Progress in developing a consistent theory that describes physical phenomena
at scales where quantum and general relativistic effects are large is
hindered by the lack of experiments. In this talk, we present a proposal
that would overcome this experimental obstacle by using a Bose-Einstein
condensate (BEC) to test for possible conflicts between quantum theory and
general relativity. Recent developments in large BEC systems allows us to
verify if gravitationally-induced wave function collapse occurs at the
timescales predicted by Roger Penrose. BECs with high particle numbers
(N>10^9) can also be used to demonstrate quantum field theory in curved
spacetime by observing how changes in the spacetime affect the phononic
quantum field of a BEC. These effects will enable the development of a new
generation of instruments that will be able to probe scales where new
physics might emerge, with applications including gravitational wave
detectors, gravimeters, gradiometers and dark energy probes.

Higgs bundles are pairs of holomorphic vector bundles and holomorphic 1-forms taking values in the endomorphisms of the bundle. Their moduli spaces carry a natural Hyperkahler structure, through which one can study Lagrangian subspaces (A-branes) or holomorphic subspaces (B-branes). Notably, these A and B-branes have gained significant attention in string theory. After introducing Higgs bundles and the associated Hitchin fibration, we shall look at  natural constructions of families of different types of branes, and relate these spaces to the study of 3-manifolds, surface group representations and mirror symmetry.

Polycyclic groups either have polynomial growth, in which case they are virtually nilpotent, or exponential growth. I will give two interesting examples of "small" polycyclic groups which are extensions of $\mathbb{R}^2$ and the Heisenberg group by the integers, and attempt to justify the claim that they are small by sketching an argument that every exponential growth polycyclic group contains one of these.

You’re an amateur investigator hired to uncover the mysterious goings on of a dark cult. They call themselves Geometric Group Theorists and they’re under suspicion of pushing humanity’s knowledge too far. You’ve tracked them down to their supposed headquarters. Foolishly, you enter. Your mind writhes as you gaze unwittingly upon the Eldritch horror they’ve summoned… Group Theory! You think fast; donning the foggy glasses of quasi-isometry, you prevent your mind shattering from the unfathomable complexity of The Beast. You spy a weak spot and the phrase `Gromov Hyperbolicity’ flashes across your mind. You peer deeper, further, forever… only to find yourself somewhere rather familiar, strange, but familiar… no, self-similar! You’ve fought with fractals before, this weirdness can be tamed! Your insight is sufficient and The Beast retreats for now.
In other words, given an infinite group, we associate to it an infinite graph, called a Cayley graph, which gives us a notion of the ‘geometry’ of a group. Through this we can ask what kind of groups have hyperbolic geometry, or at least an approximation of it called Gromov hyperbolicity. Hyperbolic groups are quite a nice class of groups but a large one, so we introduce the Gromov boundary of a hyperbolic group and explain how it can be used to distinguish groups in this class.

"Fibre theorems" in the style of Quillen's fibre lemma are versatile tools used to study the topology of partially ordered sets. In this talk, I will formulate two of them and explain how these can be used to determine the homotopy type of the complex of (conjugacy classes of) free factors of a free group.
The latter is joint work with Radhika Gupta (see https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.09380).

A core problem in the study of manifolds and their topology is that of telling them apart. That is, when can we say whether or not two manifolds are homeomorphic? In two dimensions, the situation is simple, the Classification Theorem for Surfaces allows us to differentiate between any two closed surfaces. In three dimensions, the problem is a lot harder, as the century long search for a proof of the Poincaré Conjecture demonstrates, and is still an active area of study today.
As an early pioneer in the area of 3-manifolds Seifert carved out his own corner of the landscape instead of attempting to tackle the entire problem. By reducing his scope to the subclass of 3-manifolds which are today known as Seifert fibred spaces, Seifert was able to use our knowledge of 2-manifolds and produce a classification theorem of his own.
In this talk I will define Seifert fibred spaces, explain what makes them so much easier to understand than the rest of the pack, and give some insight on why we still care about them today.
 

This talk features a self-contained introduction to persistent homology, which is the main ingredient of topological data analysis. 

Injection of a gas into a gas/liquid foam is known to give rise to instability phenomena on a variety of time and length scales. Macroscopically, one observes a propagating gas-filled structure that can display properties of liquid finger propagation as well as of fracture in solids. Using a discrete model, which incorporates the underlying film instability as well as viscous resistance from the moving liquid structures, we describe brittle cleavage phenomena in line with experimental observations. We find that  the dimensions of the foam sample significantly affect the speed of the  cracks as well as the pressure necessary to sustain them: cracks in wider samples travel faster at a given driving stress, but are able to avoid arrest and maintain propagation at a lower pressure (the  velocity gap becomes smaller). The system thus becomes a study case for stress concentration and the transition between discrete and continuum systems in dynamical fracture; taking into account the finite dimensions of the system improves agreement with experiment.

Motion at the microscale is a fascinating field visualizing non-equilibrium behaviour of matter. Evolution has optimized the ability of microscale swimming on different length scales from tedpoles, to sperm and bacteria. A constant metabolic energy input is required to achieve active propulsion which means these systems are obeying the laws imposed by a low Reynolds number. Several strategies - including topography1 , chemotaxis or rheotaxis2 - have been used to reliably determine the path of active particles. Curiously, many of these strategies can be recognized as analogues of approaches employed by nature and are found in biological microswimmers.

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Bacteria attached to the metal caps of Janus particles3

However, natural microswimmers are not limited to being exemplary systems on the way to artificial micromotion. They certainly enable us to observe how nature overcame problems such as a lack of inertia, but natural microswimmers also offer the possibility to couple them to artificial microobjects to create biohybrid systems. Our group currently explores different coupling strategies and to create so called ‘BacteriaBots’.4

1 J. Simmchen, J. Katuri, W. E. Uspal, M. N. Popescu, M. Tasinkevych, and S. Sánchez, Nat. Commun., 2016, 7, 10598.

2 J. Katuri, W. E. Uspal, J. Simmchen, A. Miguel-López and S. Sánchez, Sci. Adv., , DOI:10.1126/sciadv.aao1755.

3 M. M. Stanton, J. Simmchen, X. Ma, A. Miguel-Lopez, S. Sánchez, Adv. Mater. Interfaces, DOI:10.1002/admi.201500505.

4 J. Bastos-Arrieta, A. Revilla-Guarinos, W. E. Uspal and J. Simmchen, Front. Robot. AI, 2018, 5, 97.