Nearly Perfect Fluids: From the Quark-Gluon-Plasma to Ultracold Atoms; Durham, NC

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This award will support the participation of young scientists at the NEAR PERFECT LIQUIDS 2009 workshop, to be held April 6-8 2009 in Durham, NC. The Workshop will attempt a synthesis between physical relationships among the hottest matter (quark matter at more than 2 trillion degrees Kelvin) and the coldest matter (cooled atoms at a few billionth degree Kelvin) produced in the laboratory, new insights gained from superstring theory, which make it possible to infer the properties of certain strongly coupled thermal systems from the physics of black holes in five or more dimensions, and recent progress in the many-body theory of strongly coupled systems. The Workshop aims at advancing the knowledge of the physics of nearly perfect liquids. It has recently been recognized that the ability of fluids to flow frictionless is limited by fundamental quantum effects; but the precise form and the absolute nature of this limitation is a conjecture. All material substances known until recently were far away from the conjectured universal bound; only during the present decade has matter (quark matter and ultra-cold atoms) been discovered and studied that approaches it. It is not fully understood whether a common mechanism is at work in all instances or whether there are several distinct paths leading to perfect fluidity. While superstring theory has furnished a tractable theoretical model of such a fluid, it remains unclear how it relates to the two materials discovered in the laboratory. By bringing experts in the different areas together for an intense exchange of ideas, the Workshop will help to develop new ideas for answers to these wide-ranging questions at a forefront area in the physical sciences. It is hoped that the cross-disciplinary nature of the workshop may lead to scientific advances in all of the above fields of physics and counter the increasing compartmentalization found in many areas of the hard sciences.