Beautiful Papers, PHYS 773, September 12 - December 1, 2025
Scroll down to Registration and Enrollment to participate.
Structure:
We will discuss 8 papers which had huge impact in physics. One week Instructor Pedro Vieira will discuss a paper; students should read it beforehand. One week later students discuss recent papers referring to that paper (20 min each student, ~ 3 presentations; at the end of the class Pedro will grade the presentations based on “Physics”, “Presentation”, “Question handling”; and give comments).
By the end of the course, students will have explored a vast set of topics in theoretical physics — spotting potential gaps to be fixed — sharpened their presentation skills through steady practice, and sparked cross-disciplinary conversations through our shared physics language.
Familiarity with Quantum Field Theory and General Relativity is assumed.
The papers:
Sept 12 & 19: On the Quantum Correction for Thermodynamic Equilibrium, Wigner, 1932
Topic: Quantum Mechanics
Sept 22 & 29: Existence theorem for certain systems of nonlinear PDEs, Foures-Bruhat, 1952
Topic: General relativity
Oct 3 & 10: The Renormalization Group and the Epsilon Expansion, Wilson and Kogut, 1973
Topic: Quantum Field Theory
Oct 14 (Tues) & 20: More about the Massive Schwinger Model, Coleman, 1976
Topic: 2D Quantum Field Theory
Oct 24 & 31: A sequence of approximated solutions to the S-K model for spin glasses, Parisi, 1980
Topic: Statistical Mechanics
Nov 3 & 10: Quantum Field Theory and the Jones Polynomial, Witten, 1988
Topic: Topological Quantum Field Theory
Nov 14 & 21: Exactly Solvable Field Theories of Closed Strings, Brezin, Kazakov, 1989
Topic: 2D Quantum Gravity
Nov 24 & Dec 1: Unpaired Majorana fermions in quantum wires, Kitaev, 2000
Topic: Quantum Matter/Quantum Information
Schedule:
This is a Friday / Monday alternating week schedule from 915am-1045am.
Exceptions:
The session on October 13 has been moved to Tuesday, October 14 due to the Thanksgiving holiday.
Location & Building Access:
Alice Room, 3rd Floor, Perimeter Institute, 31 Caroline St N, Waterloo
Participants who do not have an access card for Perimeter Institute must sign in at the security desk before each session. For information on parking or accessibility please contact [email protected].
Registration and Enrollment:
Please sign-up here: https://forms.office.com/r/nDQ6SDxSR4
December 2025
- Dec 01
November 2025
- Nov 24
- Nov 21
- Nov 14
- Nov 10
- Nov 03
October 2025
- Oct 31
- Oct 24
- Oct 20
- Oct 14
- Oct 10
- Oct 03
September 2025
- Sep 29
- Sep 22
- Sep 19
- Sep 12