Abstract
The XXVIIIth International Colloquium on Group-Theoretical Methods in Physics (ICGTMP), also known as the GROUP 28 conference, took place in Newcastle upon Tyne from 26–30 July 2010. There were 128 attendees from 22 countries – physicists, mathematicians, chemists and engineers who use mathematical and numerical methods based on geometry and symmetry in their work. The conference was organised jointly by Northumbria and Durham Universities. The conference website is http://group28.northumbria.ac.uk.
Symmetry plays an important role both in science and art, and group theory provides a mathematical framework for the study of symmetries. The series of ICGTMP meetings is the oldest conference series in the fields of geometry and physics. It started in 1972 in Marseilles, and so far 15 meetings have been held in Europe, 8 in North America, 2 in Asia, 1 in Australia and 2 in the Middle East. This was the second time that the conference took place in Britain, 28 years after the Xth Colloquium in Canterbury.
While the first meetings were centred on solid-state physics and crystallography, the main topics quickly became more diversified following the success of geometric and algebraic methods for modelling systems in particle physics, quantum mechanics, engineering and chemistry. The aim of the GROUP 28 meeting was to broaden and further diversify mathematical and numerical methods based on geometry and symmetry through their applications to biosciences, physical sciences, quantum information, nonlinearity and complexity. The conference included traditional and novel applications to mathematical and theoretical physics (including particle physics, conformal theory and cosmology), condensed matter, quantum optics and quantum information, complex and nonlinear systems, biosciences and other new exciting areas.
The scientific programme was delivered in the form of plenary talks, a public lecture, parallel sessions, a poster session and an open forum. An important feature of the meeting was that all plenary talks presented the state-of-the-art and were at the same time educational and exciting, promoting the multidisciplinary aspects of the research, and thus were inspirational for young scientists considering work in these fields. The plenary talks, each lasting 1 hour, were given by distinguished world experts and some young 'rising stars': Richard Ward, Ulf Leonhardt, Jens Eisert, Michael Berry, Shahn Majid, Arndt von Haeseler, Michio Jimbo, Katrin Wendland, Raymond Goldstein, Mark Trodden, Maria Vozmediano and Giulio Chiribella. The public lecture was given by Francesco Iachello and was open to participants and other people from the Newcastle-Durham region. In addition, talks of 30 minutes duration each and including more technical content, were given in four parallel sessions. Each parallel session had a designated time for informal interaction with the speakers, discussions of new directions of research and for forming new collaborations. The poster session, in a room where posters were exhibited for the duration of the conference, was easily accessible, and had a friendly and relaxed atmosphere, encouraging discussions of work and exchanges of new ideas. To secure a high quality scientific programme, all contributions were reviewed.
Another interesting feature of the conference was the Open Forum on the Friday afternoon, which was lively and well attended. It took the form of a question and answer session with a panel chaired by Allan Solomon, with the following members: Gerald Goldin, Jean-Pierre Gazeau, Mark Trodden and Giulio Chiribella. The focus was on new directions of research, novel applications and the further development of group theory, education, training and career opportunities for young researchers. The participants were asked to submit questions in advance; examples are: "What is the role of symmetries and conservation principles in deducing underlying physics from experimental data?" and "What are the most promising research areas where group theory and representations have applications?"
All the sessions were easily accessible and took place in the modern premises of the City Campus East of Northumbria University, conveniently located in the city centre of Newcastle.
In a separate ceremony on Tuesday evening in the Great Hall of Newcastle's Discovery Museum, the 2010 Wigner Medal was awarded to Michio Jimbo for his seminal work on quantum groups and for his study of affine Lie algebras, in connection with classical and quantum integrable systems. The Hermann Weyl prize was awarded to Giulio Chiribella, in recognition of his pioneering work on the application of group theoretical methods to the problem of quantum estimation, within the framework of quantum information theory. This was followed by a reception, which included a delightful, impromptu violin recital given by Gérard H E Duchamp, one of the conference participants.
The social programme included a variety of events. On the Monday evening, the Welcome Address by the Lord Mayor of Newcastle was followed by a Reception in Newcastle's Civic Centre. On the Wednesday afternoon the participants had the opportunity to visit beautiful Alnwick Castle. This was followed by a conference dinner in Newcastle's Assembly Rooms on the Thursday evening.
The conference was sponsored by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (grant EP/1009183/1), the London Mathematical Society (grant 1906), the Institute of Physics, Northumbria University, Durham University, Newcastle City Council and Newcastle's Discovery Museum. We thank our sponsors for their generous support.
It took two years to organise a conference of such importance. We express our gratitude to the International Advisory Committee for its help in selecting the plenary speakers and to the Standing Committee and its current and former Chairmen, Jean Pierre Gazeau and H D Doebner respectively.
We thank the Newcastle-Gateshead Convention Bureau for its support in organising the conference, Sarah Howells for her devoted secretarial, administrative and organisational work, Rosemary Zakrzewski for arranging the "Accompanying persons' programme" and to the research assistants and research students of the Intelligent Modelling research group at Northumbria University – Mu Niu, Sujan Rajbhandari, Helen Gibson, Ahmed Lawgali, Kushwanth Koya, Thuli Mazwi, Osemeke Mosindi and Sirichai Triamlumlerd – for their energetic assistance to the organisers. Finally, a big thank you to all the members of the Local Organising Committee for their devoted and tireless work in preparing and running the conference and our colleagues from both universities for their help and moral support.
Maia Angelova and Wojciech Zakrzewski Chairs of the Local Organising Committee