Colleagues are invited to register for the Centre for Teaching and Learning’s final two Developing Academic Skills workshops this academic year. The in-person sessions support colleagues involved in teaching or supporting undergraduate and postgraduate taught students’ academic skills development. Topics are structuring and editing (Monday 26 January), and developing exam and revision skills (Monday 23 February).
From application and interview support to sector insights and inspiring guest speakers, Hilary term offers a wide range of opportunities for students at every stage of career planning. Term planner highlights include the Creative Careers Festival in 4th week, the Crankstart and Diversity Fair in 7th week, and ongoing internship application support throughout the term.
The Radcliffe Science Library invites science and medicine postgraduates to give a short, engaging 5–7 minute talk on their research. It’s a great chance to practice explaining your work clearly and succinctly - perfect preparation for the DPhil transfer or upcoming conferences - and to connect with other researchers in a relaxed setting. A complimentary pizza lunch will follow the talks.
Radcliffe Science Library , Friday 20 March 2026, 12:00–13:00 followed by lunch.
13:00
Dynamics of the Fermion-Rotor System
Abstract
In this talk, I will examine the dynamics of the fermion–rotor system, originally introduced by Polchinski as a toy model for monopole–fermion scattering. Despite its simplicity, the system is surprisingly subtle, with ingoing and outgoing fermion fields carrying different quantum numbers. I will show that the rotor acts as a twist operator in the low-energy theory, changing the quantum numbers of excitations that have previously passed through the origin to ensure scattering consistent with all symmetries, thereby resolving the long-standing Unitarity puzzle. I will then discuss generalizations of this setup with multiple rotors and unequal charges, and demonstrate how the system can be viewed as a UV-completion of boundary states for chiral theories, establishing a connection to the proposed resolution of the puzzle using boundary conformal field theory.