Instituto de Física Teórica

Seminar by Christian Northe (Institute of Physics, Prague)
2026-05-07 15:00 - 16:00 (Europe/Madrid) | IFT Seminar Room/Red Room, Instituto de Física Teórica (IFT) -C. Nicolás Cabrera, 13-15, Fuencarral-El Pardo, Madrid, 28049,, Spain
Title: Entanglement through topological interfaces in CFT revisited
Speaker: Christian Northe (Institute of Physics, Prague)
Venue&Time: Red Room / 15:00
Abstract: Present theoretical predictions for the entanglement entropy through topological defects are violated in numerical simulations of critical systems. In this talk, I discuss a paradigm shift in the preparation of reduced density matrices in the presence of topological defects, and emphasize the role of defect networks with which they can be dressed. Grouplike and duality defects are considered in detail for the Ising model, establishing agreement with all numerically found entanglement entropies. Since this new construction functions at the level of reduced density matrices, it accounts for topological defects beyond the entanglement entropy to other entanglement measures. The framework employs boundary conformal field theory techniques to implement the factorization of Hilbert space, which I recapitulate at the beginning of the talk and discuss its relation with the entanglement spectrum.

Seminar: Title TBA (Florian Kühnel, TU Dortmund & LMU Munich)
2026-05-11 15:00 - 16:00 | IFT Seminar Room/Red Room, Instituto de Física Teórica (IFT) -C. Nicolás Cabrera, 13-15, Fuencarral-El Pardo, Madrid, 28049,, Spain
TBA

Holo-Club by Martin Sasieta (U. Berkeley)
2026-05-12 11:30 - 13:00 | Gray Room 3, Instituto de Física Teórica (IFT) -C. Nicolás Cabrera, 13-15, Fuencarral-El Pardo, Madrid, 28049,, Spain

Cosmology Journal Club
2026-05-12 14:00 - 15:00, 2026-05-19 14:00 - 15:00, 2026-05-26 14:00 - 15:00, 2026-06-02 14:00 - 15:00, 2026-06-09 14:00 - 15:00 | Discussion room 5th floor, C. Nicolás Cabrera, 13-15, Fuencarral-El Pardo, Madrid, Madrid, 28049, Spain
Every Tuesday at 2:00 PM in the discussion room on the 5th floor.
Join the IFT cosmology/gravity journal club at benty-fields.com to vote for papers and volunteer to present them

Seminar by Andrii Dashko (DESY)
2026-05-14 15:00 - 16:00 | IFT Seminar Room/Red Room, Instituto de Física Teórica (IFT) -C. Nicolás Cabrera, 13-15, Fuencarral-El Pardo, Madrid, 28049,, Spain
Title: ‘Perturbative aspect of electroweak phase transitions in the Early Universe’

Seminar by Jose Beltran (Salamanca)
2026-05-18 15:00 - 16:00 | IFT Seminar Room/Red Room, Instituto de Física Teórica (IFT) -C. Nicolás Cabrera, 13-15, Fuencarral-El Pardo, Madrid, 28049,, Spain

Seminar by Felix Yu (Mainz U.)
2026-05-21 15:00 - 16:00 | IFT Seminar Room/Red Room, Instituto de Física Teórica (IFT) -C. Nicolás Cabrera, 13-15, Fuencarral-El Pardo, Madrid, 28049,, Spain

Seminar by Marco Finetti (U. Aveiro)
2026-05-28 15:00 - 16:00
Title: ‘First Order Phase Transitions and Gravitational Waves’
Venue&Time: Red Room / 15:00
Speaker: Marco Finetti (U. Aveiro)
Abstract: The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) will be the first space-based gravitational wave (GW) detector, opening a new observational window for both astrophysics and early-Universe cosmology. Operating in the millihertz band, it will probe a rich superposition of GW signals. Astrophysical population models predict a sufficient number of signals in the LISA band to blend together and form an irresolvable Galactic foreground noise. In addition, a stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB) of cosmological origin could add an unknown component to the measured noise. In this talk, I will assess the bias induced on the parameter estimation of stochastic signals, arising from the unresolved binaries buried within the cosmological signal. Using a representative SGWB model, I will quantify the impact of this effect on the reconstruction of the foreground template parameters and, most importantly, on those of the SGWB model itself. Neglecting inter-template correlations can lead to significan biases, and, for several benchmark cases, those biases exceed the statistical reconstruction uncertainties. These findings expose a key limitation of existing template-based strategies and indicate that unbiased component separation will likely require additional information, such as constraints from resolved sources obtained through global-fit analyses.

Seminar by Saskia Demulder (CUNEF)
2026-06-01 15:00 - 16:00 | IFT Seminar Room/Red Room, Instituto de Física Teórica (IFT) -C. Nicolás Cabrera, 13-15, Fuencarral-El Pardo, Madrid, 28049,, Spain

IFT Colloquium: Matthew Headrick (Brandeis & IHES)
2026-06-03 15:00 - 16:30 | Blue Room, Instituto de Física Teórica (IFT) - C. Nicolás Cabrera, 13-15, Fuencarral-El Pardo, Madrid, 28049,, Spain
Venue&Time: Blue Room / 15:00
Coffee will be served in the cafeteria at 16:15h

Seminar by Sarah R. Geller (TBC)
2026-06-11 15:00 - 16:00 | IFT Seminar Room/Red Room, Instituto de Física Teórica (IFT) -C. Nicolás Cabrera, 13-15, Fuencarral-El Pardo, Madrid, 28049,, Spain
