Ipht Institut De Physique Théorique De Saclay Evaluation by the AERES
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IPhT Institut de Physique Théorique de Saclay Evaluation by the AERES committee (2013-2014) Activity Report January 2008 – June 2013 Commissariat à l’énergie atomique Centre national de la recherche scientifique et aux énergies alternatives Institut de physique Direction des sciences de la matière CNRS / INP / URA 2306 CEA / DSM / IPhT CEA Saclay, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France http://ipht.cea.fr/ - Tel: +33 (0)1 69 08 73 85 2 Activity Report CEA/DSM/IPhT 2008 — 2013 Contents 1 Presentation of the Institute 5 1.1 Activity overview . 5 1.2 Three main “themes” . 6 1.3 A few publication statistics . 6 1.4 Interaction with society at large . 6 1.5 Scientific snapshot . 7 1.6 Organization of the Institute . 8 1.7 Understanding the past, preparing for the future . 10 1.8 External fundings . 11 1.9 Coding . 13 1.10 Teaching and its asides . 13 1.11 More on Visibility . 14 1.12 Challenges for the future . 16 1.13 A resume of Strategy and Project . 17 2 Scientific production 23 Mathematical physics - structures and models . 24 Cosmology and particle physics . 37 Statistical and condensed matter physics . 49 A Appendices 59 A.1 Executive Summary . 60 A.2 Functional organization of the Institute . 62 A.3 Prizes . 63 A.4 External Fundings and grants . 64 A.5 Organization of scientific events . 72 A.6 Publications, 1/1/2008–30/06/2013 . 77 A.7 PhDs at IPhT . 137 A.8 Teaching activities . 142 A.9 Popularizing Science . 150 A.10 Scientific editing . 152 A.11 Research administration . 153 A.12 List of IPhT members . 155 3 4 Activity Report CEA/DSM/IPhT 2008 — 2013 CHAPTER 1 Presentation of the Institute The Institut de physique théorique (IPhT) is an institute of the Direction des sciences de la matière (DSM) of the Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA), and a laboratory of Institut national de physique (INP) at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS, Unité de recherche associée URA2306). It is part of the Centre de recherches de Saclay, on the Plateau de Saclay. Over the years, the IPhT has gained a worldwide recognition for its many fundamental contributions to theoretical physics. A long tradition of impartial scientific evaluations has helped the Institute to adapt to the many evolutions of theoretical physics from a purely scientific viewpoint, but also to many changes in the management of science, in France and abroad. This report presents an overview of the organization and activities of the IPhT from January 2008 to June 2013. 1.1 Activity overview Our main activity is fundamental research in theoretical physics, resulting in the production of articles in peer-reviewed journals, as well as communications in international conferences or workshops, or in various seminars. We also take part in the organization of such events. Globally this activity may accounts for 80% of our time. We also dedicate a consequent amount of time to the formation of students, mostly at the graduate level (master students or PhD). Many permanent members regularly teach in Master courses, at IPhT, in the Paris area but also farther in France or abroad. We also organize or teach in numerous summer schools. The number of graduate students present in the institute has grown rapidly in the last few years, it almost reaches 30, to which should be added about 10 external PhDs spending a long period in our Institute. Roughly 15% of our work time can be associated with this formation activity. Research administration and animation may account to about 5% of our work time. It mainly consists in participation in various committees: hiring committees at universi- ties, CNRS committee, steering committees of various research structures (Labex, RTRA, academic senate of the new Paris-Saclay University). Our actions towards society at large are relatively few, and account for a negligible part of our work time. The general focus of this detailed introduction is on qualitative trends rather than on quantitative data, but precise statistics are collected in the appendices of the report. These appendices cover also a number of facets of the IPhT: awards, teaching, external fundings, 5 6 Activity Report CEA/DSM/IPhT 2008 — 2013 scientific editing, research administration, organization. My deputies, Anne Capdepon and Stéphane Nonnenmacher, dedicated a lot of time to those. The writing of the scientific part involved a large fraction of the permanents. Special credits for hard work go to the members of the internal scientific council. 1.2 Three main “themes” Over the five and a half years period covered by the report, above one thousand articles, proceedings or books have been published by IPhT members (permanent researchers, PhDs and PostDocs, long term visitors). This large number makes it illusory to include, in a readable and useful report, a complete list of even cursory descriptions. Instead, in Chap. 2 below we illustrate the salient features of our work via three topical surveys, and a selection of about twenty highlights. The surveys: – Models and Structures: Mathematical Physics – Cosmology and Particle Physics – Statistical Physics, Condensed Matter and Biophysics reflect the three main research directions, as well as a formal organization (more on this later) of the Institute, but definitely not a clear-cut division of the people into “teams” working separately from each other. The contributions of many researchers are split be- tween at least two of the three surveys. These surveys, as well as the following highlights, are meant to be gentle general introductions, and we hope that they will trigger the reader’s curiosity to have a closer look at some of the publications. 1.3 A few publication statistics Most of our production consists in publishing articles in peer-reviewed journals, the rest consisting in advanced scientific softwares, some of them publicly available (see section 1.9). A full list of our publications, with various statistics appear in App. A.6. Year 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 June 30, 2013 Total # publications 186 191 186 246 215 86 1100 av. citation # 19.5 15.2 10.4 6.6 2.1 % art. in top 10% 32 28 28 32 34 31 (av.) % art. in top 1% 3.2 4.2 3.8 3.7 5.6 4 (av.) Table 1: A few data on our publications (after ISI Web of Science) A significantly high proportion of the IPhT articles made its way to the top 10% or top 1% most cited in Physics over the period 2008-2012. Some papers have had the honor of the front-cover of good journals or have been awarded prizes (see App. A.6). The highlights we propose in Chap. 2 are not meant to reflect these successes. They illustrate some significant projects or scientific trends over the period under review. Though we have chosen those carefully, we are well aware that only the future will tell which ideas and contributions will survive in the long term. 1.4 Interaction with society at large Our interaction with society at large can be considered as relatively minor, the content of our research activities being rather abstract, with no immediate application to everyday Introduction 7 life or to marketable innovations. Still, fundamental science continues to fascinate the general public. Some of our members have given interviews in newspapers or popular science journals, or have written articles in such journals. A few members present their professional activity (as scientists) in high schools, or in general audience conferences. Others have participated in radio programs; this has been the case in particular at the occasion of widely advertised scientific events (e.g. the recent discovery of a Higgs-like boson, or the cosmological data obtained from the Planck satellite mission). Some detailed actions are listed in App. A.9. 1.5 Scientific snapshot The basic goal of IPhT is to contribute to a better understanding of the laws of nature, from the largest scales to the smallest ones. This goal can take a variety of incarnations, depending on the field of research and the personality of the researcher. But IPhT can claim to harbor at least one respected specialist in any major physics field of current in- terest, with a handful of exceptions though. IPhT disposes of several task forces of leading experts. One example is the field of precision perturbative quantum gauge field theory computa- tions. This field is living a revolution which started about a decade ago. The LHC makes this activity particularly timely because high precision computations of the “background signal" are needed in order to detect any “new physics". The activity at IPhT goes from abstract (yet deep) results relating gauge theory and gravity amplitudes to more concrete (but highly tricky) computations of standard model cross sections. The intermediates are numerous, each involving impressive mathematics, and the flow of ideas is by no means one-way. The output is a mixture of publications and software. These activities also have close connections with integrable systems —a tradition at IPhT— used to compute with great success exact properties of supersymmetric gauge theories, and of course with string theory. String theory is a rather recent research direction at IPhT. After several failures to attract seniors, the policy to build a junior group is by now a real success. The group cannot cover all aspects of the subject, but its members have made fundamental contributions to black holes, flux compactifications, AdS/CFT and many more. Another example of a considerable task force at IPhT is the group studying nonperturba- tive aspects of QCD, extremely competitive in all aspects of this domain, with the notable exception of lattice computations.