Physics at the Falls Workshop Series

The Rust Belt Cosmology Workshop is an informal, student-centered workshop bringing together researchers in cosmology and astroparticle physics from the New York / Ohio / Ontario / Pennsylvania region.

This workshop reviewed the increasing number of calculations that deal with the limitations or the breaking of QCD factorization. In particular, it investigated their potential consequences on fixed-order calculations, resummation and parton showers Topics of Interest: QCD factorization Fixed-order calculations Resummation Parton showers Effective Field Theories

18th international conference Recent Progress in Many Body Theory was at Niagara Falls, NY. The conference encourages the exchange of ideas between physicists working in such diverse areas as nuclear physics, quantum chemistry, complex systems, lattice Hamiltonians, quantum fluids and condensed matter physics.

A fundamental theme in condensed matter physics is the dependence of various phenomena on dimensionality. It is well known that quantitative dependencies appear in the critical exponents of phase transitions. Of arguably greater interest are qualitative dependencies, including the very existence, or absence, of transitions according to the dimensionality. For example, in one dimension, no finite temperature transition can occur, while in two dimensions such transitions are present for some systems, but not for others. In recent years, quite remarkable phenomena have been seen in two-dimensional (2D) systems, the focus of this meeting. Their studies have been stimulated by great experimental progress with graphene and related monolayer materials and the observation of the quantum Hall effect and topological insulating behavior in 2D or quasi-2D systems. The many various phenomena of interest include phase transitions in adsorbed films and in the electronic and magnetic properties of these systems.

The international symposium on Quantum Fluids and Solids QFS2015 was held at Niagara Falls, NY, USA. This conference continues in the long-standing tradition of such conferences from 1975 being held two out of every three years

The Workshop on Entanglement, Decoherence, and Quantum Control (EDQC2014) was in Buffalo, NY. The objective of this workshop series is to provide an opportunity for extended expert interaction on a number of linked topics of extensive current interest. An common denominator is the study of quantum open systems, whose concepts and techniques have their roots in quantum optics, quantum information, and condensed matter physics, among other branches of physics.

The purpose of the workshop was to discuss recent experimental and theoretical developments in oxide nanostructures, to provide students and postdocs an opportunity to interact with experts, and to foster collaborations among leading researchers in the field. Complex oxides constitute one of the most intriguing and interesting classes of solids. These materials host a wide variety of exotic and technologically important properties, including tunable metal-insulator transitions, intriguing catalytic activities, and high Tc superconductivity, which offer tremendous potential for future technologies. Unfortunately, these materials are also prototypes of correlated electron systems in which structural, spin, charge, and orbital degrees of freedom are strongly coupled. The subtle interplay among various degrees of freedom results in multiple instabilities, electronic and structural. These instabilities may manifest themselves as phase transitions, polymorphism, catalytic activities, or in general, an extreme sensitivity in their electron and structural properties to small perturbations such as temperature, strain, and/or slight chemical variations.

Over the last decades, Cluster Science has developed into a vivid field located between chemistry and physics. Historically, many of the early developments in cluster science came from interactions between nuclear and condensed matter scientists, in particular ideas from the nuclear shell model came to fruitful applications in cluster science. This was especially true concerning structural properties of metal clusters, which by nature share many common properties with other finite fermion systems such as in particular nuclei or helium droplets. But the range of common topics certainly goes much beyond that scope and also applies to dynamical properties of various kinds of clusters and nanosystems. For example the recent developments of laser pulse shaping nowadays allow remarkable experimental possibilities for addressing various dynamical scenarios, even in a time resolved manner, which, in turn, represents a true theoretical challenge. Exchange of experience on such emerging topics would thus certainly again be very fruitful. The goal of this workshop was to bring colleagues together of whom we believe that they have an interest in such interdisciplinary communication.

The goal of this workshop was to promote the exchange of new ideas, as well as to foster collaboration among frontier researchers, in the area of nonequilibrium quantum many-body physics. In the past few decades, the need for a deep theoretical understanding of particle dynamics driven far out of equilibrium has grown ever pressing, with the advent of modern experimental techniques in areas such as nanoscale electronics, cold-atom systems, quantum liquids, and in cosmology and biophysics. In recent years, much effort has been made to develop the fundamental formulation of nonperturbative quantum transport theory, realistic nano-scale modeling, and discovery of nonequilibrium emergent states.