Full Description
The International Conference on Theoretical Physics, TH-2002, took place in Paris from July 22 to 27 in the Conference Center of the UNESCO, the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization, under aegis of the IUPAP, the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics and of the French and Euro pean Physical Societies, with a large support of several French, European and international Institutions. International and crossdisciplinary, TH-2002 welcomed around 1200 partic ipants representing all domains of modern theoretical physics. The conference offered a high-level scientific program, including 18 plenary lectures, 45 general lectures in thematic sessions and 140 more specialized lectures, partly invited and partly selected among proposals received from participants. Around 500 contribu tions were also presented as posters. Plenary lectures as well as general thematic lectures were addressed to a general audience of theoricians, not only to specialists. According to our commitments towards UNESCO and other sponsoring insti tutions, TH-2002 attributed more than 200 fellowships, mostly to scientists from developing countries and Eastern Europe, covering registration fees and, for more than half of them, stay expenses with student type accomodation. Special highlights of the conference included • the opening ceremony on July 22, with the participation of Mrs Claudie Haignere, French Minister of Research, and M. Walter Erdelen, General Ad joint Director for Sciences at UNESCO. Their opening addresses were espe cially appreciated and are reproduced below. This ceremony preceded the first lecture by Professor Cohen-Tannoudji, Physics Nobel prize winner.
Contents
Special Plenary Lectures.- Rise of Complexity, 1953-2002.- The Thematic Melodies of Twentieth Century Theoretical Physics.- Theme 1 Beyond the Standard Model.- Probing Physics at the Planck Scale.- Tachyons in String Theory.- Neutrino Masses as a Probe of Grand Unification.- Addressing Challenges of Quantum Gravity Through Quantum Geometry: Black holes and Big-bang.- CP Violation and the CKM Matrix.- Supercoset CFT's for String Theories on Non-compact Special Holonomy Manifolds.- Kaon Decays and the Flavour Problem.- Strings in flat space and plane waves from N.= 4 Super Yang Mills.- Solution of N =2 Theories via Instanton Counting.- Topological Effects in Matrix Models Representing Lattice Gauge Theories at Large N.- Aspects Of String Motion in Time-Dependent Backgrounds.- Boundaries, Defects and Frobenius Algebras.- Surprises with Angular Momentum.- Theme 2 QCD, Hadron Dynamics, etc....- Lattice QCD — from Quark Confinement to Asymptotic Freedom.- QCD and Natural Philosophy.- RHIC and High Energy Density Matte.- Generalized Parton Distributions and Generalized Distribution Amplitudes: New Tools for Hadronic Physics.- Progress in Study of Renormalization of Theories with Nontrivial Internal Symmetry.- Approaching the Final State in Perturbative QCD.- Theme 3 Astrophysics and Cosmology.- The Cosmic Microwave Background.- String Cosmology and Chaos.- Solar Neutrino Production.- Quantum Fields on dS and AdS.- The New Cosmology: Mid-term Report Card for Inflation.- Tests of Gravity on Astrophysical Scales and Variation of the Constants.- Theme 4 Statistical Physics.- Conformal Invariance in Percolation, Self-Avoiding Walks, and Related Problems.- First-Passage Problems in Spatially Extended Systems.- Passive Sliders on Growing Surface and (Anti-)Advection in Burger's Flows.- Conformal Spiral Multifractals.- Condensation Transitions in Nonequilibrium Systems.- How to Simulate Fluid Criticality: The simplest ionic model has Ising behavior but the proof is not so obvious!.- Infinite Volume Limit and Spontaneous Replica Symmetry Breaking in Mean Field Spin Glass Models.- Dimensional Reduction and Crossover to Mean-Field Behavior for Branched Polymers.- Polymer Transport in Random Potentials and the Genetic Code: The Waltz of Life.- Optimization and Physics: On the Satisfiability of Random Boolean Formulae.- Is There a Unified Theory of Nonequilibrium Statistical Mechanics?.- Finite-Dimensional Spin Glasses: States, Excitations, and Interfaces.- The Functional Renormalization Group Treatment of Disordered Systems, a Review.- Theme 5 Condensed Matter Theory.- The Functional Renormalization Group Treatment of Disordered Systems, a Review.- Network Models for Chiral Symmetry Classes of Anderson Localization.- Many Body Physics: Unfinished Revolution.- Multi-Terminal Carbon Nanotube Networks.- Dynamical Response of Quasi 1D Mott Insulators.- Mesoscopic Fluctuations of Co-Tunneling and Kondo Effect in Quantum Dots.- Tunneling Between Parallel Quantum Wires.- Field theories of paramagnetic Mott insulators.- Theme 6 Soft Matter and Biology.- Arrest and Flow of Colloidal Glasses.- Decoding the Genome.- Physical Basis of Interference Effects in Hearing.- Active Behaviors in Living Cells.- Soap Froths and Crystal Structures.- Sliding Phases: From DNA-lipid Complexes to Smectic Metals.- Theme 7 Dynamical Systems and Quantum Chaos.- Chaos in the Solar System.- Orbit Bifurcations and Quantum Fluctuation Statistics.- Nondeterministic Dynamics and Turbulent Transport.- Prime Correlations and Fluctuations.- Statistical Mechanics of Many Interacting Point Masses in Spherical Geometry.- Theme 8 Theoretical Quantum Mechanics.- Quantum Information Processing with Quantum Optics.- Exact Reformulation of the Bosonic Many-Body Problem in Terms of Stochastic Wave Functions: an Elementary Derivation.- Phase Fluctuations and Coherence of an Almost Ideal Condensate.- Extracting Entropy from Quantum Computers.- Theme 9 Random Matrices and Applications.- Applications of Ideas from Random Matrix Theory to Step Distributions on "Misoriented" Surfaces.- Integrable Flows inc =1 String Theory.- New Applications of Non-Hermitian Random Matrices.- Theme 10 General Formalism and Mathematical Methods.- Thermal Aspects in Quantum Field Theory.- Noncommutative Gravity.- Half-Space Large Size Discrete Velocity Models.- Lattice Chiral Symmetry, CP-Violation and Majorana Fermions.- Observations on Noncommuting Coordinates and on Fields Depending on them.- Functional Renormalization Group for Interacting Fermi Systems.- Aperiodic Order and Quasicrystals: Spectral Properties.- Theme 11 Interdisciplinary and Miscellaneous Topics.- Fermi-Point Universality Class: Emerging Relativistic Quantum Fields & Gravity.- Epidemic Thresholds on Scale-Free Graphs: the Interplay between Exponent and Preferential Choice.- Special Session Theoretical Physics in Developing Countries The First Regional Center for Mathematical Sciences.- The African Institute for Mathematical Sciences.- Author Index.
