simulating Physics with Computers” that “Nature isn’t classical … and if you want to make a simulation of Nature, you’d better make it quantum mechanical, and by golly it’s a wonderful problem, because it doesn’t look so easy.”1,2 In recent years, this brave prophecy started to become reality and quantum computing holds great promise to revolutionize the computational capabilities of human kind. In contrast to the architecture of contemporary (super)computers that relies on classical mechanics and binary bits, quantum computers harness the laws of quantum mechanics and its unique concepts (such as coherence, superposition, and entanglement) to form bits of an infinite manifold of possible states (often called qubits) and couple them to each other.

This new computational platform calls for completely new algorithmic paradigms. To exemplify this, consider quantum chemistry calculations that are considered to be the first killer application for quantum computers.3-10 On traditional computers one usually approximates the many-body wave function as a linear combination of basis-functions (usually Slater determinants constructed from localized, plane-wave, or real-space grid-based orbitals) using, e.g. the configuration interaction or coupled clusters expansions.12 Alternatively, a the single-determinantal wave function of a reference non-interacting system can be used for this approximation within the realm of density functional theory.13-15 In contrast, given a quantum computer one can obtain exact mapping between the quantum mechanical problem to be solved and the actual state of the quantum circuitry. Hence, the system can be prepared in an initial quantum state and be driven towards the desired solution that can eventually be read directly from the system’s state at a certain accuracy.

However, with the recent great advances in the construction of actual quantum computational platforms16-17 and the emergence of their first practical quantum chemistry applications3-10 come also great challenges of shifting the computational paradigm within the relevant user communities. The main hurdles can be identified as: (i) reluctance to study a completely new computational language and jargon that are out of the comfort zone of traditional users; (ii) the need to invest efforts and resources in understanding the interplay between the physical world to be modeled and the new computational platform; and (iii) the natural distrust in an immature and exploratory technology.

Nevertheless, the expected gain for those who make the step forward is very high. This is well supported by the success of the computational methodologies developed by the 2013 Nobel prize Laureates Michael Levitt, Arieh Warshel, and Martin Karplus, and their great mentor, the late Shneior Lifson, who constructed highly efficient algorithms that were able to utilize the very poor computational resources available at the time to perform multiscale computer modeling of proteins. In a sense, the current status of quantum computing is similar to the state of classical computers when these pioneering achievement, of untouched scientific grounds, have been made.

In light of all of the above, the objective of the tutorial is to help potential quantum computer users in general, and those coming from the quantum chemistry community in particular, overcome the abovementioned potential energy barriers for using this new and fascinating computational platform. The participants will be exposed to the basic theoretical concepts of quantum computing, to the technical and operational aspects of the available platforms, and to the fundamentals of translating and mapping an actual physical problem onto a quantum computing circuit. To this end, experts from three different disciplines, namely, computer science, quantum chemistry, and the computer technology industry, will be gathered to provide tutorial level introductory lectures assuming no preliminary knowledge on the subject.

The suggested tutorial will complement recent CECAM workshops, such as “Synergy Between Quantum Computing and High-Performance Computing” that aimed at identifying major challenges and future directions. It will do so by making the field accessible to non-experts, who have no prior experience and knowledge on the theory and practice of quantum computing. Therefore, the knowhow gained in this workshop is expected to expand the community of quantum computing users from the chemistry and physics disciplines. Furthermore, we aim to seed collaborative efforts between quantum chemists, physicists, and computer scientists to form synergistic workgroups that will develop new ways 

----2018----

TAU-ESPCI International Winter School on "Active Matter" - a CECAM supported conference

From Sunday 28 January 2018
To Thursday 01 February 2018

The school is open to graduate students and postdocs and will include four days of pedagogical lectures and one day of an advanced workshop on various topics in the field of active soft matter, including:

​Active liquid crystals / Model experiments in active matter

Fluctuation in active systems / Mechanical properties of active matter

Flow of bacterial suspensions / Hydrodynamics of tissues

Next Step in Random Walks: Understanding Mechanisms Behind Complex Spreading Phenomena

From Monday 08 October 2018
To Thursday 11 October 2018

Spreading is an omnipresent phenomenon which plays either negative or positive role, depending on what is spreading, an invasive pathogen or holes in a semiconductor.   There are many facets of spreading that have been studied in different fields. On the micro time-space scales compared with the lifetime of a single mover, an atom migrating over a substrate or a foraging animal, spreading splits into a set of point-like random processes, so that individual trajectories look like trajectories of random walkers. It was therefore very natural that the paradigm of random walks heavily influenced the development of the fields where spreading plays the key role – solid state electronics, turbulence, molecular biophysics, ecology, and others. At the beginning, Gaussian random walks, as a well-established concept, were extensively used. Then in many labs, it was observed that the obtained data do not fit this model, so new tools and models were demanded. The complexity of the observed phenomena can be captured in more detail with such updates as continuous-time random and Lévy walks (LW). These approaches have found a striking number of applications in diverse fields, including optics, dynamical chaos, turbulence, many-body physics (both quantum and classical ones), biophysics, behavioral science, and even robotics.

Existing models, such as LWs and fractional Fokker-Planck equations, have a strong appeal – they are very well developed, they are famous and have very good reputations and agenda. It is very tempting therefore to use them immediately when an experimentalist or a field ecologist comes with the statistical data and ask “Could you please explain it with your theories?”. But even if the matching is perfect, it does not serve an explanation. The explanation is encoded in the data and in order to extract it, the theoretician has, first of all, to understand the process which produced this data.

Spreading of cold atoms in dissipative optical potentials is an example where this path is already taken. At first, a specific classical diffusion equation was derived to capture the specific cooling mechanism (essentially quantum by its nature) governing the dynamics of atoms; and then it was possible to demonstrate that on the microscopic level trajectories of individual atoms appear as LWs. In such a way, a LW-like process has been derived from physics. Yet these experiments have also revealed that a simple LW description does not capture all features of the observed phase space dynamics. In a very different direction another microscopic origin of anomalous diffusion of bacteria was recently developed. These two examples are only part of a trend of a maturing field switching from phenomenological methods to deeper modeling, and our primary goal is to help diffuse these new ideas among the relevant practitioners.

The main emphasis of the workshop is on changing the “cargo-cult” paradigm prevailing now on the field of anomalous diffusion and random walks when it comes to their practical applications. Namely, it is not that experimental data should be analyzed in the view of the existing random walk and diffusion models but models themselves have to be constructed in a way as to capture essential physics behind the emerging spreading. That simply means that physical mechanisms running the spreading have to be understood first by those theoreticians who want to describe them with their mathematical constructions. The focus of the proposed workshop is to leave the phenomenological stage of the theory and bring together experts who work on the basics mechanism still covering a large body of models and systems.

Strongly Correlated Materials: Experiments and Computation

From Monday 09 April 2018
To Thursday 12 April 2018

Heavy fermion materials, transition metal oxides, and a variety of rare-earth compounds exhibit strong correlation: electrons in partially filled d and f shells of constituent atoms are delicately balanced between interaction-induced localization and kinetic delocalization, resulting in rich phase diagrams with remarkable and potentially useful switching properties. Most widespread computational approaches to materials, which are based on weak-correlation theories such as Density Functional Theory (DFT), Hartree-Fock and GW, fail to fully capture strong correlations.

The physics of strongly correlated electrons is of broad fundamental interest, with recent examples including the elusive theory of topological Kondo insulators, the formation of multipolar orders in actinide oxides and the controversial nature of high temperature superconductivity in plutonium-based materials. Some of the most societally pressing and yet long-standing issues involve the radioactive actinides, and better theoretical methods are critical to addressing nuclear waste remediation.

An emerging, cutting-edge generation of methods has begun addressing the challenge of performing realistic simulations of strongly correlated materials. Notable examples include the Dynamical Mean Field Theory (DMFT) paired with continuous time quantum Monte Carlo (CT-QMC), variational Monte Carlo and others. However, the problem remains extremely difficult, and attacking it requires a large-scale multidisciplinary effort. In this conference, we propose to bring together some major players working on various separate but synergistic sides of the problem, from both the theoretical and experimental perspectives.

From the theoretical perspective, significant progress towards a quantitative and general theory of d-electron and f-electron systems requires a combination of tools and approaches. Great strides have been made in DMFT. However, advances towards a realistic description rely on a stronger connection to underlying weakly correlated theories. They further rely on improved Monte Carlo methods able to address dynamical phase problems in the associated auxiliary problems. Promising new variational approaches should also be explored and hopefully integrated into the same toolset, and all these ideas should be combined with modern methods for constructing coarse-grained models. Finally, close collaboration with experimentalists is paramount to focusing this effort.

We propose to bring together several prominent researchers in correlated electrons, f-electron materials, and the foundations and extensions of weakly correlated methods. All invitees develop unique and relevant computational or experimental methods. The emphasis is on members of several centers in the Czech Republic and Israel, between which we hope to form a long-term collaboration; however, a select group of leaders in the field from elsewhere will also attend.

The main emphasis is on theory and method development, and discussions are planned between experts from a diverse set of disciplines and scientific communities that have made relevant contributions to the field but would not normally meet each other. However, we also propose to put these theorists in close contact with experimentalists that have unique access to some of the most groundbreaking studies in Europe on strongly-correlated 5f systems, and provide tutorials on x-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD), x-ray absorption near-edge structure (XANES), electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS), electron-probe microanalysis (EPMA), and transmission electron microscopy (TEM).

Sackler-CECAM school and workshop on Frontiers in Molecular Dynamics: Machine Learning, Deep Learning and Coarse Graining

From Monday 08 October 2018
To Friday 12 October 2018

The great 20th century physicist, Richard P. Feynman, stated in his famous 1981 lecture titled “Simulating Physics with Computers” that “Nature isn’t classical … and if you want to make a simulation of Nature, you’d better make it quantum mechanical, and by golly it’s a wonderful problem, because it doesn’t look so easy.”1,2 In recent years, this brave prophecy started to become reality and quantum computing holds great promise to revolutionize the computational capabilities of human kind. In contrast to the architecture of contemporary (super)computers that relies on classical mechanics and binary bits, quantum computers harness the laws of quantum mechanics and its unique concepts (such as coherence, superposition, and entanglement) to form bits of an infinite manifold of possible states (often called qubits) and couple them to each other.

This new computational platform calls for completely new algorithmic paradigms. To exemplify this, consider quantum chemistry calculations that are considered to be the first killer application for quantum computers.3-10 On traditional computers one usually approximates the many-body wave function as a linear combination of basis-functions (usually Slater determinants constructed from localized, plane-wave, or real-space grid-based orbitals) using, e.g. the configuration interaction or coupled clusters expansions.12 Alternatively, a the single-determinantal wave function of a reference non-interacting system can be used for this approximation within the realm of density functional theory.13-15 In contrast, given a quantum computer one can obtain exact mapping between the quantum mechanical problem to be solved and the actual state of the quantum circuitry. Hence, the system can be prepared in an initial quantum state and be driven towards the desired solution that can eventually be read directly from the system’s state at a certain accuracy.

However, with the recent great advances in the construction of actual quantum computational platforms16-17 and the emergence of their first practical quantum chemistry applications3-10 come also great challenges of shifting the computational paradigm within the relevant user communities. The main hurdles can be identified as: (i) reluctance to study a completely new computational language and jargon that are out of the comfort zone of traditional users; (ii) the need to invest efforts and resources in understanding the interplay between the physical world to be modeled and the new computational platform; and (iii) the natural distrust in an immature and exploratory technology.

Nevertheless, the expected gain for those who make the step forward is very high. This is well supported by the success of the computational methodologies developed by the 2013 Nobel prize Laureates Michael Levitt, Arieh Warshel, and Martin Karplus, and their great mentor, the late Shneior Lifson, who constructed highly efficient algorithms that were able to utilize the very poor computational resources available at the time to perform multiscale computer modeling of proteins. In a sense, the current status of quantum computing is similar to the state of classical computers when these pioneering achievement, of untouched scientific grounds, have been made.

In light of all of the above, the objective of the tutorial is to help potential quantum computer users in general, and those coming from the quantum chemistry community in particular, overcome the abovementioned potential energy barriers for using this new and fascinating computational platform. The participants will be exposed to the basic theoretical concepts of quantum computing, to the technical and operational aspects of the available platforms, and to the fundamentals of translating and mapping an actual physical problem onto a quantum computing circuit. To this end, experts from three different disciplines, namely, computer science, quantum chemistry, and the computer technology industry, will be gathered to provide tutorial level introductory lectures assuming no preliminary knowledge on the subject.

The suggested tutorial will complement recent CECAM workshops, such as “Synergy Between Quantum Computing and High-Performance Computing” that aimed at identifying major challenges and future directions. It will do so by making the field accessible to non-experts, who have no prior experience and knowledge on the theory and practice of quantum computing. Therefore, the knowhow gained in this workshop is expected to expand the community of quantum computing users from the chemistry and physics disciplines. Furthermore, we aim to seed collaborative efforts between quantum chemists, physicists, and computer scientists to form synergistic workgroups that will develop new ways 

----2017----

Bridging the Worlds of Electromagnetic and Quantum Simulations

From Tuesday 20 June 2017
To Friday 23 June 2017

In this workshop, we intend to bring together a multidisciplinary group of prominent researchers whose common interest lies in developing multiscale and multiphysics methods for electromagnetic field matter interaction. The goal of such a meeting is to examine challenges in such modeling efforts from both theoretical and computational perspectives, propose pathways to possible solutions and identify collaborations to achieve these goals. More specifically, we propose examining the following goals:

  • Advance rigorous formulations to couple classical and quantum physics of electromagnetic field and matter.

  • Develop multiscale methods in space and time for numerical modeling in electrodynamics and quantum theory.

  • Develop methods that account for long range correlation of disorder, partial order or anisotropies.

  • Advance numerical modeling in electrodynamics and quantum theory: highly-efficient algorithms and fast solvers.

  • Advance coupling of theoretical methods of quantum chemistry such as Density Functional Theory and its applications in nano-Electromagnetics.

  • Advance theory of nanoantennas coupled with quantum objects.

  • Explore physical principles of nanorectennas with their potential applications in solar power harvesting.

  • Advance theory and modeling capabilities for quantum nanomagnetic devices.

 

This workshop is a unique showcase for new and emerging techniques that bridge between atomistic and quantum mechanical models and methods with methods of electromagnetics and related applications, including microwaves, optics, and magnetism. Topics of interest include advanced theoretical models that couple quantum mechanical and atomistic methods with Maxwell’s equations, the Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert equations, spin transport equations, and other related equations. Fostering synergistic collaboration is the principal goal of the workshop. The workshop will comprise oral sessions, discussion panels of invited speakers, and a poster session. This format is geared towards an informal atmosphere facilitating discussions and collaboration between the participants.

Expeditious Methods in Electronic Structure Theory and Many Body Techniques

From Sunday 17 December 2017To Wednesday 20 December 2017

Electronic structure involves a basic science study of the electronic excitations in molecular and nanostructured systems with significant technological implications. The role of theory in this field is to predict properties of materials as well as nanostructured and supramolecular systems. Hence the main challenges facing electronic structure theory are: predictive power and applicability for large systems. Predictivity implies the development of first-principles high-level treatments of electron correlations while tackling large systems requires low computational complexity. Progress is slow since these two requirements are mutually exclusive: high-level theories of electron correlation involve high computational complexity.[Whitfield2013]

In the past two decades approaches for low-scaling ab initio methods, based on density functional theory and perturbation theory, have been developed with varying degree of generality and success.[Goedecker1999, Gillan2007, Beer2008] However, unlike the quantum Monte Carlo methods for quantum chemistry, stochastic methods for electronic structure have not yet found a central role in the field. This situation is now changing as a surge of new ideas concerning stochastic quantum processes is observed. The proposed workshop is intended to bring together researchers that are developing new stochastic methods or low scaling high precision methods for electronic structure of large systems. The basic hope is that such a workshop can synergistically inspire researchers to develop new ideas and paradigms which can be used

Stochastic methods involve, necessarily, a stochastic process that allows efficient sampling of the configurational space from which the computed quantity can be estimated. The best known methods, such as variational, diffusion and Green's function Monte Carlo have already proved strengths and (unavoidably) weaknesses.[#Nightingale1999, #Hammond1994, #Gubernatis2016] Many workshops and schools on QMC methods are held annually and it is not our goal to entertain an additional meeting on this topic. Instead we aim at stochastic methods for the community developing techniques for accelerating the calculation of approximate (but highly accurate) electron correlation theories.

Such stochastic methods concerning electron correlation have recently been published, such as the stochastic CI [#Booth2009, #Ten-no2013, #Thomas2015], stochastic DFT,[#Baer2013, #Neuhauser2015], coupled-cluster and perturbation theory [#Thom2010, #Thom2007a, #Willow2012, #Neuhauser2013], random phase approximation,[#Neuhauser2013a] GW theory[#Neuhauser2014], response and Bethe-Salpeter equation,[#Neuscamman2013, #Rabani2015], theory of multiexciton generation rates in nanocrystals.[#Baer2012a] and continuous time Monte Carlo for nonequilibrium quantum impurity problems.[#Muehlbacher2008, #Gull2011, #Cohen2015]

The aim of the proposed workshop is to bring together the leading scientists representing low complexity and/or stochastic approaches for large scale electronic structure calculations. Unlike workshops on Quantum Monte Carlo methods focusing on the solution of the many-body Schrödinger equation, the proposed workshop targets stochastic approaches to high complexity single- or two-particle methods such as 1) for ground states: density functional and Hartree-Fock (DFT and HFT) theory, perturbative methods (Random Phase Approximation (RPA), Moller-Plesset Theory MPn, coupled cluster (CC) approaches), geminal electronic structure and 2) for excitations response and dynamics: many-body perturbation theory (GW, Bethe-Salpeter GF2, time-dependent DFT (TDDFT) etc.) and continuous time Monet Carlo.

The idea behind this workshop is to bring together experts developing a wide range of tools to solve the quantum many-body problem. The unifying theme is the stochastic nature of the algorithms underlying the approaches developed by the invited speakers. The workshop will include experts that rarely meet and discuss science. This unique environment will provide scientists additional tools to expand into novel directions by adopting approaches from other fields. All invited speakers are leaders in the field of the quantum many-body problem and have contributed to the development of methods and applications in one of the fields, i.e. density function theory and its time dependent version, perturbative electronic structure methods, many-body perturbation techniques, and many-body diagrammatic methods. The diverse background of speaker’s expertise in method development and applications is expected to lead to synergetic collaborations of researchers from different disciplines, all working on the quantum many-body problem.

Existing models, such as LWs and fractional Fokker-Planck equations, have a strong appeal – they are very well developed, they are famous and have very good reputations and agenda. It is very tempting therefore to use them immediately when an experimentalist or a field ecologist comes with the statistical data and ask “Could you please explain it with your theories?”. But even if the matching is perfect, it does not serve an explanation. The explanation is encoded in the data and in order to extract it, the theoretician has, first of all, to understand the process which produced this data.

Spreading of cold atoms in dissipative optical potentials is an example where this path is already taken. At first, a specific classical diffusion equation was derived to capture the specific cooling mechanism (essentially quantum by its nature) governing the dynamics of atoms; and then it was possible to demonstrate that on the microscopic level trajectories of individual atoms appear as LWs. In such a way, a LW-like process has been derived from physics. Yet these experiments have also revealed that a simple LW description does not capture all features of the observed phase space dynamics. In a very different direction another microscopic origin of anomalous diffusion of bacteria was recently developed. These two examples are only part of a trend of a maturing field switching from phenomenological methods to deeper modeling, and our primary goal is to help diffuse these new ideas among the relevant practitioners.

The main emphasis of the workshop is on changing the “cargo-cult” paradigm prevailing now on the field of anomalous diffusion and random walks when it comes to their practical applications. Namely, it is not that experimental data should be analyzed in the view of the existing random walk and diffusion models but models themselves have to be constructed in a way as to capture essential physics behind the emerging spreading. That simply means that physical mechanisms running the spreading have to be understood first by those theoreticians who want to describe them with their mathematical constructions. The focus of the proposed workshop is to leave the phenomenological stage of the theory and bring together experts who work on the basics mechanism still covering a large body of models and systems.

2nd Israeli Conference on Computational Modeling of Molecules and Solids

Thursday 06 July 2017

This is the second of a series of Conferences on the computational modeling of solids and molecules (the first one took place in 2015 at Techion). The Conference aims at gathering the Israeli community of computational modeling with interests such as:

  • Computational Quantum Chemistry.

  • Electronic Structure Methods.

  • Finite Elements for Materials Simulations.

  • Molecular Dynamics.

Ferroelectric Domain Walls

From Monday 13 November 2017 -  08:00
To Wednesday 15 November 2017 - 13:00

This workshop will bring together scientists in the field of ferroelectric domain walls. In the spirit of CECAM workshops, it is designed with the idea of facilitating a exchange of views between a selected group of researches approaching problems in this field from different angles: computation, theory, and experiment. The main goal of the workshop is to refine the attendees' picture of the state of the art regarding ferroelectric domain walls properties and applications, focusing on what are the open problems, and what are the opportunities for development of approaches to solve them.

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