HEPHY-SMI PhD Retreat

23 Jun 2025, 10:00 → 25 Jun 2025, 23:00 Europe/Zurich

Seminar room (Flackl-Wirt)

The retreat will take place at the Hotel Flackl-Wirt in Reichenau/ Rax from the 23rd - 25th June. The retreat gives the PhD students from HEPHY and SMI an opportunity to understand the scientific output of the future joint institute, and to get to know each other in a more relaxed environment. The retreat also includes invited physics talks from some of our senior colleagues from other institutes at the academy, to broaden the scientific scope of the retreat, as well as a session dedicated to career development.

Monday 23 June

Arrival

Morning 1: Introduction and scientific scope

Lunch

Retreat excursion

BBQ

Tuesday 24 June

Breakfast

Student presentations: # 1

Break

Student presentations: #2

Break

Student presentations: #3

Lunch

Afternoon 1: Discussion session 1 (scientific)

Break

Afternoon 2: Discussion session 2 (outreach)

Dinner

Wednesday 25 June

Breakfast

Morning 1: Invited physics talks

1 IWF: Synergies between stellar and planetary characterisation

Exoplanets represent one of the hottest research topic in astrophysics. The first exoplanet around a main sequence star was discovered quite recently, in 1995. However, this field of research has been developing really fast and up to now we have discovered almost 6000 exoplanets with further 7500 candidates that are waiting for confirmation.

After briefly introducing the research activities at the IWF in Graz, I will focus my talk on my areas of expertise, which are related to stars and exoplanets. First, I will mention the space missions I am involved in and I will present you the two main methods for detecting exoplanets, namely the transit method and the radial velocity technique. After that, I will give you some details about the data reduction processes and I will stress that both the transit and the RV techniques are indirect methods of detection, thus knowledge of the star is key to fully characterise exoplanets. I will then show you how to derive meaningful stellar parameters, which are the limits of relying on stellar evolutionary
models, and how stars play a role in shaping the atmospheres of exoplanets.

Speaker: Andrea Bonfanti

2 Q&A

09:30 Break

3 IQOQI: Exploring macroscopic quantum physics with levitated systems

Objects levitated and controlled in optical, electric and magnetic fields offer an ideal platform for the exploration of macroscopic quantum physics. Their excellent isolation from the environment, combined with recently demonstrated quantum-limited readout and control [1,2], has triggered a number of proposals for producing non-Gaussian quantum states of these nearly macroscopic objects [3,4]. In particular, as these objects also interact gravitationally, there is hope that if two such massive levitated particles can be put into superpositions in close vicinity to one another, then aspects of quantum gravity can be tested in a tabletop experiment. In this talk, I will outline the research in the Aspelmeyer/Kiesel groups in this direction, from classical gravity experiments to quantum experiments with optically levitated nanoparticles. I will focus on an ongoing experiment which aims to perform a version of the double slit experiment with a levitated glass bead 100 nm in diameter.

[1] Delic et al., Science 367, 892-895 (2020).

[2] Magrini et al., Nature 595, 373-377 (2021).

[3] Neumeier et al., PNAS 121, e2306953121 (2024).

[4] Roda-Llordes et al., PRL 132, 023601 (2024).

Speaker: Yaakov Fein

4 Q&A

Break

Morning 2: Career development

5 Career development

Speaker: Gianluca Inguglia

6 Q&A

Lunch

Afternoon 1: Knowledge transfer

7 Knowledge transfer

Speaker: Benjamin Frisch

8 Q&A

Departure