The purpose of this winter school is to provide PHD students and young postdocs in the Nordic countries with introductory and advanced courses in a range of the most important topics in the field of theoretical cosmology. Furthermore, the school will provide a way to bring together students and young postdocs across different fields, research institutions and countries.

In the search for dark matter (DM), one particular focus is on light and ultra-light dark matter, i.e. sub-GeV mass dark matter from a hidden dark sector with a new force interacting with the standard model or ultra-light DM with mass range from 10−22 eV to keV. The arguably most popular example of the latter class is the axion, invoked to solve the apparent absence of CP violation in Quantum Chromo Dynamics. Detection of these particles poses new challenges to potential sensor materials: very small energy depositions, magnetic properties and anisotropic response to particle interactions for example become crucial requirements. The challenge of finding suitable materials fits well with recent developments in solid state physics: Motivated by the exponential growth of computational power and the resulting data, we witness the rapid adoption of functional materials prediction within the framework of materials informatics. Here, methods adapted from computer science based on data-mining and machine learning are applied to identify materials with requested target properties.

The workshop brings together theoretical high energy physicists who are specialised in string theory in a broad sense. The workshop focuses on four intertwined pillars: String compactifications, AdS/CFT and dualities, Black holes, and Conformal field theories and symmetries. Besides providing an opportunity to exchange knowledge on the most recent and outstanding developments in these fields, this workshop will be an opportunity to discuss bias, diversity and gender issues within this scientific community which largely affect women, as a yet underrepresented minority in these fields.

Gravitational waves promise a new window into the highest-energy events in the evolution of the universe. The recent LIGO/Virgo detections of gravitational waves from the mergers of binary black holes and binary neutron stars and have ignited interest in the future direction of gravitational wave astronomy. A space-based laser interferometer, pioneered by NASA's LISA concept and the European Space Agency's eLISA program and ESA's recent spectacularly successful LISA Pathfinder mission, would enable direct detection of gravitational waves in the milliHertz range. A lower frequency range would allow detection of supermassive black hole mergers, tracing the galaxy merger history and serving as cosmic sirens to probe the universe's expansion history, as well as precursors for the LIGO sources. A space-based detector would also be sensitive to stochastic gravitational wave backgrounds produced by unknown physics operating in the very early universe, including an electroweak phase transition. This Nordita program will bring scientists together to engage in an effort to characterize and detect sources contributing to the gravitational wave background from the early universe, and the implications for new physics at the TeV scale and beyond.

Machine learning has entered the field of quantum matter with applications covering quantum materials and the many-body problem. For example, interpretable and computationally-efficient machine learning models are able to capture the structure-property relationship in materials science. In case of the many-body problem, machine learning architectures provide versatile wavefunctions that lead to accurate results and prove to be more flexible than traditional methods. Conversely, methods in physics have also influenced the development of machine learning methods in the case of tensor networks. The workshop will feature talks by leading experts combined with the talks of younger participants to present a broad picture of the activities and best ideas on the use of ML methods in quantum matter.

The traditional Nordita summer school in physics for students from the Nordic and Baltic countries aims at introducing frontier areas of physics research by world top scientists at a level understandable for master's and undergraduate students, and also to stimulate further studies. The lectures will be accompanied by exercises in groups and discussion sessions.

Recent advances in the band theory of crystalline materials have singled out topology as a key ingredient in the modern classification of matter, with major impact on measurable electronic properties. Topological band theory has also grown into an emerging paradigm in many areas of physics, and is now used to characterize metamaterials, including photonic, atomic, acoustic, and elastic systems, in both the quantum and classical regimes. As our understanding of topology in physics widens, the incorporation of out-of-equilibrium phenomena is gaining in importance.

In the last few years there has been renewed interest in QCD and hadronic dynamics using holographic gauge/gravity duality, resurge of the large N methods, progress in string models, integrability, unitarity and bootstrap and more. Also, many new experimental results were reported by ALICE at LHC regarding collectivization in pp and pA collisions, by LHCb at CERN and the B- and C-factories regarding the existence of exotics and the spectroscopy of heavy-light systems, and more recently the reporting of 2 neutron star mergers by the LIGO collaboration and its constraint on the nuclear dense equation of state. The conference will bring together practitioners of these interdisciplinary fields to discuss these exciting new developments, and explore the relevance of the holographic framework for addressing these observations.

The conference will cover cutting-edge non-perturbative methods in quantum field theory, as well as mathematical aspects of integrability and its more traditional applications in condensed-matter physics and statistical mechanics. Solvable models play a valuable a role in theoretical physics, as they illustrate general concepts in a simpler setting and provide insights into the qualitative features of more complex phenomena.

Growing amount of molecular biological data combined with current advances in modeling of complex systems provide unprecedented opportunities to understand biological evolution in a quantitative way. A quantitative description of an evolving system is the first step towards prediction and control, and it opens new exciting directions for highly interdisciplinary research. The central questions are: (i) to what degree we can predict the outcome of biological evolution, (ii) what features of the system are predictable and (iii) which features confer predictive value for a quantitative description of the system. This program brings together theoretical and experimental physicists, experimental biologists with an interest in quantitative modelling and mathematicians with interest in biological systems.

A week of workshops at the frontiers of quantum physics. Hosted by Frank Wilczek in collaboration with Stockholm University, Nordita and Wilczek Quantum Center at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

In recent years there have been exciting new developments at the interface between elliptic integrable systems, special functions and quantum field theory. The aim of this workshop is to obtain a better understanding of the emerging links between these topics and to help bring out further unexpected connections in the future. This will be achieved by bringing together researchers from diverse areas in mathematics and physics, for a week of lectures and informal discussions. The workshop is the continuation of a series (Kyoto 2004, Bonn 2008, Leiden 2013, Vienna 2017). It is a satellite meeting of String Math 2019, which takes place on Uppsala 1-5 July. The main themes of the meeting are: Elliptic integrable systems, Elliptic hypergeometric functions, Elliptic and classical Painlevé equations, and New special functions emerging from quantum field theory

This school, intended for PhD students and junior researchers in quantum phenomena and condensed matter physics, will consist of short courses on topics from Short courses from Quantum Matter, Quantum Information and Quantum Sensing, from theory to computations and experimental results.

This Nordita Program is devoted to theoretical and observational studies of the interstellar medium of galaxies across cosmic time, and to their implications in shaping future line-intensity mapping experiments which have recently generated a tremendous interest in the Community of astrophysicists and cosmologists. The program is particularly timely because the advent of new facilities, such as ALMA full array, JWST (launch spring 2019), and E-ELT (2024), will provide a wealth of high resolution multi-wavelength spectroscopic data on the ISM of galaxies across cosmic time. Moreover, the program will bring together experts from different areas as we aim gathering astrophysicists, working on galactic and extragalactic observation, theoreticians devising simulations, astrochemists, and cosmologists interested in the large scale structure of the Universe. The program has been conceived with a bottom-up structure that, from ~pc scales, relevant for star formation, will zoom-out up to ~Mpc scales relevant for intensity mapping experiments.

Statistical mechanics provides a universal formalism to understand the behavior of a variety of complex systems on a variety of spatio-temporal scales. This conference will deal with a selection of the most recent developments and cutting edge scientific research topics within the general area of nonequilibrium statistical physics, stochastic modelling, complex networks, nonlinear dynamical systems, chaos and turbulence, disordered quantum systems and spin glasses, phase transitions and critical phenomena, and interdisciplinary applications in physics, biology, economics, and the social sciences. There will be ample opportunity for informal discussions and interdisciplinary interaction between people from different scientific backgrounds within the broad area of statistical and nonlinear physics. This will be the 2nd conference of the EPS Statistical and Nonlinear Physics Division, connected with the award of the EPS Statistical and Nonlinear Physics Prize.

Physical systems look different when observed at different resolutions: what appears as a continuum liquid to the naked eye becomes a cluster of jiggling atoms when observed at the resolution of an electron microscope. Effective field theory provides a description of physics in terms of degrees of freedom appropriate to a given resolution. Over the last couple of decades, physicists have developed effective field theory tools which, to a large extent, unify fields as diverse as atomic and condensed-matter physics, particle and nuclear physics, and cosmology. The ensuing interaction between different branches of physics has never been as fruitful as it is now. The aim of this program is to give a new impulse to a further development of this exciting interdisciplinary field. We bring together leading practitioners working on effective theories of quantum phases of matter across several branches of physics. Our goal is to map out important open problems with broad relevance and look for new directions towards their solution, to reinvigorate existing collaborations and foster new connections.

Quantum Information Science is a major frontier of modern science and technology, exploring physical situations that are classically impossible. An important technological application, already available today, is secure quantum key distribution realized by spatially separated entangled quantum states. This program will be centered around new fundamental physical questions that will emerge from successful current and future quantum technologies. The focus will be on effects and phenomena that appear already in low-dimensional quantum systems, and which are (or may soon be) experimentally realized.

This workshop series provides a forum where scientists in the Nordic countries working in the area of Statistical Physics can meet regularly. Topics covered include diffusion problems, physics of DNA and bio-molecules, population dynamics, pattern formation, non-equilibrium transport, bacterial motility, single-molecule kinetics, dynamics and structure of networks, statistical inference, Monte-Carlo simulation techniques, self-assembly, soft condensed matter (colloids, liquid crystals etc.), work relations and fluctuation theorems, and many more.

For quantum systems confined to lower-dimensional geometries there is a possibility to create states of matter that display very non-trivial topological behavior. The most famous example is the fractional quantum Hall effect and its associated effective particles with unusual statistics, called anyons. Despite such models having been studied intensively by physicists for a long time, there has been very little progress on the rigorous mathematical side. The aim of the workshop is therefore to bring together leading experts in the field, both mathematicians and physicists, to summarize the state of the art and to exchange ideas on future directions. In view of the serious theoretical intricacies of the field, particular emphasis will be put on the possible use of recent rigorous mathematics in physical applications.

Magnetic helicity is a conserved quantity in ideal MHD and is also a topological invariant. Due to these properties, it plays special roles for the operation of the global solar dynamo, and in the release of solar eruptive events, but both of these related processes remain poorly understood. On both themes, theoretical models would benefit from being validated and constrained with observational data, and the increasing amounts of observational data could be more efficiently used as basis to improve the models. The abundant observational data pouring in from various sources poses its own challenges and sometimes cross-calibrations are lacking. This program will bring together solar observers and dynamo theorists to work on these topics. We aim to obtain crucial new knowledge on the operation of the global solar dynamo itself, but also how it drives eruptive events which then are observed as space weather.

The purpose of this winter school is to provide PhD students and young postdocs in the Nordic countries with introductory courses in a range of the most important topics in the field of theoretical particle physics. The school will provide a way to bring together students and young postdocs across different fields, research institutions and countries.

Presently under construction, the European Spallation Source (ESS) will be the world's most powerful neutron source. The ESS can provide a unique program of experimental particle physics at the intensity and precision frontiers. Experiments at the ESS can address central open questions in modern physics such as the mechanism of baryogenesis, the strong CP problem, and the nature of dark matter. Sensitivity to particles and processes beyond the Standard Model at mass scales beyond that available at colliders. This workshop explores the potential of the ESS, focusing on the optimization of signatures and experimental search strategies, the development of the phenomenology needed to interpret ESS results, and the complementarity with the collider program. A number of topics are covered, including the implications of precision measurements neutron decay, searches for neutron electric dipole moment and for the baryon number violating (BNV) processes.

The conventional approaches for treating condensed matter, based on Fermi liquid theory and the associated Landau-Ginzburg-Wilson approach to phase transitions, have been challenged recently, as we see a growing library of states that do not display this behaviorm and also witness discoveries of many materials that exist on the verge of transitions to different types of ordered states. These developments are encapsulated within the new category of condensed matter known as “quantum materials”, which has stimulated a host of new ideas based on unconventional correlated, entangled, and topological orders. Attendant with the developments on theory and modeling we see a rapid rise of new probes of matter, most prominently, MAX IV and ESS that are capable of revealing a new and exciting behavior of quantum matter at the short time scale with high spatial resolution.

Gauge theory and general relativity are the two modern frameworks that describe the interactions of fundamental spin-1 (gluon) and spin-2 (graviton) particles, respectively. Despite significant historical differences in how these theories were developed, recent results show that these frameworks are intimately connected. The goal of this workshop is to bring together in a collaborative environment world experts on ideas and methods relevant to the double-copy dictionary between gauge and gravity perturbative predictions. Topics expected to be covered by the workshop include: amplitudes in supersymmetric gauge theory and gravity, classical solutions and perturbation theory in gravity, effective potentials and gravitational waves, higher-loop QCD, supergravity UV divergences, gravitational symmetries, string amplitudes, on-shell diagrams and the amplituhedron, twistor strings, polylogarithms, color-kinematics duality and the double copy, and more.

This program is devoted to the discussion of the latest theoretical and experimental advances related to chiral magnetic phenomena and their relevance for plasma physics, particle physics, condensed matter physics, astrophysics and cosmology. Included topics: Chiral magnetohydrodynamics (MHD), including theory of laminar and turbulent dynamos in chiral MHD and impact of chiral magnetic phenomena on waves in plasma; Direct numerical simulations of laminar and turbulent dynamos in chiral magnetohydrodynamics; Astrophysical and cosmological applications of chiral MHD: the early Universe, neutron stars, quark-gluon plasmas; Applications of chiral MHD to high-energy heavy ion collisions at RHIC and LHC; New materials with pseudo-relativistic electrons and chiral magnetic effect.

The program explores recent developments in describing the dynamics of strongly-coupled field theories using the notion of fundamental, quantum bounds on transport, and their interplay with quantum chaos. By bringing together international leaders in condensed matter and high-energy physics, we aim at enhancing our current understanding by combining experimental results and the various theoretical, non-perturbative approaches to these problems. Participants will include experts in thermoelectric transport experiments, hydrodynamics, gauge/gravity duality, condensed matter and conformal field theory.

Organised in a series of meetings devoted to accretion and ejection from compact objects, this workshop will cover spectral and timing aspects of black holes and neutron stars. The conference will bring together observers and theoreticians to discuss our present understanding of accretion, and what key questions we need to answer. The meeting will include topics such as: 'X-ray timing and spectral observations and modelling', 'Multiwavelength observations and modelling', and 'Simulations of accretion/ejection'.

Almost a century ago Einstein’s seminal paper 'Cosmological Considerations in the General Theory of Relativity' (2 August 1917) proposed a game changing addition to his theory of general relativity: Lambda, the cosmological constant. Since then, and in particular from the remarkable experimental data gathered during the last two decades, the cosmological constant has gone from a theoretical sideline to a central feature of research in cosmology and quantum gravity, including the effective Λ of inflation, the observed Λ of the late time acceleration of our universe, and the negative Λ of the gauge/gravity correspondence in string theory. Theoreticians and philosophers have been fascinated and aggravated by 'the Lambda Problem' for a century. The advent of precision cosmology has made this an issue of practical relevance, and this workshop will be productive through critiquing and advancing theoretical approaches within the constraints of observations.

Since the discovery of topological insulators about a decade ago, the field has been focused on non-interacting gapped fermionic states, classified within the so-called 'ten-fold way periodic table'. However, new topological states of matter not captured within this classification have recently been theoretically proposed and experimentally discovered. These include topological crystalline insulators, Weyl semimetals, but also classical topological states in mechanical metamaterials. Given these developments it is clear that the study of topological matter is entering a new period where the themes going 'beyond the ten-fold way' take the center stage. In this program, we bring together experimentalists and theorists to review the current status of this burgeoning field, identify the crucial areas where progress can be made, and foster collaborations and partnerships to vigorously pursue these goals.

A week of workshops at the frontiers of quantum physics. Hosted by Frank Wilczek in collaboration with Stockholm University, Nordita and Wilczek Quantum Center at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

This school, intended for PhD students and junior researchers in quantum phenomena and condensed matter physics, will consist of short courses on topics from Quantum Chaos and Disordered Systems to Topological Matter, Entanglement and Quantum Information, from theory to computations and experimental results.

The program will bring together a group of theoretical physicists, mathematicians, experimental biologists, and experimental biophysicists, to study the mechanisms by which (i) protein assemblies, such as biopolymers, exert forces in cells, (ii) protein assembly dynamics in cells are regulated by forces, and (iii) the dynamics of force-generating assemblies are controlled by signaling pathways. The program will enhance the formation of collaborative links between experiment and theory, as well as those between theorists using different methodologies. It will also clarify the links between apparently disparate, but related phenomena by bringing in individuals with a broad range of backgrounds. Finally, it will enhance the development of the mechanobiology community in the Nordic countries.

From a clinical point of view, cancer is a devastating disease. From the point of view of theoretical physics, it is fascinating. Cancer progression involves cells changing shape, cells that migrate under constraints imposed by the human body, flow of blood and cells, and changing of the physical characteristics of a human tissue, to give just a few examples. Moreover, some aspects of cancer development, such as population genetics, are well rooted within subfields of theoretical physics. In this conference, we will host world-renown experts in cancer research who will present their views of fundamental problems that limit our understanding of cancer (and where theoretical physics might be helpful). In addition, leading physicists and theoretically-oriented scientists from related fields will discuss theory and modelling applied to cancer research, and the presence of cancer biologists will facilitate a dialogue between the disciplines

The program will bring together theoretical physicists and mathematicians working in the seemingly different areas where exactly solvable or integrable models make pronounced appearance: integrability in gauge theories, stochastic processes and non-equilibrium dynamics, quantum quenches, chaotic behaviour in statistical systems, matrix models for topological strings and N=2 gauge theories based on localization, symmetric polynomials, Hall and cluster algebras.

Numerous systems including deformation and fracture of materials, dynamics of domain walls in ferromagnets, and earthquakes respond to slow and smooth external driving by exhibiting intermittent and bursty dynamics, or 'crackling noise', consisting of a sequence of events with a broad size distribution. A major challenge we aim to address within this program is that in many cases, the relevant empirical and experimental phenomena remain unexplained by theory. To this end, we plan to bring together experts of various fields where crackling noise is observed, including contributions from theory, numerical simulations and experiment, to present an overview of the current developments, and to discuss open problems of the field.

This workshop series provides a forum where scientists in the Nordic countries working in the area of Statistical Physics can meet regularly. Topics covered include diffusion problems, physics of DNA and bio-molecules, population dynamics, pattern formation, non-equilibrium transport, bacterial motility, single-molecule kinetics, dynamics and structure of networks, statistical inference, Monte-Carlo simulation techniques, self-assembly, soft condensed matter (colloids, liquid crystals etc.), work relations and fluctuation theorems, and many more.

One of the big challenges of non-perturbative quantum gravity is the complexity of the dynamics. Discrete approaches can only show a non-trivial dynamics and approximate the continuum when a large number of degrees of freedom is taken into account. Over the last decades numerical tools have stimulated and accelerated developments in many fields of theoretical physics, which is why we want to apply them to non-perturbative quantum gravity. The goal of this workshop is to bring together researchers from quantum gravity already working with numerical methods, those that want to start working with numerical methods and practitioners of numerics in other fields of physics to kick-start the development of numerical techniques and to establish new collaborations and research projects.

The purpose of this winter school is to provide PhD students and young postdocs in the Nordic countries with introductory courses in a range of the most important topics in the field of theoretical condensed matter physics. The school will provide a way to bring together students and young postdocs across different fields, research institutions and countries.

Molecular electronics and spintronics have been in the focus of fundamental research in the last decade and harbor great potential for future magnetic devices allowing to store magnetic information in fundamental units. Of particular importance for the design of devices is the study of organic/inorganic hybrid systems such as adsorbates/molecules on 2- and 3-dimensional substrates. This workshop focuses on the interplay between adsorbates/molecules and Dirac materials, and aims to provide an opportunity to present and discuss fundamental and applied research in the emerging field of Dirac materials and in particular on hybrid organic-topological interfaces.

The workshop will provide a forum for discussing recent cross-disciplinary advances in describing the dynamics of strongly-coupled many-body systems using notions from condensed matter, quantum chaos and holography. Emphasis will be placed on the impact on transport of fundamental bounds and the explicit/spontaneous breaking of symmetries. We will draw lessons on transport without quasiparticles, relevant both for theoretical models (e.g. holography, Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev) and experiments on bad metals and high Tc superconductors.

Stochastic thermodynamics is a recently established discipline of statistical physics. It aims to apply and extend thermodynamic principles to the non equilibrium regime. In particular, it provides an adequate framework to investigate the behaviour of small systems. The salient property of stochastic thermodynamics is the incorporation of fluctuations, which are prominent on that scale. In combination with the constraints put forth by macroscopic thermodynamics, a number of important fundamental results were established, e.g. the fluctuation theorems. Stochastic thermodynamics is by now a rapidly evolving field, with an increasing range of applications. The aim of this program to discuss the latest developments and open problems in Stochastic Thermodynamics.

Energization of particles is the cornerstone for the most of bright astrophysical phenomena in the Solar system and beyond. Solar flares, pulsars, jets launched by accreting black hole in active galaxies and microquasars and accretion discs around compact objects shine thanks to the dramatic energy release with associated particle acceleration. Which processes lead to energy output, how particles lose their energy to radiation and what are the observational signatures? These are the open questions to be answered by the modern numerical laboratories. The workshop aims to discuss the state-of-the-art approaches, challenges for the next-generation hybrid MHD-PiC and radiation-PiC methods and outline the problems to be answered by the new exascale simulations of Nature in silico.

Modern condensed matter systems of interest, including those which display the highest superconducting transition temperatures, tend to exhibit a complex interplay of many-body ordering tendencies with ensuing multicomponent field theories. Understanding the microscopic origin and the phenomenology of such interplay has been among the most active frontiers of research in recent years. A satellite of the 28th International Conference on Low Temperature Physics, LT28, held 9-16 August 2017 in Gothenburg, Sweden, this conference will cover a wide range of topics such as superconductivity in iron-pnictides, cuprates, and in materials without inversion symmetry, as well as other systems with unconventional pairing symmetry.

The traditional Nordita one-week summer school in physics for students from the Nordic and Baltic countries aims at introducing frontier areas of physics research by world top scientists at a level understandable for master's and undergraduate students, and also to stimulate further studies. The lectures will be accompanied by exercises in groups and discussion sessions.

Topological phases play an important role in condensed matter physics for understanding quantum effects like topological insulators and the quantum Hall effect. At the same time, cold atoms and ions have matured as a testbed to study complex quantum systems and are now used to generate, visualize and understand topological quantum states and phases. This program will bring together researchers from condensed matter and atomic physics, to share their knowledge how to describe and investigate topological quantum systems and to inspire collaborations between researchers of the two fields.

A week of workshops at the frontiers of quantum physics. Hosted by Frank Wilczek in collaboration with Stockholm University, Nordita and Wilczek Quantum Center at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

What is the expansion history of the Universe? What are dark energy and dark matter? Is Einstein’s theory of gravity valid on cosmological scales? What generated the initial perturbations that grew into stars and galaxies? We are gradually developing the observational and theoretical prowess to tackle the most fundamental unknowns of our Universe, the nature of dark matter and dark energy, and to shed light on the dark ages spanning the dawn of time to the birth of the first star. Through observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background and Large Scale Structure we are unravelling this cosmic puzzle while constraining the inflationary physics that we believe is responsible for generating the primordial perturbations, the seeds of our universe. By complementing these studies with information from cosmological messengers, such as neutrinos and gravitational waves, we link our cosmological understanding to fundamental physics. The challenge for further progress lies at the intersection of these thrusts; strong interactions and collaborations between the theory and observations are required to answer key questions of modern day cosmology.

Massive stars, almost always found in pairs, evolve and end their lives as extreme-gravity compact objects - white dwarfs, neutron stars and black holes. Binary stellar interactions and gravitational radiation drive these two objects together resulting in their mergers. Such mergers are widely accepted to give rise to a host of the most energetic transient events known in the Universe. By critically assessing binary stellar interactions and evolution, this multidisciplinary program will bring together theorists, computational astrophysicists, observers, and instrumentalists for a period of three weeks. Our aim is to systematically connect the binary progenitors through the complex merger physics to the myriad of observed and predicted cosmic transient events.

Phase transitions occur constantly in the interstellar medium and to a large degree define star and planet formation. The transition from atomic to molecular gas sets the initial conditions for star formation, while the formation and destruction mechanisms of dust and other solids is the basis for understanding the origins of planets. This program aims to bring together experts in ISM dynamics, planet formation, exoplanet atmosphere, and planetary ices, from both modeling and observations to study this problem in detail.

The conference brings together many of the leading experts, across both theory and experiments, working in the closely related areas of topological insulators, semimetals, and superconductors at the forefront of the field of topological quantum matter, for an intense week of stimulating idea exchanges. A special focus will be on topological semimetals such as Weyl semimetals, which were recently experimentally realized and have already been shown to host a number of truly remarkable properties. Additional focus topics include: effects of interactions and fractional topological phases, interplay of topology and superconductivity, Majorana fermions, and driven states such as Floquet topological insulators.

This workshop series provides a forum where scientists in the Nordic countries working in the area of Statistical Physics can meet regularly.

The purpose of this winter school is to provide PhD students and young postdocs in the Nordic countries with introductory courses in a range of the most important topics in the field of planet formation. The school will provide a way to bring together students and young postdocs across different fields, research institutions and countries.

The recent years have brought exciting developments in axion physics and breakthroughs in the experimental searches seem very likely at this time. To review the current status and foreseeable experimental advances, this workshop will bring together leading researchers from around the world who are exploring the physics around axions using a variety of techniques, to share their insights and find synergies.

The aim of the Gaia Challenge is to prepare and discuss the exploitation of Gaia data, the first release of which will be on September 14, 2016. The format is that participants are invited to apply their favorite techniques to mock data in an effort to recover underlying physical quantities, like the gravitational potential and the phase-space structure of stars. However, this year a particular focus will be dedicated to the first data release of Gaia. The mock data will be distributed in advance, and the workshop itself is focused in comparing and discussing results, honing the various techniques, and building collaborations. The Gaia Challenge is part of the Nordita scientific program Dark Matter Distribution in the Era of Gaia.

Dark Matter (DM) binds our galaxy together and is at the heart of modern cosmology. The current Lambda Cold DM paradigm has had great success on large scales, but a detailed understanding of the distribution of DM on smaller scales is still lacking where new data from Gaia could challenge the CDM scenario or rule out competing models such as warm dark matter. Gaia will measure the proper motion and distances of on the order of a billion stars in the Milky Way's disk, bulge and halo, as well as in a few individual Milky Way satellites. The focus of the workshop is to bring theorists (particle physicists and astrophysicists), modelers, and observers together in order to discuss ideas, methods, and modeling to focus our understanding of the local universe revealed by Gaia at a critical time when the first data from Gaia will become available.

The recent detections by the twin LIGO detectors of gravitational waves is one of the most important events in the history of science. It is therefore not surprising that gravitational waves are today the focus of attention for both the general public and professionals. There were already many events organized where LIGO's experimental results have been discussed, but none focused on the mathematical foundations of the theory behind the discovery. However, LIGO's success is not only a triumph of experimental physics and technology; it is also the culmination of a century of work by theorists on mathematical descriptions of gravitational waves. This three-day event is organized by Nordita and sponsored by Nordita, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences through its Nobel Institute for Physics, the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education and the Polish Society of Relativity.

With the coming on-line of MAX IV as a world-leading synchrotron radiation facility, theory support is be essential to obtain maximum yield on this investment in experimental hardware. This school, open to students from the Nordic countries as well as elsewhere, focuses on state-of-the-art theory to describe different spectroscopies and scattering techniques. Topics to be covered include fundamental aspects of light-matter interactions, second quantization, relativistic effects, vibrational spectroscopy, optical and x-ray spectroscopies, dynamical effects, electron spectroscopy techniques and high-energy scattering.

Turbulent combustion is not only a part of our daily life (e.g. in combustion engines that power road vehicles, airplanes, space vehicles and ships, as well as in power plants and numerous industrial sectors), but also it is the key process in supernovae explosions and thermo-nuclear fusion. Turbulence itself is a challenging research area and over the past few decades a significant development in experiments and high fidelity modeling has been made. Combustion is a multi-scale physico-chemical process involving reactions with a range of time scales and when coupled with turbulence they occur also in different spatial locations. Depending on the mixture composition, temperature, pressure and flow conditions rich combustion phenomena can occur: ignition, quenching, deflagration and detonation wave propagation, formation of pollutants, supernovae explosion, etc.

This conference is organized in connection with the Nordita program Black Holes and Emergent Spacetime. The conference will provide a forum for discussing recent advances in gravitational theory and its interplay with quantum theory, with a focus on quantum aspects of black holes and the holographic nature of space-time.

This Nordita Program will develop two interrelated themes to provide new insights into the underlying holographic structure of space-time and the quantum nature of black holes. We will focus on the interplay between quantum entanglement, entropy and the emergence of space-time from quantum field theory in the context of holographic dualities. A parallel theme involves extending the notion of holographic duality to more general classes of space-times. Widening the scope of the holographic paradigm will open up new avenues for applied holography and may shed light on some deep puzzles in quantum cosmology. The program aims at bringing together experts in this exciting research field and introduce PhD students and younger researchers to these developments.

The Amplitudes 2016 conference will be devoted to exciting advances and developments in the field of amplitudes and related subjects: amplitudes in gauge, gravity, and string theories, AdS/CFT and integrability, the structure of SYM and supergravity, mathematics of polylogarithms, Grassmannians and twistor approaches, and connections to LHC phenomenology.

Modern condensed matter systems of interest, including those which display the highest superconducting transition temperatures, tend to exhibit a complex interplay of many-body ordering tendencies with ensuing multicomponent field theories. Understanding the microscopic origin and the phenomenology of such interplay has been among the most active frontiers of research in recent years. The goal of the workshop is to bring together experts working on various aspects of the field to share their latest development and spark future collaborations. The workshop will cover a wide range of topics such as: superconductivity in iron-pnictides, cuprates, and in materials without inversion symmetry, as well as other systems with unconventional pairing symmetry.

Scattering amplitudes in relativistic quantum theories possess a multitude of remarkable hidden structures and correspondences. They are of vital importance for high-precision comparisons of theory and experiment at the LHC, yet they also have the promise of revealing fundamentally new approaches to quantum field theory and of exposing interrelations that unify gauge theories, gravity, and string theory. This program will provide a meeting ground to communicate the current themes and recent progress in various areas of theoretical physics touched by scattering amplitudes. This includes N=4 SYM, higher-loop QCD, perturbative gravity, string amplitudes, polylogarithms, Grassmannians and the amplituhedron, soft theorems, twistor strings, color-kinematics duality and double-copy properties of gravity, supergravity UV behavior, and more.

The post Lehman market dynamics represent a fascinating case study of the evolution of the complex drive system. We propose to apply the methods of data mining, machine learning and social network analysis to analyze the behavior and possibly catch the tipping points and onset of new trends in the evolution of complex systems like markets. We envision a highly interactive exchange of ideas between social science, statistical physics, mathematics, Big Data and theoretical physics.

Recent years have seen a resurgence of interest in statistics mechanics aspects of quantum systems that are not covered by the well-developed quantum statistical mechanics. Key motivational questions have been quantum fluctuation relations and the generalization to the quantum domain of key concepts of non-equilibrium thermodynamics such as heat and work, all still actively investigated and where no consensus has been reached. The topic has many potential applications related to optimizing and control of quantum dynamics through interaction with the environment and through measurement. The workshop aims to bring together pioneers and leading researchers active in the field, and is also run as a school aimed at graduate and undergraduate students.

This conference will bring together researchers from various areas within natural sciences, who apply theoretical approaches to cancer research. In addition, we will host few leading clinically-oriented scholars who will present the audience with their views on the most urgent issues within the field. Ample time will be given for discussions, and we are expecting a dialogue between the theoretically- and clinically-oriented scientists, as well as interesting discussions among theoreticians.

Quantum field theoretical concepts are an essential tool for the understanding of a wide range of problems in condensed matter theory including the theory of quantum phase transitions, the quantum Hall effects, and frustrated spin systems. While field theories provide an effective description and capture the universal features, they cannot usually be directly related to microscopic models. Here numerical tools are of great importance to tackle quantum many-body problems starting from microscopic Hamiltonians. Over the past decades, several new numerical tools have been developed, including tensor product state based methods, multi-scale entanglement renormalization group methods and new quantum Monte Carlo methods.

The holographic duality has provided new insights into the physics of strongly-coupled systems by bridging together different subjects that before were thought to be completely unrelated, such as hydrodynamics and physics of black holes, string theory and strongly-coupled phenomena in condensed-matter physics, integrable systems and and non-perturbative behavior of gauge fields. Symmetries have played an important role in these developments and have led to development of new non-perturbative methods based for example on integrability, bootstrap and localization. The aim of the program is to discuss new developments in dualities and holography, with focus on gauge/string dualities, integrability, symmetries in string theory, supersymmetric localization, bootstrap methods, applications of holography in QCD and condensed-matter systems.

The workshop is devoted to the physics of the interaction between the accretion discs and stellar magnetospheres and structure of accretion flows onto magnetized neutron stars. The specific topics to be discussed during the workshop include but not limited to accreting millisecond pulsars (AMSP), X-ray pulsars, and Super-Eddington accretion flows around magnetized neutron stars.

This workshop series provides a forum where scientists in the Nordic countries working in the area of Statistical Physics can meet regularly. Topics covered include diffusion problems, physics of DNA and bio-molecules, population dynamics, pattern formation, non-equilibrium transport, bacterial motility, single-molecule kinetics, dynamics and structure of networks, statistical inference, Monte-Carlo simulation techniques, self-assembly, soft condensed matter (colloids, liquid crystals etc.), work relations and fluctuation theorems, and many more.

This is a collaboration meeting to answer an ESA call about medium space missions (5th call) referred to as M5. The application is to launch a satellite capable of doing microlensing and astrometry to discover (very best case scenario) exoplanets and dark matter, thus bring together two communities into one project.

A meeting in connection with the project on Bottlenecks for Particle Growth in Turbulent Aerosols financed by the Knut och Alice Wallenberg Foundation.

"Stochastic Thermodynamics" represents an exciting new research direction in statistical physics, which explores fundamental aspects of non-equilibrium processes. The common idea is to adapt and generalize concepts from equilibrium thermodynamics to the non-equilibrium realm, typically on the level of single particle trajectories monitored over the entire system evolution. The program intends to gather the world-leading experts to explore the possibilities of applying the tools of Stochastic Thermodynamics to open questions in biological systems, mainly on the cellular and molecular level.

During this conference, Stephen Hawking along with a group of the world's most renowned physicists will be discussing one of the most pressing and complex questions in the field and, arguably, the world today: whether singularities in black holes exist and whether Hawking radiation has bearing on their existence.

A major direction of research in contemporary condensed matter physics is the effort to design materials with specific functionality by utilizing the unique properties of interfaces between materials of different types. The prospect of using two-dimensional interfaces between two-dimensional layers at the nanoscale provides many potential avenues for tailoring materials. The program brings together world leaders in the fields of superconductivity and Dirac materials and young researchers from the Nordic region who can learn from them.

This interdisciplinary workshop will bring together researchers in nuclear and neutrino physics, nuclear astrophysics, and in numerical modelling of relativistic astrophysical phenomena such as the mergers of neutron stars and core-collapse supernovae. The overarching goal of the MICRA workshop is to improve the interaction and collaboration between different communities towards astrophysical simulations that combine state-of-the-art microscopic (neutrino-matter interactions, equations of state, thermonuclear reaction rates) and macroscopic physics/methods (e.g. hydrodynamics, radiative transfer and relativity).

This workshop is targeted at new and potential new users of the open source relativity infrastructure. It will provide a general introductions into numerical relativity (although some previous knowledge would be beneficial) and in code development within large collaborations. Hands-on sessions will help to familiarize attendees with the Einstein Toolkit. We would like to invite especially students from physics and computer science to participate.

The traditional Nordita one-week summer school in physics for students from the Nordic and Baltic countries aims at introducing frontier areas of physics research by world top scientists at a level understandable for undergraduate students, and also to stimulate further studies. The following four series of lectures, each of five hours, will be given: Complex Systems, Gravitation and Cosmology, Stellar Physics, Quantum Computing in Condensed Matter Systems, and Amplitudes in High-Energy Physics. The lectures will be accompanied by exercises in groups and discussion sessions.

Magnetic reconnection is a fundamental multi­scale plasma process responsible for plasma transport, plasma heating and acceleration of energetic particles in many astrophysical environments, ranging from planetary magnetospheres and solar wind to solar flares, accretion disk corona, and other astrophysical plasmas. The major goal of this program is to increase the knowledge about the magnetic reconnection process in astrophysical plasma environments based on synergies between the studies of magnetic reconnection remotely, in situ, in numerical simulations and in laboratories.

Focus themes during this program will be: observations, observational tools, prospects; MHD in cosmology and origin of magnetic fields; and magnetized structures. There will be a conference during the second week.

The plan of the conference is a 3-day celebration of the remarkable advances in the fields of particle physics and cosmology from the turn of the millennium to the present day. There will be a series of talks and panels over the course of the three days by the invited participants. The conference will take place at a 17th century estate Piperska Muren in central Stockholm.

Manifestations of patterns such as wrinkles, folds, and singular creases, are ubiquitous mechanical instabilities found in nature and they happen at many different length-scales, from cell membranes to leaves and flowers. The ways materials respond to external forcing, deformation, failure, etc, are intrinsically geometric effects that get transmitted across length scales, from the geometric microstructure to the bulk. The goal of this meeting is to target cutting edge questions on the mechanics of shape formation and response of intrinsically 2-dimensional soft-matter with focus on the question how microstructure architectures may result into macroscopic phenomena that are effectively non-linear and anisotropic responses to external forces and strains.

The aim is to study quantum control and dynamics of few-particle systems in an active collaborative effort between experimentalists and theorists, as well as between recognized senior researchers and young investigators. The activity is motivated by recent advances in the physics of ultrafast phenomena in the femto- and attosecond time scale - a regime within reach of novel light sources. New insights into fundamental many-body physics are expected when ultrafast atomic and solid-state processes can be monitored in real time.

The physics of exotic nuclear shapes, where the nuclear behavior is expected to be significantly altered, presents the possibility of the appearance of chiral bands and its related new physics. Chirality represents a novel feature of rotating triaxial nuclei, in which the chiral symmetry is spontaneously broken in the intrinsic reference frame and is observed in the laboratory frame. During the three days of the Conference we plan to focus on the present theoretical and experimental status regarding chiral bands. We plan also to discuss new observations and theoretical approaches, the interaction between theories and experiments and, last but not least, future collaboration projects.

Renormalization group methods are a key element of theoretical particle physics and may also be central for constructing a fundamental theory of gravity, e.g., based on Weinberg’s asymptotic safety conjecture. The aim of this program is to bring together theorists and phenomenologists in order to discuss ideas related to the application of the renormalization group in quantum gravity and the consequences of asymptotic safety for cosmology, black holes and a possible ultraviolet completion of the standard model of particle physics including gravity.

Scientific recording of sunspots started with Galileo in 1609. Since Hale (1908) we know that sunspots are strong concentrations of magnetic field of up to 4000 gauss. They could be formed by subsurface magnetic flux tubes piercing the surface. Meanwhile, numerical simulations by many different groups suggest that strong magnetic fields could be generated in the bulk of the convection zone. This would mean that sufficiently strong magnetic fields may be generated not far from the surface. However, at the surface the magnetic field appears to be strongly concentrated into only a few isolated spots - in stark contrast to the more diffuse magnetic field beneath the surface. This is still a mystery.

The cosmological constant and the physics behind dark energy that accelerates the expansion of the universe remain among the biggest mysteries in theoretical physics. An intriguing possibility is that these problems stem from extrapolating Einstein's General relativity from the Solar system to the far infrared cosmological scales. In the other extreme, at the ultraviolet regime Einstein's theory encounters notorious infinities resulting in spacetime singularities and obstacles to quantisation, which suggest new gravitational physics with possible repercussions to early universe physics. The program aims at establishing new links between fundamental physics and cosmological and astrophysical experiments from the fruitful interface of extended theories of gravity.

This workshop series provides a forum where scientists in the Nordic countries working in the area of Statistical Physics can meet regularly. Topics covered include diffusion problems, physics of DNA and bio-molecules, population dynamics, pattern formation, non-equilibrium transport, bacterial motility, single-molecule kinetics, dynamics and structure of networks, statistical inference, Monte-Carlo simulation techniques, self-assembly, soft condensed matter (colloids, liquid crystals etc.), work relations and fluctuation theorems, and many more.

The purpose of this winter school is to provide PhD students and young postdocs in the Nordic countries with introductory courses in a range of the most important topics in the field of theoretical particle physics. The school will provide a way to bring together students and young postdocs across different fields, research institutions and countries.

This is a kick-off meeting in connection with the project on Bottlenecks for Particle Growth in Turbulent Aerosols financed by the Knut och Alice Wallenberg Foundation.

Water is ubiquitous and a prerequisite to life as we know it, yet the fundamental origin in terms of structure and dynamics of its many anomalous properties is still under debate. No simulation model is currently able to reproduce these properties throughout the phase diagram. Experimental techniques, such as x-ray spectroscopies and x-ray and neutron scattering, femtosecond pump-probe and free-electron laser experiments in "no man’s land", provide data that stimulate new theory developments. This program brings together experimentalists and theoreticians in strong synergy to advance towards a unified picture of water.

The main theme of the workshop is dark energy, and even more specifically the possible interactions of dark energy. The emphasis is theoretical but observational prospects shall be discussed with great interest. Some specific topics to be covered are: screening mechanisms (Vainshtein, chameleon, disformal, symmetron), structure formation (linear and nonlinear, N-body simulations, Euclid forecasts), and couplings to visible sector (variations of constants, astrophysical and cosmological constraints).

Advanced theoretical methods play a central role in answering the key questions of many-body physics. We intend to discuss and compare such methods as are being applied at present in nuclear physics, condensed matter, cold atoms and quantum chemistry. The computation techniques required to achieve an understanding of existing experimental data and in predicting with high reliability new properties and processes seem at present to be dispersed in the various fields.

The aim of this workshop is to put together experimentalist, theoreticians and phenomenologists that are interested in possible tests of the quantum/discrete structure of spacetime at very short distances. There will be a number of rather focussed talks that will discuss possible phenomenological tests of quantum gravity scenarios and propose new ideas in this direction. This is the fourth workshop of the series.

Quantum physics is a notoriously challenging subject even for the experts. The goal of this workshop is to give science writers the opportunity to take a step back and gain a broader perspective on this field. At the same time, we want to give researchers in the field the possibility to interact with science writers and share experiences about the pitfalls of science communication. Some of the topics covered: Quantum computing, quantum optics and novel tests of the foundations of quantum mechanics, topologial insulators, tests of emergent quantum mechanics, analog gravity, the gauge-gravity duality and its applications in condensed-matter physics, and searching for new physics in atomic, molecular and optical physics.

The 2014 annual workshop of the ESF network HoloGrav will be held in Reykjavík, Iceland. The meeting will provide an overview and assessment of recent progress in applying holographic methods to various strongly coupled quantum systems. Focus topics include: quantum entanglement, out of equilibrium dynamics in condensed matter and in heavy ion collisions, explicit and spontaneous symmetry breaking in holographic models, holography for higher spin theories, and integrability in supersymmetric gauge theories.

This conference, which is part of the Nordita program Quantum Engineering of States and Devices, aims at furthering interactions among researchers working in different subfields of quantum engineered systems.

Supersymmetry is one of the most beautiful symmetry principles in physics. Apart from possible phenomenological applications, supersymmetry has led to tremendous progress in understanding non-perturbative phenomena in quantum field theory. The aim of the workshop is to highlight recent advances in supersymmetric field theories, in particular through their relationship to other subjects such as integrable systems, string theory, gauge-string duality and AdS/CFT correspondence, QCD and conformal field theory.

Experimental research on engineered quantum states and devices is progressing rapidly, providing special opportunities and challenges for the theorist. While the basic motivation draws from the wish to understand the intriguing coherence and correlation effects often featured, the prospects to use them for processing and storing quantum information has given the field an additional boost. The program aims at offering an interdisciplinary forum to further interactions among theorists working in different subfields of quantum engineered systems.

Integrable systems play an important role in physics, as they give us a clue on strongly coupled phenomena in quantum field theory and statistical mechanics, the description of which by other means is impossible or very difficult. The school will cover applications of holographic duality and integrability to condensed matter systems, conformal field theory, modern methods to compute scattering amplitudes, and various aspects of integrability in AdS/CFT correspondence, such as the Thermodynamic Bethe Ansatz, applications to scattering amplitudes and Wilson loops.

In a frustrated system, competition between interactions hinders the tendency towards forming an ordered state, allowing for the emergence of new physical phenomena. This programme will bring together experts in the field of frustrated and critical magnetism as well as younger researchers, to discuss recent developments, explore connections between different areas of research, and generate new ideas.

We are witnessing a tremendous growth of the activities in materials that host Dirac fermions, also known as Dirac Materials. The unique properties of the linear Dirac spectrum point to interesting ways to functionalize these materials for new applications. Complementary to that discussion the workshop will cover the role of nanoscale superconductors and particular interest will be paid to hybrid structures that bring into contact different competing phases.

The meeting will take place during the scientific program Dynamics of Particles in Flows at Nordita, 2-27 June.

A NETADIS-Nordita meeting in honor of John Hertz' 70th birthday. Studying the dynamics of large systems with complex dynamics, e.g. arising from disorder in the form competing interactions, is important for a wide range of problems from spin glasses to machine learning, neuroscience, protein interaction networks, metabolic networks and systemic risk in finance. The workshop brings together experts in statistical physics approaches suited to large networks together with experts in interdisciplinary application areas to address these questions.

The meeting will take place during the scientific program Dynamics of Particles in Flows at Nordita, 2-27 June.

The question of the dynamics of particles in flows has a wide range of applications. Examples are the dispersion of pollutants in the atmosphere, fuel injection in a car engine, rain formation in clouds, and planet formation in circumstellar accretion disks. These examples have in common that the fundamental processes (collisions, coalescence, or breakup of particles) are determined by similar microscopic equations.

Recent years have been characterized by an increasing interest in and awareness of the role of multi-scale interactions in shaping the ecology of wide aquatic environments as the ocean and small-scale active suspensions as biofilms. Penetrating such a new and intriguing research field demands a multidisciplinary approach accounting for the coupling of physics, chemistry, and biology from the microscale to the macroscale.

This 3-day workshop on latest results in Dark Matter searches is coordinated with the concurrent Nordita program What is Dark Matter?.

The nature of Dark Matter is one of the most important outstanding problems in modern physics. Many Dark Matter models exhibit high dimensional parameter spaces with many degeneracies and considerable expected backgrounds, and therefore a combination of all experimental data available will likely be necessary to arrive at robust conclusions regarding the nature of dark matter. The aim of the program is to bring together experimentalists, phenomenologists and theorists in order to discuss ideas, methods and models for interpreting the vast amount of data available.

The focus of this program is the theory and phenomenology of neutrino physics and the role of neutrinos in astrophysics and cosmology. Important issues include extended versions of the Standard Model of particle physics including massive neutrinos, using neutrinos for probing astrophysical environments, and confronting theories with measurements. We intend the program to be a workshop in the real sense of the word, with informal discussion meetings and ample opportunities for research and discussion of common projects.

This workshop series provides a forum where scientists in the Nordic countries working in the area of Statistical Physics can meet regularly. Topics covered include diffusion problems, physics of DNA and bio-molecules, population dynamics, pattern formation, non-equilibrium transport, bacterial motility, single-molecule kinetics, dynamics and structure of networks, statistical inference, Monte-Carlo simulation techniques, self-assembly, soft condensed matter (colloids, liquid crystals etc.), work relations and fluctuation theorems, and many more.

The aim of this research training course is to give to the participants an overview of current trends in condensed matter physics and at the same time provide them with the tools to enter into rapidly developing areas of research. The school is addressed to PhD students and young post-docs, and will last two weeks with 10 full days of teaching. As well as the basic topics fundamental to condensed matter physics, the school will cover the fields of magnetism, topological states of matter, and the physics of low-dimensional structures and interfaces.

The program during this meeting will consist of three lecture series by invited speakers (on 'Holographic entanglement entropy', 'Recent advances in conformal bootstrap', and 'Rigid supersymmetry on curved manifolds'), as well as short talks by students and young researchers who wish to contribute.

Cosmic magnetic fields reveal themselves in the form of polarized synchrotron emission. This non-thermal emission originates from relativistic electrons gyrating around the field lines and is routinely observed in the radio wavelength. The upcoming generation of radio telescopes will give polarization maps of nearby galaxies with unprecedented detail. Existing data are limited in resolution and suffer from various shortcomings related to projection effects and the finite bandwidth of radio frequencies used.

The workshop is part of the program Lyman Alpha as an Astrophysical Tool

This program is about the Ly α transition in Hydrogen and its astrophysical applications. Young stellar populations are dominated by massive, hot and short-lived stars that ionize their surroundings, which is hence a powerful, but complicated, probe of star forming and high redshift galaxies. This programs aims to bring together experts in modeling Ly αradiative transfer and galaxy formation, and observations of Ly α in local galaxies and the distant universe.

Superconductivity has been of central scientific interest for more than a century, and yet the progress to date has been largely empirical: despite the tremendous progress in many-body theory there is as yet no general set of rules to predict and “design” new kinds of superconductors. With the rapidly growing list of new superconductors we feel it is time to have a high level workshop, bringing together theorists and experimentalists and focusing on the established facts and challenges in understanding the fundamental properties and basic mechanisms of superconductivity.

The workshop is part of the program Beyond th LHC

The 14 TeV LHC will look further above the electroweak scale, but where do we go beyond that to improve our understanding of the fundamental constituents of the Universe? Should we look to the results of a high-luminosity SLHC or a higher energy VLHC, do we need a precision linear collider at ILC or CLIC energies, are neutrino or flavour experiments essential to move forward, what can we learn from astrophysics?

In order to further reduce the cost of whole-genome sequencing, radically new methods need to be developed to determine the nucleobase order in DNA. Electronic sequencing could potentially provide an attractive alternative to the existing biochemical approaches. At this workshop, leading experts in the field will discuss the science and technology underpinning various forms of electronic sequencing including nanopore-based ionic conductance measurements, embedded electrodes, and STM-based techniques.

This workshop will focus on highlights of materials and engineering capabilities at Los Alamos, KTH and Nordita in the field of complex materials that are of great scientific interest for basic science and for nuclear energy applications. From the perspective of basic science we will discuss strong electronic correlations along with strong coupling to multiple degrees of freedom. The workshop will also discuss our current understanding of the interactions of defects at interfaces in materials subjected to extreme radiation doses and mechanical stress in order to synthesize new interface-dominated materials with tailored response under such extreme conditions.

This programme brings together astrophysical theoreticians and simulators interested in radiative feedback, specifically the dynamical effects of radiative heating of dense gaseous structures, a process known as photo-evaporation, which occurs in regions of intense star formation, in the dense planet forming discs around young stars, in massive planets orbiting close to their parent star and even in the earliest phases of galaxy formation in the Universe. As part of the programme a 5-day workshop will address the latest observational and theoretical results.

Writing about science for the public is challenging. With deadlines looming, it's hard to carve out time to recharge your intellectual batteries, find distinctive stories, and get a broad overview of where researchers are headed. We've designed this workshop to give you the background material you need to cover astrophysics and cosmology, packing as much as possible into as short a time as possible for the busy working journalist.

The meeting addresses applications of statistical mechanics to biological cooperativity on all level from the molecular to strategical actions and the development of populations. The workshop is held in Mariehamn, Åland.

Stability and transition of flows belong to fundamental issues in the field of fluid mechanics. Predicting flow structures and characteristics requires deep understanding of the different routes of transition. Further, similarities between the fluid behavior (instabilities) and different phenomena within the field of astrophysics give an opportunity to explain some of astrophysical phenomena based on the stability characteristics of canonical shear flows.

The goal of the programme is to advance our understanding of the physical processes generating differential rotation in various types of stars, and the role that this effect plays for stellar magnetic activity and dynamos. The Sun is the only star for which the internal rotation profile is observationally known thanks to helioseismology – for other stars, only the surface differential rotation can be inferred from photometric or spectroscopic observations. The main goal of the program is to investigate the connection between the theories and observations and obtain better understanding of the generation and role of differential rotation for stellar magnetism.

This workshop provides a forum where scientists in the Nordic countries working in the area of Statistical Physics can meet regularly. The workshop series brings together experts interested in the broad spectrum of timely problems in (classical) Statistical Physics, ranging from fundamental aspects in the theory of non-equilibrium processes to modern applications in biophysics.

Stochastic Thermodynamics represents an exciting new research direction in statistical physics, which explores fundamental aspects of non-equilibrium processes. The developments summarized under this term may be characterized by the common idea to adapt and generalize concepts from equilibrium thermodynamics to the non-equilibrium realm, typically on the level of single particle trajectories monitored over the entire system evolution.

During the last years, numerous achievements have been presented in the research with cold atoms, such as realizations of; various lattice models, synthetic gauge fields, orbital physics, disordered systems, non-equilibrium dynamics, dipolar gases, and many-body cavity QED. This program will gather both experamentalists and theoriticians for discussions and presentations of these topics as well as others.

The purpose of this winter school is to provide PhD students and young postdocs in the Nordic countries with introductory courses in a range of the most important topics in the field of astrophysics. The school will provide a way to bring together students and young postdocs across different fields, research institutions and countries.

Current cosmology provides a fascinating mix of a wealth of new observational data with deep conceptual problems still to be addressed. Several approaches in the general context of quantum gravity aim at a fundamental description of the relevant stages in the history of the universe, but none of them appears to be fully convincing and comparisons between different directions are difficult to draw. This workshop brings together a large set of experts, from both fundamental and phenomenological theory, in order to provide a snapshot of the current status and to focus future activities.

The conference is part of the program The Holographic Way: String Theory, Gauge Theory and Black Holes

Among the topics of this EANA workshop are extrasolar planets, astrophysics and astrochemistry, geochemical origin of life, origin and evolution of the biosphere, planetary habitability and exploration, extremophiles and early life, astrobiology on the International Space Station, and artificial life.

Holography has emerged as one of the most fascinating and powerful new concepts in modern theoretical physics. Some of the most exciting current and future advances in the field build on two amazing prospects of the AdS/CFT correspondence, and thereby the Holographic Principle. On the one hand, the AdS/CFT correspondence offers a way to study strongly coupled gauge theories, and more generally strongly coupled systems with many degrees of freedom. Conversely, it offers a way for understanding the quantum states and the quantum behavior of black holes.

Investigation of mesoscopic physics (nanometer scale systems) became a field of the intense research in last two decades, stimulated by the possibility of creation of nano-devices where the spin of the single particles could be an object of the precise manipulation and control. The workshop will seek to encourage interaction and information exchange between researchers working in the field of spin-related phenomena in various mesoscopic systems, as well as between experimentalists and theoreticians.

Owing to their large length scales and small viscosities, astrophysical objects are often observed to be turbulent. Given that laboratory experiments are usually not available and analytical techniques are very limited, numerical simulations become the most valuable tool to study these complicated systems. By bringing together renowned experts from around the world, some of the goals of this workshop are to provide a suit of clear and simple test cases, and find ways to improve existing numerical algorithms.

Topological states of matter, such as topological insulators, topological superconductors, and quantum Hall liquids, are of great recent interest, both theoretically and experimentally. The purpose of this program is to gather experts on these different types of topological states, to discuss recent developments and create an exciting atmosphere where we can come up with new ideas.

The traditional Nordita one-week summer school in physics for students from the Nordic and Baltic countries aims at introducing frontier areas of physics research by world top scientists at a level understandable for undergraduate students, and also to stimulate further studies. The following four series of lectures, each of five hours, will be given: Physics of climate, Quantum photonics, Astronomy, High-energy physics. The lectures will be accompanied by exercises in groups and discussion sessions.

The Thirteenth Marcel Grossmann Meeting on Recent Developments in Theoretical and Experimental General Relativity, Gravitation, and Relativistic Field Theory will take place at Stockholm University and AlbaNova in Stockholm, Sweden. Nordita is one of the supporters of this international conference.

The workshop focuses on non-locality in quantum foundations, quantum information, and quantum gravity, including string theory and emergent gravity. The aim of the workshop is to bring together researchers working on various aspects of non-locality, to identify commonalities as well as differences in the role non-locality plays in different approaches to a fundamental description of space, time and matter.

The conference is part of the program Origin of Mass 2012. It is the third in a series of meetings organized with the main aim of bringing together experts working at the frontier of research on the origin of bright and dark matter in particle physics, astrophysics and cosmology.

The program is dedicated to the present and future phenomenological impact of the first years of results from the Large Hadron Collider experiments at CERN. The aim is to have a very active scientific environment with theorists and experimentalists discussing the latest results and investigating future directions. During the event several topics will be discussed ranging from model building to collider phenomenology with the various links to cosmology. The 3rd week of the program is dedicated to the Mass 2012 Conference.

The purpose of the meeting is to explore common interests in the area of protoplanetary disks evolution in young solar systems and discuss possible Nordita initiatives to support further collaboration.

The two main issues for this meeting are 'unsatisfiability' or in computer science language max-K-SAT problems and their variants, and glasses, where for the dynamical properties and real examples the low-lying energy landscape structure defines the physics. The meeting aims to extend the reach of statistical mechanics from satisfiability to unsatisfiability, and the eventual connection to glasses.

The area of Solar-­Terrestrial Relations has played a decisive role in the growth of Astrophysics and Space Science since 150 years. In this development several Nordic research groups play important roles, but the Nordic potential to contribute decisively to this research in a coherent way seems still greater.

The lattice Boltzmann equation (LBE) is a minimal form of Boltzmann kinetic equation, which is meant to simulate the dynamic behaviour of fluid flows without directly solving the equations of continuum fluid mechanics. In this series of lectures, after expounding the basic notions behind LB theories, we shall discuss selected applications from current cutting-edge research in the field, such as the modeling of fluid turbulence, the rheology of soft-glassy materials and wave propagation.

In biological systems, proper function crucially depends on dealing with large amounts of information received from a usually noisy environment. Filtering out the noise, finding structure in the incoming information, memorizing this information, and eventually using it for generating proper response are fundamental operations performed by these systems. The scale at which these operations are performed ranges from individual cells to multispecies communities.

This workshop is the third one in a series which has been initiated in 2010 at Nordita. The first two editions in 2010 and 2011 were highly appreciated by the participants, what encouraged us to continue, in order to provide a forum where scientists in the Nordic countries working in the area of Statistical Physics can meet regularly. The workshop series brings together experts interested in the broad spectrum of timely problems in (classical) Statistical Physics, ranging from fundamental aspects in the theory of non-equilibrium processes to modern applications in biophysics.

The school is part of the Nordita program Dynamics of Biomolecular Processes: From Atomistic Representations to Coarse-Grained Models. Topics include: Advanced Monte Carlo methods, Molecular dynamics and force fields, Coarse-graining and multiscale methods, Coarse-grained model of proteins, Hydrodynamic and mesoscopic simulations.

This program focuses on the different methods for modeling the dynamics of biomolecular systems, ranging from force-field based all-atom representation of individual biomolecules to coarse-grained models for multi-component systems. In particular, the link between these 'complementary' modelling approaches, which cover distinct length and time scales, is of central interest.

The conference is part of the Nordita program Exact results in Gauge-String dualities, and is intended to bring together experts in gauge theories, strings, and integrable systems in order to create a discussion forum for future developments in this rapidly evolving field.

There has been remarkable progress in understanding non-perturbative dynamics of gauge fields and their relationship to string theory in recent years. Many important developments have been made by using methods of exactly solvable systems. The topics will include (i) exact results in the AdS/CFT correspondence (ii) scattering amplitudes (iii) supersymmetric gauge theories (iv) Bethe ansatz and exact solvability in quantum field theory

The purpose of this winter school is to provide PhD students and young postdocs in the Nordic countries with introductory courses in a range of the most important topics in the field of theoretical particle physics. The school will provide a way to bring together students and young postdocs across different fields, research institutions and countries.

The workshop is the part of the Nordita scientific program Geometry of Strings and Fields which runs November 1-30 2011 at Nordita. The program during this meeting will consist of three lecture series by invited speakers, and short talks by students and young researchers who wish to contribute.

The 4-week program will be devoted to geometrical subjects motivated by string theory, and to recent developments in string theory and related physical fields (quantum field theory) which are of strong geometrical interest. While the program will cover all areas of interaction between string theory and geometry, to provide additional focus we will emphasize particular subareas such as: the application of supersymmetry in differential geometry, generalized geometry, vertex algebras, topological field theories.

A multidisciplinary program to celebrate the 70th birthday of Uriel Frisch. The principal scientific topics are going to be turbulence, nonlinear dynamics, statistical mechanics, atmospheric and biological applications of nonlinear physics. A tentative list of themes includes Fluid turbulence, Turbulent dynamo, Lattice-gas, Lattice-Boltzmann, Optimal transport and applications, Biologically inspired problems, Weather and Climate physics.

The program is centered around modern developments in non-equilibrium statistical mechanics both with respect to fundamental aspects (fluctuation theorems, entropy production, fluctuation-dissipation theorems) as well as applications (noise-induced phenomena, biophysical problems).

Thanks to novel light sources, ultrafast atomic and solid-state processes in the femto- and attosecond time scale can be monitored in real time.

The purpose of this school is to introduce PhD students and young researchers to a selection of topics in Random Geometry through lecture series by experts in the field. Topics to be covered include percolation theory, statistical mechanics, random matrices, stochastic Loewner evolution and random graphs.

Understanding the origin of solar and stellar magnetic field is one of the central problems of physics and astrophysics, and a key to understanding the cosmic magnetism, in general.

The idea is to have a small relaxed two day workshop, that in the spirit of the previous events allows plenty of time for informal discussions between the talks. The focus of the symposium will be the interplay of topological order and quantum information theory. The topics will range from implementations of topological quantum computation to employing quantum information techniques in understanding topologically ordered condensed matter systems.

The program will try to cover what string theory has to say about physics beyond the Standard Models of both particle physics and cosmology. Topics may include but are not limited to: string effective actions, string instantons, stringy supersymmetry breaking, intersecting D-branes, generalized flux compactifications, inflation in string theory, string-inspired MSSM-like models and dark matter in those models.

This workshop, held in Mariehamn on Åland, intends to bring together scientists interested in the self-assembly of DNA nanostructures. So-called DNA origami uses the specific Watson-Crick base-pairing between complementary nucleic acids on many different short strands which in solution self-assemble to large complex yet programmable shapes. They hold promise for providing a versatile "toolbox" to engineer and manufacture complex nano-machinery with manifold applications in biotechnology and nanoelectronics.

This one-week school is part of the Nordita program "Predictability".

Predicting the unpredictable is a challenge that is common to various physical systems whose dynamics is governed by the equations of fluid dynamics. The oldest example is weather prediction. Other examples include climate prediction, space weather forecast, and solar cycle forecast. The mathematics developed for these applications is extremely interesting and deserves more detailed understanding, so that these techniques can be used also in other areas where the application of this technique is less well developed.

This conference is part of the Nordita program Applications of network theory: from mechanisms to large-scale structure.

The main idea is to convene key world-class researchers on complex networks and let them interact freely with the Nordic groups interested in the area. The program will be divided into four thematic areas: biological networks, general network theory, technological networks, and social networks. Many of the intended participants are interested in several of these points.
A more intense, 3-day workshop will be arranged during the middle of the program.

The 27th Nordic Network Meeting was organised by the High-Energy Theory Group of the Niels Bohr Institute and was hosted by the Niels Bohr International Academy in Copenhagen.

Research topics to be covered include: cosmological probes of dark energy, induced gravity on higher codimension surfaces and defects, K–essence, alternatives to the cosmological constant, technical naturalness as a qualified guide to new physics, vacuum structure, and stringy perspectives.

The workshop intends to bring together and promote collaboration between scientists from the Nordic countries working on equilibrium and non-equilibrium statistical physics with application to biological and complex systems. The subjects covered during the workshop will range from biopolymer manipulation, biological and genetic networks to glassy systems, transport phenomena in low-dimensional systems, and computer simulations.

The alpha effect is a prototype of non-diffusive turbulent transport phenomena that play important roles in understanding the formation of ordered magnetic fields from turbulent and chaotic motions. Examples include the large-scale magnetic field of the Sun, its 11 year cycle, as well as similar phenomena in other stars, accretion disks, and galaxies. In recent years, this subject has attracted ever growing attention through close comparisons with laboratory and numerical experiments. The purpose of this meeting is to discuss recent progress and to highlight outstanding problems, clarify controversies, and to identify future possibilities for making progress.

The main purpose of this winterschool is two-fold. First of all, the students will be introduced to some of the basics milestones of condensed matter theory, such as Fermi-Liquid theory, Luttinger liquids and BCS theory. Secondly, more modern topics will be introduced at a basic level. The topics will be chosen from fields ranging from cold atomic gasses, soft condensed matter and topological phases of matter, such as topological insulators. The school will be aimed at graduate students.

The impressively successful classical theories on phase transitions are based on the thermodynamic limit, which implies infinitely large or small extension on all the systems that are considered. These theories fail, however, to address many important aspects, as finiteness in extension is apparent in most physical systems. The question is of highly generic nature and has significance within condensed matter physics, chemistry as well as biology.
This program will run in two installments: 15 February-1 March and 12-17 December 2010.

The concept of Random Geometry covers a variety of techniques and methods. These include the physics of interfaces in statistical mechanical systems, polymer and membrane physics, the theory of propagating strings relevant in high-energy physics, the functional integral approach to quantum gravity, the description of gene regulatory networks as well as of computer networks and their use in the design of algorithms, and also random graphs and random maps with important applications in physics, combinatorics and probability theory.
Two workshops, 1-2 November and 6-7 December, and a mini-conference, 22-23 November, are planned during the program period.

The program during this meeting will consist of two lecture series by invited speakers, and short talks by students and young researchers who wish to contribute.

The interdisciplinary field of quantum information processing and communication connects at its deepest level quantum mechanics, photonics, solid state physics, superconductivity, atomic physics, and electronics with computer science and information theory in order to gain advantages and functionality in cryptography, communication, and computing that are impossible to achieve within the realm of classical physics. This conference is part of the Nordita program Quantum Information, will focus on physical and theoretical aspects of quantum information processing and communication, as well as on their physical implementation.

The interdisciplinary field of quantum information processing and communication connects at its deepest level quantum mechanics, photonics, solid state physics, atomic physics, and electronics with computer science and information theory in order to gain features in cryptography, communication, and computing that are impossible to achieve using classical methods. Quantum information science has also revitalized the discussions about the foundations of quantum theory. This field has grown explosively and is now one of the hottest subfields of both computer science and physics.

This conference, arranged jointly by NORDITA and the European Science Foundation network INSTANS, as part of the workshop Quantum Matter in Low Dimensions: Opportunities and Challenges, will address fundamental questions encountered in the modern physics of low-dimensional matter, with focus on phenomena in electronic and cold atom systems driven by quantum effects and strong interactions.

The workshop is aimed at bringing together experts in the fields of nanoscale and low-dimensional condensed matter physics, quantum gases, integrable models, statistical and quantum field theory, and mathematical physics, to develop interdisciplinary communication and collaborations. Experimentalists will be visiting for shorter periods, to provide overview talks on recent developments.
A conference, co-sponsored by INSTANS, will be held 6-10 September.

This conference is a part of the Nordita program on "Quantum solids, liquids, and gases" and will focus on frontiers in physics of quantum solids, liquids and gases (defined in a broad sense).

The program will focus on frontiers in physics of quantum solids, liquids and gases (defined in a broad sense).

During the last few years, various possibilities to experimentally test quantum gravity within the near future have been proposed, based on effective models that incorporate features like deformations of special relativity, extra dimensions, a fundamentally minimal length, space-time foam, or traces from quantum effects in the early universe in cosmological data. With this workshop, we bring together people from different areas in order to assess these possibilities and encourage discussions.

The use of integrability has lead to remarkable progress in our understanding of non-perturbative dynamics in gauge theories and their relationship to string theory. Highly unexpected links between supersymmetric field theory, spin chains, and two-dimensional sigma-models have been discovered in recent years. This conference, which is part of the Nordita program Integrability in String and Gauge Theories; AdS/CFT Duality and its Applications, is intended to bring together experts in gauge theories, strings, and integrable systems in order to create a discussion forum for future developments in this rapidly evolving field.

The program has two main themes: Integrability in N=4 gauge theories and AdS/CFT duality and its applications to eg. quark-gluon plasmas, non-relativistic CFTs, hydrodynamics, and condensed matter systems.
An objective of the program is to support interaction between the two main themes. It is anticipated that specialists from each group will be simultaneously present, allowing for the exchange of new ideas between the two groups.
The 2010 conference on Integrability in Gauge and String Theories (IGST2010) will be held at the program site from 28 June to 2 July.

For several years, ideas from statistical mechanics have been used in developing inference techniques useful for analyzing high dimensional data. Furthermore, in recent years technological advances in multi-electrode and multi-array recordings have resulted in an increase in the number of elements that can be observed simultaneously in many biological systems. This workshop, held in Mariehamn on Åland, is meant to gather scientists interested in applications of statistical mechanics for building useful inference techniques and the use of such techniques for making sense of multi-electrode/multi-array data, as well as scientits from Computer and Information Science working on similar ideas.

This program has two related focus areas, each of which culminate in a 2-day conference.
Turbulent boundary layers, appearing on solid surfaces of bodies submerged in fluids and in channel and pipe flows, have been the focus of experimental and analytical investigations for almost a century. Still there are several unresolved issues even related to fairly basic mechanisms.
In turbulent combustion there are also many unresolved problems, such as how a turbulent premixed flame propagates. The importance of basic research in connection with energy production is evident. Simulations are important, because questions regarding the temperature distribution cannot easily be addressed experimentally.

The program during this meeting will consist of three lecture series by invited speakers, and short talks by students and young researchers who wish to contribute.

The workshop intends to bring together and promote collaboration between scientists from the Nordic countries working on equilibrium and non-equilibrium statistical physics with application to biological and complex systems. The subjects covered during the workshop will range from biopolymer manipulation, biological and genetic networks to glassy systems, transport phenomena in low-dimensional systems, and computer simulations.

The impressively successful classical theories on phase transitions are based on the thermodynamic limit, which implies infinitely large or small extension on all the systems that are considered. These theories fail, however, to address many important aspects, as finiteness in extension is apparent in most physical systems. The question is of highly generic nature and has significance within condensed matter physics, chemistry as well as biology.
This program will run in two installments: 15 February-1 March and 12-17 December 2010.

The School will provide training for PhD students working in magnetohydrodynamics in general, and in astrophysical dynamos, the geodynamo, and laboratory dynamos in particular. In the last 10 years major theoretical advances have led to a much deeper understanding of dynamos. In addition, three different laboratory experiments have now been successful in displaying dynamo action, broadening the range of phenomena that need to be understood theoretically.

The 24th Nordic Network Meeting was organised by the Center for Theoretical Physics at the University of Groningen.

This four-week event joins a school, a scientific program and a conference, where teachers, students and scientists in computational science and engineering will be brought together to present, discuss and solve problems in areas of reserach involving multiple scales.

A special workshop in the honor of the 70th birthday of Professor Ilkka Tuominen, held during the Nordita program Solar and Stellar Dynamos and Cycles

Understanding the origin of solar and stellar magnetic fields is one of the central problems of physics and astrophysics, and a key to understanding the cosmic magnetism, in general. The first two weeks of the programme are dedicated to stellar dynamo theory and observations, and the last two for solar magnetic activity, dynamos and data assimilation methods. The 5th-6th of October there is a special workshop in the honor of the 70th birthday of Professor Ilkka Tuominen.

Bringing together experts on neutron star dynamics, condensed matter and nuclear physics, surface layers and the magnetosphere, the key questions taht will be discussed are: What input from microphysics calculations do we need to build realistic theoretical models? What bounds can the dynamical models in conjunction with observations provide on the state of matter at extreme densities? How do we use observations to constrain these parameters? If a neutron star is oscillating, how does information of the oscillations propagate to the observers?

The Pencil Code User Meeting is an annual meeting dedicated to the Pencil Code. The purpose of the meeting is to bring regular users and core developers together to discuss scientific and technical progress since the last meeting, to instigate collaborative projects and to allow new users to learn more about the code and to interact with other users and developers. The Pencil Code Meeting 2009 will be held August 24-28 2009 at the Max-Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) in Heidelberg, Germany.

A workshop around the theme of combining different datasets relevant for the epoch of reionization. Several different types of surveys are currently aiming at detecting signatures from the era beyond redshift 6, which is when the reionization of the Universe happened. Each of these surveys is at the cutting edge of what is possible, and detecting the desired signatures will be challenging. However, by comparing or cross-correlating the same areas on the sky between different data sets, a clearer detection may be possible.

The aim of this workshop is to bring together a group of theorists with a broad and varied range of competences in numerical techniques, low energy effective theories, conformal field theory and lattice models, but with quantum Hall phenomena as a common interest.

The traditional Nordita one-week summer school in physics for students from the Nordic and Baltic countries will be organized this year in Hillerød, Denmark. The school aims at introducing frontier areas of physics research by world top scientists at a level understandable for undergraduate students, and also to stimulate further studies. The following four series of lectures, each of five hours, will be given. The lectures will be accompanied by exercises in groups and discussion sessions: Physics of climate, Quantum photonics, Astronomy, High-energy physics.

The exciting prospect of exploring the Higgs sector of the Standard Model and its presumed extensions at the LHC has renewed interest in electroweak baryogenesis and the electroweak phase transition.

This conference is held in connection with the Nordita program Physics of Relativistic Flows. It is centered on observations of relativistic flows and jets in astrophysical sources: AGN, GRBs, microquasars, etc. We anticipate that combining the two approaches will stimulate discussion and increase collaboration.

This workshop, held in Mariehamn on Åland, is meant to gather together scientists interested in the applications and theory of game theory with the statistical mechanics viewpoint in mind. Thus we expect to invite and attract statistical physicists, computer scientists, and biologists.

Relativistic jets are responsible for the huge luminosities seen in active galactic nuclei and gamma-ray bursts and are probably launched from the central black holes in these objects. The details of the jet launching mechanism, its acceleration, mechanisms of the energy dissipation, particle acceleration and the emission remain unknown.

The 23rd Nordic Network Meeting was organised by the High-Energy Theory Group of the Niels Bohr Institute and was hosted by the Niels Bohr International Academy in Copenhagen.

A meeting on the occasion of the 50th birthday of Axel Brandenburg (Nordita, Stockholm, Sweden). The location has been chosen in Finland, where the academic career of Axel has started. The scope of the meeting covers the broad range of Axel's research interests, from planets to the Sun and stars, to galaxies, and to the Early Universe, with emphasis on the role and origin of magnetic fields, and on numerical experiments. Axel has published with about 130 coauthors.

The research topics to be covered at the program are: neutrino physics, dark matter, cosmology, supersymmetry, dark energy, inflation, extra dimensions, ultra-high-energy cosmic rays, supernovae, leptogenesis.
We intend to keep the program rather loose what concerns seminars, thus giving more time for actual research and discussing future research projects among the participants of the program.

How much do we actually know about the environmental and health effects of nanomaterials? Too little. Is there possibly reason for concern? Yes. Is it possible that nanomaterials could be used for applications improving the quality our lives, if we just understood their properties well enough. Definitely yes.
The syposium is organized as part of the Nordita scientific program Theoretical Assessment and Prediction of the Biological and Environmental Effects of Nanomaterials.

The environmental and health effects of nanomaterials are of global concern, both in view of assessing the impact of nanomaterials discharged into nature and for a safe and transparent development of nanotechnology, especially in relation to novel applications in biomedicine.
The aim of this scientific program is to establish an international think-tank of researchers excelling in state-of-the-art computational and analytical theoretical methods to assess these and related issues.

The workshop is the part of the Nordita scientific program Geometrical Aspects of String Theory which runs October 15 - December 15 2008 at Nordita.

The workshop is the part of the Nordita scientific program Geometrical Aspects of String Theory which runs October 15 - December 15 2008 at Nordita.

Ever since the birth of superstring theory, interaction with geometry has been one of the primary driving forces that has led to progress. On one hand, string theory has generated many new geometrical concepts; and on the other hand new ideas from geometry have often found their first applications in string theory.
Within the program there will be the "Geometrical Aspects of String Theory" workshop and "The 22nd Nordic Network Meeting on Strings, Fields and Branes"

Search processes play an important role in physical, chemical, and biological systems, a prominent example playing the encounter of two molecules to perform a chemical reaction as quantified in the Smoluchowsky model. Recent interest is directed toward more complex search processes. In particular, gene regulation in biological cells has been very actively studied.

This school is the anchor in a series of schools organized by Nordita that complement university education and provide direct contact to field leaders in selected research areas, heading towards deep impact research activities. The topics of the school are The Cosmological Constant Challenge and Advanced Inflation.

The workshop is part of the program TeV Scale Physics and Dark Matter, and is part of the series organised by the LHC and Beyond NordForsk Network aiming to integrate the Nordic participation in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN and facilitate the Nordic R&D plans for the next generation of experiments beyond the LHC.

The Standard Model of Elementary Particle Physics suffers from a number of inconsistencies and requires extreme fine-tuning of parameters in some areas. This has led to the widespread belief that the Standard Model is the low-energy effective theory of some more fundamental theory in which all, or most, of the difficulties plaguing it are removed. The search for this more fundamental theory is one of the main enterprises of theoretical elementary particle physics.
Within the program there will be the "2nd Nordic Workshop on LHC and Beyond".

The workshop is part of the program Physics of distributed information systems (PhysDIS). Statistical physics has recently applied been to understanding, analysis and design of large distributed information systems. These range from decoding algorithms (Belief Propagation) and phase transitions and typical-case hardness in combinatorial optimization problems to content distribution and dynamical phenomena on the Internet, to the modelling of distributed agent systems - Peer-to-Peer networks, auction mechanisms and more.

Statistical physics has recently applied been to understanding, analysis and design of large distributed information systems. These range from decoding algorithms (Belief Propagation) and phase transitions and typical-case hardness in combinatorial optimization problems to content distribution and dynamical phenomena on the Internet, to the modelling of distributed agent systems - Peer-to-Peer networks, auction mechanisms and more. The PhysDIS program aims to survey current trends in this exciting area, and foster new research into untapped directions.

The origin of astrophysical magnetic fields remains controversial. The intense progress in nonlinear and turbulent dynamo theory of the last ten years has prepared ground for imminent fundamental progress in this area. The programme will bring together experts in various relevant areas in order to (1) identify the critical problems to allow further rapid progress, (2) focus the effort on the most fruitful areas of research and (3) establish new collaborations, especially those between theoreticians and observers, that might ensure such a progress.

Homochirality is a unique property of living matter, and a property that gradually disappears after death. The origin of homochirality is therefore closely linked to the origin of life, which makes this topic a prominent research field in astrobiology.

The purpose of this Astrobiology meeting is to bring together people from the Nordic countries in general and Sweden in particular. There will be time for formal presentation and plenty of time for discussion. The meeting is organized jointly with the Swedish Astrobiology Network (SWAN).

Focus of the program: quantum fluids, Bose-Einstein condensates, supersolids, quantum hall systems, exotic states such as projected quantum fluid states of metallic hydrogen, topological defects and vortex matter in quantum fluids.

The purpose of the 3-day symposium is to highlight the role of radiation in fluid dynamical activity throughout astrophysics. A wide range of topics will be considered including thermal effects in the solar atmosphere and sunspots, radiation pressure driven dynamics such as photon bubbles in hot stars and accretion discs and reionization of the Universe by the first stars.

The program during this meeting will consist of lecture series by invited speakers, and short talks by students and young researchers who wish to contribute.