2024 IHES Summer School – Symmetries and Anomalies: a Modern Take

The next Summer School, organized by Zohar Komargodsky (SCGP), Bruno Le Floch (CNRS & LPTHE), Masahito Yamazaki (IPMU), and Elli Pomoni (DESY) will focus on the physical and mathematical underpinnings of anomalies, for two weeks. It will be held at IHES from June 24 to July 5, 2024.

Anton Kapustin (Caltech), Yuji Tachikawa (IPMU), and Xiao-Gang Wen (MIT) are the members of the scientific committee for this 2024 edition.

If you want to participate, please send your application before March 15, 2024. The selected applicants will be informed in mid-April at the latest.

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Symmetries and Anomalies: a Modern Take

Symmetries play an outsized role in understanding physical phenomena. In quantum systems ranging from condensed matter to high-energy particle physics, symmetries can feature different anomalies, which may constrain the dynamics or ruin the model’s consistency. This gives important clues on extensions to the Standard Model, or new topological phenomena in quantum materials. Anomalies have played an essential role in the modern developments of supersymmetric quantum field theories and string theory. Last but not least, their study has influenced and benefitted from different areas of mathematics, particularly algebraic topology.

This school will introduce students to the physical and mathematical underpinnings of anomalies including its more mathematical aspects on topological quantum field theory and characteristic classes, with a view toward recent applications to topological phases of matter and strongly coupled gauge theories. The overarching idea is to have courses from three points of view that build upon each other: that of a mathematician (TFT, category theory, characteristic classes), a high-energy physicist (chiral anomalies and Hooft anomaly matching), and a condensed matter physicist (symmetry-protected and symmetry-enhanced topological order). 

The courses will be given by:

• Max METLISKI (MIT)
• Clément DELCAMP (IHES)
• Thomas DUMITRESCU (UCLA)
• Shu-Heng SHAO (Stony Brook University)
• Clay CORDOVA (University of Chicago)
• Iñaki GARCÍA ETXEBARRIA (Durham University)
• Yifan WANG (New York U)
• Đàm Thanh Sơn (Univ. of Chicago)