SPOCK symposia

The SPOCK (for "Strings and Particles at Ohio, Cincinnati, and Kentucky") symposia are day-long meetings in theoretical high-energy physics that have been held on (on average) four Saturdays per year since 2006. They feature 2 to 4 invited speakers who give leisurely informal talks and lead discussion on their research. The meetings have had regular attendance from particle theorists in the Indiana-Kentucky-Ohio tri-state area, and are also often attended by physicists from Illinois, Michigan, Tennessee, and West Virginia.

Please contact Philip Argyres if you wish to be added to the SPOCK email list.

Past SPOCK dates and speakers (all hosted at UC unless indicated otherwise; some talk titles are links to videos of the talks):

• 12/8/18 (@Purdue):
  Y. Wang (Princeton) "Knots from M-theory"
  S. Giombi (Princeton) "Half-BPS Wilson loop and defect 1d CFT"
  N. Lashkari (IAS) TBA
  N. Benjamin (Princeton) "The most irrational rational CFTs"
  
• 11/17/18:
  L. Bhardwaj (Harvard) "Classifying 5d SCFTs via 6d SCFTs"
  M. Headrick (Brandeis) "Bit threads and holographic monogamy"
  G. Mandal (Tata) "Gravitational collapse and Choptuik transitions in SYK model"
  
• 10/27/18 (@OSU):
  G. Shiu (Wisconsin) "Swampland conjectures: evidences and applications"
  J. Kaplan (John Hopkins) "Exact bulk operators in black hole microstates and the fate of locality"
  K. Dasgupta (Montreal) "Does string theory allow four-dimensional de Sitter vacuum?"
  
• 4/15/17 (@Purdue):
  S. Cremonini (Lehigh) "Striped phases in holography: pair and charge density waves"
  S. Komatsu (Perimeter) "Correlation Functions in N=4 SYM from Triangulation"
  R. Leigh (UIUC)  "Multi-boundary / multi-partite Entanglement in Chern-Simons Theories"
  S. Pufu (Princeton) "AdS_2 / CFT_1 from AdS_4 / CFT_3"
• 11/5/16: I. Klebanov (Princeton): "F-theorem and epsilon-expansion"
  F. Kos (Berkeley): "Bootstrapping Gross-Neveu Models"
  L. Pando-Zayas (Michigan):  "Topics in One-loop Holography"
  
• 10/15/16: L. Anderson (VaTech) "Multiple fibrations and duality in F theory"
  J. Golden (UMich) "Cluster algebras and scattering amplitudes"
  D. Xie (Harvard) "Singularities and classification of 5d N=1 SCFTs"
  
• 5/14/16 (@OSU): A. Puhm (UCSB) "Tunneling into black hole microstates"
  J. Garriga (Barcelona) "Black holes from cosmic inflation"
  S. Avery (Brown) "Noether's second theorem, BMS, and new Ward identities"
  
• 4/23/16 (@Purdue): L. Pando-Zayas (Michigan) "Towards precision holography with Wilson loops"
  E. Yuan (IAS, Princeton) "Scattering equations and KLT relations"
  S. Franco (CUNY) "Branes and 2d (0,2) gauge theories"
  
• 4/2/16: W. Cottrell (UW Madison) "3d gauge theories and their gravity duals"
  H. Liu (MIT) "Effective field theory for dissipative fluids"
  M. Martone (UC) "N=3 SUSY in 4d and dsconnected gauge groups"
  
• 12/5/15: C. Cordova (IAS) "Toda theory from six dimensions"
  S. Das (UKy) "Old and new scaling relations in quantum quench and holography"
  B. Willett (KITP) "Dimensional reduction of supersymmetric dualities"
  
• 10/17/15: B. S. Kim (UKy) "Skyrmion charge, Ward identity, and Hall transport"
  G. Mandal (TIFR) "Some results on thermalization in conformal and integrable models"
  T. Takayanagi (Yukawa Institute) "Gravity dual of quantum information metric"
  
• 4/25/15 (@OSU): O. Lunin (SUNY Albany), F. Larsen (Michigan), M. Kruczenski (Purdue)
  
• 8/29/15: C. Sun (VaTech) "Rethinking gauge theory through Connes' noncommutative geometry"
  T. Dumitrescu (Harvard) "Anomalies, RG Flows, and the a-Theorem in Six-Dimensional SCFTs"
  S. Gukov (CalTech) "RG flows of chiral rings and BPS spectra"
  
• 2/7/15: D. Poland (Yale) "Overview of (3d) bootstrap"
  A. Shapere (UKy) "Modular bootstrap in 2d"
  C. Beem (IAS) "Analytic aspects of extended superconformal bootstrap"
  
• 4/19/14 (@UKy): J. Maldacena (IAS), V. Hubeny (Durham, UK), M. Rangamani (Durham, UK)
• 3/29/14 (@Purdue): D. Son (Chicago), S. Mathur (OSU), T. Faulkner (UIUC)
  
• 11/16/13 (@Thomas More College, KY): Bei Jai (VaTech), J. Bourjaily (Harvard), P. Putrov (CalTech)
  
• 10/5/13 (@UKy): P. Horava (Berkeley), D. Minic (VaTech), R. Leigh (UIUC), A. Karch (UWa)
  
• 3/2/13: P. Szepietowski (Virginia), S. Hellerman (IPMU, Japan), R. Myers (Perimeter, Canada)
  
• 12/8/12: S. Kharel (U.Tenn), M. Unsal (SFSU), D. Turton (OSU)
• 11/10/12: L. Pando-Zayas (U.Mich), D. Harlow (Princeton), D. Simmons-Duffin (IAS)
  
• 4/14/12 (@Purdue): R. Nepomechie (U.Miami), J. Giedt (Rensselaer), D. Correa (La Plata, Argentina), P. Liendo (Stony Brook)
• 3/1-4/12 (@Purdue): Joint Great Lakes Strings/SPOCK conference
• 1/21/12 (@Purdue): G. Festuccia (IAS), C. Keeler (U. Mich), D. Turton (OSU)
• 12/3/11: B. Grinstein (UCSD), S-S. Lee (McMaster), T. Takeuchi (VaTech)
• 11/5/11: J. Hutasoit (U.Tenn), A. Sinha (Perimeter), C-I. Tan (Brown), M. Yamazaki (Princeton)
• 10/1/11: A. Faraggi (U.Mich), T. Hartman (IAS), M. Kruczenski (Purdue)
• 4/16/11: C. Johnson (USC), T. Nishioka (Princeton), C. Plumberg (OSU)
• 3/12/11: L. Anderson (Harvard), P. Basu (UKy), D. Vaman (U. Mich)
• 1/29/11: D. Berenstein (UCSB), L. McAllister (Cornell), W. Taylor (MIT)
• 12/11/10: R. O'Connell (Carnegie Mellon), A. Strominger (Harvard), T. Wrase (Leibniz U., Germany)
• 11/13/10: G. Michalogiorgakis (Purdue), E. Sharpe (VaTech), M. Unsal (Stanford)
• 10/2/10: S. de Alwis (U.Col), J. Jottar (UIUC), Z. Komargodski (IAS)
• 4/24/10: G. Horowitz (UCSB), J. Polchinski (KITP-SB), S. Raby (OSU), B. Underwood (McGill)
• 3/20-22/10: Joint Great Lakes Strings/ SPOCK conference
• 2/20/10: Y-C. Chung (Texas A&M), M. Douglas (Stony Brook), J. Jottar (UIUC)
• 1/16/10: K. Bobkov (OSU), C. Herzog (Princeton), J. Marsano (Chicago)
• 12/5/09: A. Buchel (Perimeter, Canada), A. Royston (Chicago), G. Shiu (U.Wisc)
• 11/14/09: O. Lunin (Imperial, UK), D. Minic (VaTech), S. Avery (OSU)
• 3/14/09: Y. Tachikawa (IAS), L. Alday (IAS)
• 2/7/09: J. Liu (U.Mich), R. Karp (VaTech), A. Tirziu (Purdue)
• 11/15/08: L. Anguelova (UC), M. Edalati (UIUC), S. Mathur (OSU)
• 10/11/08: N. Nguyen (UIUC), D. Minic (VaTech), A. Shapere (UKy)
• 2/16/08: R. Leigh (UIUC), G. Semenoff (UBC, Canada), T. Takeuchi (VaTech)
• 1/19/08: B. Chowdhury (OSU), D. Minic (VaTech), E. Sharpe (VaTech)
• 10/27/07: U. al-Binni (U.Tenn), I. Ellwood (U.Wisc), V. Miransky (U.W.Ont.)
• 4/28/07: G. Mandal (Tata, India), P. Moomaw (UC), N. Suryanarayana (Perimeter, Canada)
• 2/24/07: M. Fukuma (Kyoto, Japan), S. Hirano (Bohr Inst., Denmark), G. Siopsis (U.Tenn)
• 11/18/06: P. Argyres (UC), S. Dong (UIUC), F. Larsen (U.Mich)
• 10/21/06: M. Edalati (UC), M. Kruczenski (Purdue), J. Wittig (UC)
• 5/27/06: S. Das (UKy), J. Michelson (UKy), C. Vaz (UC)
• 3/4/06: S. Mathur (OSU), R. Wijewardhana (UC)
• 2/18/06: P. Argyres (UC), A. Shapere (UKy)