Untitled - Solvay Institutes

R E P O R T

R E P O R T 

2 0 0 6

“Der Solvay Kongress wird stets eine der schönsten 

Errinnerungen meines Lebens bleiben.....“ 

Einstein (November 22, 1911), 

Nobel Prize in Physics 

“To everybody who took part in the meeting (6th Solvay 

Conference in Physics) it was a most instructive and pleasant 

experience, and the discussions will surely be of great 

help for the future of everyone of us”. 

N. Bohr (November 1, 1930), 

Nobel Prize in Physics 

“For me it is a great pleasure and a great honor to chair this 

23rd Solvay Conference in Physics. For all of us who have 

grown up in the 20th century, these conferences have 

played such an important role in our collective memory of 

physics that we hope that the revived and re-invigorated 

Solvay Institutes will continue this tradition of Solvay 

Conferences in the same spirit. Perhaps they will play a role 

as important in the 21st century.” 

D. Gross (December 1, 2005), 

Nobel Prize in Physics

The International Institutes for Physics and Chemistry, founded by Ernest Solvay, acknowledge 

with gratitude the generous support of : 

• the Solvay family, 

• Solvay S.A.- N.V., 

• the Université Libre de Bruxelles, 

• the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, 

• the Belgian National Lottery, 

• the Communauté Française de Belgique, 

• the Foundation David and Alice Van Buuren, 

• the Hôtel Métropole.

C O N T E N T S 

A word from the Director 10 

General Information 13 

Board of Directors 15 

Scientific Committee for Physics 16 

Scientific Committee for Chemistry 17 

Local Scientific Committee 18 

Honorary Members 19 

In Memoriam 21 

International Solvay Chair in Physics 23 

95th Anniversary of the Solvay Institutes 29 

Workshops, Symposia and Schools organized by the Institutes 45 

International Conference “Work, Dissipation, and Fluctuations in Nonequilibrium Physics” 47 

Modave Summer School in Mathematical Physics 63 

Workshop “Bethe Ansatz” 69 

Colloquia 81 

Professor Klaus von Klitzing (Max-Planck-Institut, Germany) “From Micro- to 

Nanoelectronics: a Quantum Leap” 82 

Professor C.N. Yang (Chinese University, Hong Kong & Tsinghua University, China) “Thematic 

Melodies of Twentieth Century Physics: Quantization, Symmetry and Phase Factor” 83 

Professor Clifford M. Will (Washington University, USA) “The Confrontation between General 

Relativity and Experiment” 85 

Workshops, Conferences and Schools sponsored by the Institutes 87 

International Conference on Theoretical Aspects of Reactivity 89 

Doctoral School “Quantum Field Theory, Strings and Gravity” 107 

Seminars and Visitors: 113 

Seminars 114 

Visitors 120 

Research carried out in the groups of the Director and of the Deputy Director 135 

Members 136 

Research Summary 138 

Research interests of some graduate students 145 

List of publications 159 

Invited Talks at conferences, seminars and schools 169 

Miscellaneous 179 

Publications of the International Solvay Institutes 180 

The Francqui Prize to Pierre Gaspard 182 

Remodelling of the Solvay Room 184 

Appendix : Outreach 187 

Radio and Television interviews 188 

Newspapers 189 

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A w o r d f r o m t h e D i r e c t o r 

This report reviews the scientific activities pursued 

at the International Solvay Institutes in the 

year 2006. It also describes the research of the 

groups of the Director and the Deputy Director 

during that same period. 

The year 2006 has been the year of the 95th 

Anniversary of the International Solvay Institutes 

since the first “Conseil de Physique Solvay”, which 

can be viewed as the birth of the Institutes, took 

place in 1911. To celebrate this anniversary, the 

International Solvay Chair in Physics has been 

launched. This chair is given each year to an eminent 

physicist who is invited to Brussels for one or 

two months. During her/his visit, the Solvay 

Professor gives a series of lectures on her/his 

recent research. In order to attract the best scientists in the 

world, whose presence in Brussels is of benefit to the 

research groups not only of the ULB and the VUB, but also 

of other Belgian universities as well as of research institutions 

in neighbouring countries, the Solvay Chair offers 

generous conditions comparable to those of the most prestigious 

international chairs of the same kind. 

The 2006 Solvay Physics Professor was Professor Ludwig 

Faddeev, renowned internationally for his pioneering 

contributions to mathematical physics. His research school 

has dominated the field in the last 40 years. His lectures, 

covering soliton theory, were followed by researchers and 

graduate students coming from Belgium, France, The 

Netherlands and Switzerland. Professors Michael Berry 

(2007) and David Gross (2008) have accepted to be the next 

Solvay Professors. We could not have dreamed of higher 

standards! The success of the International Solvay Chair in 

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Physics will lead in the near future to the launch of a similar 

Solvay Chair in Chemistry. 

To mark our 95th Anniversary, a reception was organized at 

the “Maison Ernest Solvay” during which the 2006 Solvay 

Chair in Physics was officially launched and Professors 

Ludwig Faddeev and C.N. Yang (1957 Physics Nobel Laureate) 

were made Honorary Members of the Institutes. 

The Solvay Institutes have also organized or sponsored 

workshops and conferences on themes ranging from chemical 

reactivity to non-equilibrium physics and integrable 

models. Hundreds of scientists took part in these activities. 

Our colloquium series is taking off as well and fills a clear 

need of the physics and chemistry departments of both ULB 

and VUB. Each colloquium, during which a world leader in 

a definite area came to speak in general terms about the 

recent developments in his research field, was an undeniable 

success. 

Higher education is undergoing important changes in 

Europe with the Bologna agreements. In view of the increased 

mobility, providing an internationally attractive training 

to PhD students – tomorrow’s researchers – is a challenge 

that must be met if one wants to remain on the international 

higher education map. The Solvay Institutes have 

actively supported two doctoral schools, one of which, 

“Quantum Field Theory, Strings and Gravity” combines in 

an original way forces from the University of Amsterdam, 

the Ecole Normale Supérieure (Paris), the ULB and the VUB. 

This pilot experience, in which PhD students from these 

institutions have followed graduate courses in Amsterdam, 

Brussels and Paris, was quite successful and will be continued 

and expanded in the years to come. 

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Another important event for the future of the Institutes 

that took place in 2006 is that Professor David Gross, 2004 

Physics Nobel Laureate, has accepted to chair the Solvay 

Scientific Committee for Physics. We are most grateful to 

him. 

While new scientific initiatives have been launched, the 

finances have continued to improve. The straight loan has 

been further reduced and this effort will be pursued in the 

years to come. I would like to thank our treasurer, 

Mr Bingen who, as in the past, has helped us to follow strict 

management rules. 

Finally, I would like to thank our sponsors, and in particular, 

the Solvay family, for their generous support which made 

the activities described in the report possible. I would also 

like to thank the entire staff working at the Institutes for 

their faithful dedication. 

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G e n e r a l I n f o r m a t i o n

I n t e r n a t i o n a l I n s t i t u t e s f o r P h y s i c s 

President of the Board of Directors: Mr Solvay 

Vice-President of the Board of Directors: Mr Franz Bingen (VUB) 

Director: 

Mr Marc Henneaux (ULB) 

Deputy Director: 

Mr Franklin Lambert (VUB) 

Administrative Assistants: 

Ms Dominique Bogaerts 

Ms Fabienne De Neyn 

Ms Stéphanie Deprins 

Ms Isabelle Juif 

Accountant: 

Ms Chantal Verrier 

Postal Address: IIPC-Solvay, Campus Plaine ULB/CP 231, B-1050 Brussels (Belgium) 

Tel: + 32 2 650 54 23 / 55 42 • Fax: + 32 2 650 50 28 

Emails: dobogaer@ulb.ac.be, Isabelle.Juif@ulb.ac.be 

Website: http://www.solvayinstitutes.be 

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a n d C h e m i s t r y , f o u n d e d b y E . S o l v a y 

Board of Directors 

Members: 

Mr Solvay, 

Professor Franz Bingen, 

Baron Daniel Janssen, 

Professor Franklin Lambert, 

Professor René Lefever, 

Professor Grégoire Nicolis, 

Mr Jean-Marie Solvay, 

Prof. Jean-Louis Vanherweghem, 

Professor Irina Veretennicoff, 

President; 

Vice-President and Emeritus-Professor VUB; 

Honorary Chairman of the Board of 

Directors of Solvay S.A.; 

Deputy Director of the Solvay Institutes and 

Professor VUB; 

Professor ULB; 

Professor ULB; 

Member of the Board of Directors of Solvay S.A.; 

President of the Administrative Board of ULB; 

Professor VUB. 

Honorary Members: 

Baron Jaumotte, 

Mr Jean-Marie Piret, 

Honorary Rector, Honorary President ULB 

and Honorary Director of the Solvay Institutes; 

Attorney General of the Supreme Court of Appeal 

and Honorary Principal Private Secretary to the King. 

Guests: 

Professor Albert Goldbeter, 

Mr Pascal De Wit, 

Professor Niceas Schamp, 

Professor Alexandre Sevrin, 

Professor Marc Henneaux, 

Professor ULB and Scientific Secretary of the 

Committee for Chemistry; 

Adviser Solvay S.A.; 

Secretary of The Royal Flemish Academy 

for Sciences and Arts; 

Professor VUB and Scientific Secretary of the 

Committee for Physics; 

Director of the Solvay Institutes. 

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Scientific Committee for Physics 

Chair: 

Members (second term): 

(2004-2009) 

Professor Fortunato Tito ARECCHI, 

Università di Firenze and INOA, Italy; 

Professor Claude COHEN-TANNOUDJI, 

Nobel Prize 1997, Ecole Normale 

Supérieure, Paris, France; 

Professor Ludwig FADDEEV, V.A Steklov 

Mathematical Institute, 

Saint Petersburg, Russia; 

Professor Gerard ’t HOOFT, 

Nobel Prize 1999, Spinoza Instituut, 

Utrecht, The Netherlands. 

Members (first term): 

(2004-2009) 

Professor Jocelyn BELL BURNELL, 

University of Bath, UK; 

Professor David GROSS, Nobel Prize 

2004,Kavli Institute,Santa Barbara,U.S.A.; 

Professor Klaus VON KLITZING, Nobel 

Prize 1985, Max-Planck-Institut, 

Stuttgart, Germany; 

Professor Pierre RAMOND, University 

of Florida, Gainesville, U.S.A.; 

Scientific Secretary: 

Professor Alexandre SEVRIN, Vrije 

Universiteit Brussel, Belgium. 

Professor Herbert WALTHER (†), Max- 

Planck-Institut, Munich, Germany. 

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Scientific Committee for Chemistry 

Chair: 

. 

Members (second term): 

(2005-2010) 

Professor Stuart RICE, University of 

Chicago, U.S.A.; 

Professor Manfred EIGEN, Nobel Prize 

1967, Max-Planck Institut, Göttingen, 

Germany; 

Professor Jean-Marie LEHN, Nobel 

Prize 1987, Collège de France, 

Paris, France; 

Professor Mario J. MOLINA, 

Nobel Prize 1995, Massachussets 

Institute of Technology, Cambridge, 

U.S.A.; 

Professor Guy OURISSON (†), Centre de 

Neurochimie, Strasbourg, France. 

Members (first term): 

(2005-2010) 

Professor Graham FLEMING, University 

of Berkeley, U.S.A.; 

Professor Harold W. KROTO, Nobel 

Prize 1996, University of Sussex, 

Brighton, United Kingdom; 

Professor Henk N.W. LEKKERKERKER, 

Utrecht Universiteit, The Netherlands; 

Professor K.C. NICOLAOU, University of 

California, San Diego, U.S.A.; 

Professor Kurt WÜTHRICH, 

Nobel Prize 2002, 

Institut Fédéral Suisse de Technologie, 

Zurich, Switzerland. 

Scientific Secretary: 

Professor Albert GOLDBETER, 

Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium. 

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Local Scientific Committee 

Chair: 

Professor Marc HENNEAUX (ULB). 

Members: 

Professor Pierre GASPARD (ULB); 

Professor Paul GEERLINGS (VUB); 

Professor Albert GOLDBETER (ULB); 

Professor Franklin LAMBERT (VUB); 

Professor René LEFEVER (ULB); 

Professor Alexandre SEVRIN (VUB). 

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Honorary Members 

Professor Anatole ABRAGAM, Collège 

de France, Paris, France; 

Professor Robert BROUT, Université 

Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium; 

Professor François ENGLERT, Université 

Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium; 

Professor Ludwig FADDEEV, V.A. Steklov 

Mathematical Institute, 

St Petersburg, Russia; 

Professor Ephraïm KATCHALSKY, 

Weizmann Institute, Israel; 

Professor I.M. KHALATNIKOFF, Landau 

Institute of Theoretical Physics, 

Moscow, Russia; 

Professor William LIPSCOMB, Nobel 

Prize 1976, Harvard University, U.S.A.; 

Professor V. MASLOV, Moscow State 

University, Russia; 

Professor Morikazu TODA, Tokyo 

University of Education, Japan; 

Professor Yuval NE’EMAN(† ), Tel-Aviv 

University, Israel; 

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Honorary Members 

Professor Victor A. SADOVNICHY, 

Rector of Moscow State 

University, Russia; 

Professor Roald SAGDEEV, University of 

Maryland, College Park, U.S.A.; 

Professor E.C.G. SUDARSHAN, 

University of Texas at Austin, U.S.A.; 

Professor Chen Ning YANG, 

Nobel Prize 1957, Chinese University 

Hong Kong & Tsingha University, 

Beijing, China. 

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In Memoriam 

In 2006, the International Solvay Institutes have lost the following 

collaborators and friends : 

Radu BALESCU, 

Professor Emeritus, Université Libre de 

Bruxelles, Belgium; 

Chair of the “Commission Archives” 

of the International Solvay Institutes; 

Yuval NE’EMAN, 

Professor Emeritus, Tel-Aviv University, 

Israel; 

Honorary Member of the International 

Solvay Institutes. 

Guy OURISSON, 

Professor Emeritus, at the “Centre de 

Neurochimie”, Strasbourg, France; 

Member of the Solvay Scientific 

Committee for Chemistry. 

Claude TRUFFIN, 

Scientific adviser to the President of 

the Université Libre de Bruxelles, 

Belgium; 

Member of the International Solvay 

Institutes. 

Herbert WALTHER, 

We shall deeply miss them. 

Professor Emeritus, Max-Planck- 

Institut, Munich, Germany; 

Chair of the Solvay Scientific 

Committee for Physics. 

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2 0 0 6 I n t e r n a t i o n a l S o l v a y C h a i r i n P h y s i c s

2 0 0 6 I n t e r n a t i o n a l S o l v a y C h a i r i n P h y s i c s 

2006 - Professor Ludwig Faddeev 

15 October-14 November 

The International Solvay Chair in Physics was officially 

launched on 18 October 2006. The Solvay Institutes were 

greatly honoured and pleased that Professor Ludwig 

Faddeev accepted to be the first Solvay Professor. 

“Launching” is not quite exact in fact, since the Solvay Chair 

existed for four years in the seventies. It was given in 1970 

to the physicist Wentzel and in 1971 to the mathematician 

Marc Kac. It was then given in 1972 to the chemist Mislow 

and in 1974 to the neurophysiologist Freeman. However, the 

dramatic financial difficulties suffered by the Belgian academic 

institutions in the years following the mid-seventies 

put an end to it. 

Starting in 2006, the International Solvay Chair in Physics 

will be given every year, for one or two months, to an eminent 

physicist who will come to Brussels to give a series of 

specialized lectures on a subject of his or her choice, 

together with an inaugural lecture aimed at a wider 

audience. It is planned to have also, in parallel, a Solvay 

Chair in Chemistry that should start in 2008. 

The pattern that has inspired and guided the Solvay 

Institutes for the re-birth of the Chair in Physics is the 

Lorentz Chair in Leiden and also the Francqui International 

Chair. 

It is the will of the Solvay Institutes that the chairs contribute 

to the doctoral training. In 2006, the lectures given by 

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Professor Faddeev were one of the courses of the international 

doctoral school “Quantum Field Theory, Strings and 

Gravity” co-organized by the ULB, the VUB, the University of 

Amsterdam and the Ecole Normale Supérieure (Paris). PhD 

students from these institutions attended Professor 

Faddeev’s lectures, together with more confirmed researchers 

from Belgium and neighbourhing countries (as well 

as Switzerland). 

The Solvay Chairs are meant to be among the most prestigious 

chairs in the world. With Professor Ludwig Faddeev as 

first chair holder, the Institutes have set the highest possible 

scientific standards. It was therefore a great honour for 

the Solvay Institutes to welcome him as the 2006 Solvay 

Professor in Physics. 

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A brief survey of the career of Professor 

Faddeev 

Professor Faddeev, holder of a dozen of prestigious awards 

and prizes – which include the 1975 Danni Heinemann 

Prize, the 1990 Dirac Medal, the 1996 Max Planck Medal and 

the 2005 State Prize of Russia – is recognized worldwide as 

one of the creators of modern mathematical physics. 

His first major achievements dates back to 1961, when he 

solved the famous quantum scattering problem for three 

particles, a result which opened the way to the theory of 

few-body systems that is in common use today. 

In 1967, his pioneering work (with Victor Popov) on the 

quantization of Yang-Mills gauge fields led to the foundation 

of the standard model of the theory of elementary particles. 

His seminal paper of 1971 with Vladimir Zakharov recognizing 

the Korteweg-de Vries system as a completely integrable 

Hamiltonian system, contributed to the explosion of 

work in modern soliton theory. 

Within the context of quantum mathematical physics, it is 

Professor Faddeev’s novel approach to the theory of spin 

chains that led to the discovery of new mathematical structures 

known today as quantum groups. 

Perhaps the best way to capture the importance of the 

scientific work of Ludwig Faddeev is to say that physicists 

consider him as one of the world’s leading theoretical physicists, 

whereas mathematicians count him as a mathema- 

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tician of world standing. The comparison with Henri 

Poincaré naturally comes to mind. 

Ludwig Faddeev is Professor in Saint Petersburg State 

University and researcher at the Saint Petersburg branch of 

the Steklov Mathematical Institute. He is since the age of 

42 full member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR – 

now Russia. He is also member of the French Academy of 

Sciences and he has been elected by the National Academy 

of the United States as a foreign member of two sections at 

once: mathematics and physics. 

One should add that Professor Faddeev’s school in mathematical 

physics is famous throughout the world. Many of 

his former students and collaborators hold important positions 

at various universities worldwide. 

Programme of chair 

23 – October - Inaugural lecture: “The Mass Problem in 

Yang-Mills Gauge Theory” 

23-27 October – Lectures: “Quantum Integrable Models” 

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9 5 t h A n n i v e r s a r y o f t h e S o l v a y I n s t i t u t e s

1911: Brussels, 

1 st Solvay Conference 

in Physics. 


1 st Solvay Conference 

in Chemistry. 


2 nd Solvay Conference 

in Chemistry. 


7 th Solvay Conference 

in Physics. 

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in Physics. 



in Chemistry. 

1982: Austin, 


in Physics. 


23 rd Solvay Conference 

in Physics. 

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9 5 t h A n n i v e r s a r y o f t h e S o l v a y I n s t i t u t e s 

Re c e p t i o n a t t h e 

“M a i s o n E r n e s t S o l va y ” 

On the occasion of the 95th Anniversary of the Solvay 

Institutes, a reception was organized on 18 October 2006 at 

the “Maison Ernest Solvay” during which Professors 

L. Faddeev (first holder of the International Solvay Chair in 

Physics) and C.N. Yang (1957 Physics Nobel Laureate) were 

made Honorary Members of the Solvay Institutes. 

We are grateful to Solvay SA-NV for making the beautiful 

“Maison Solvay” available to us. 

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Speech by Marc Henneaux 

Mrs and Mr Solvay, 

Mr Janssen, 

Mrs and Mr Jean-Marie Solvay, 

Excellencies 

Dear Colleagues, 

Dear Friends, 

It is a great pleasure to welcome all of you at this cocktail 

party in honour of two eminent scientists, Professor Yang 

and Professor Faddeev. 

The International Solvay Institutes celebrate this year – 2006 

– the 95th Anniversary of the First Solvay Conference in Physics. 

95 years ... well, this is not so bad if one recalls that according 

to the original time schedule set up at their foundation, the 

Institutes were to disappear after 30 years of activity. The 

concepts underlying the creation of the Institutes, which 

combine the flexibility of a generous endowment with the 

research forces of the Brussels universities, were thus remarkably 

visionary, more visionary in fact than what their 

Founder Ernest Solvay even anticipated himself. 

In 95 years, the Institutes met with unprecedented success. 

The 1911 Solvay Conference has been only the first of a series 

of mythical meetings that now belong to the collective 

memory of physicists – I dare even say, to the collective 

memory of humanity, since quantum mechanics and relati- 

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vity are intellectual jewels that no longer belong to the restricted 

circle of physicists, but to humanity itself. 

These celebrated Solvay Conferences, which gather in Brussels 

the “crème de la crème” of the world researchers working on 

a given scientific area, have been – and still are – accompanied 

by various initiatives to support frontier fundamental 

research at the highest international level. Tomorrow starts, 

for instance, a Solvay workshop focused on one of the hottest 

topics in theoretical physics. This explains the presence with 

us this evening of leading physicists from all over the world. 

The Solvay Institutes are one of the most famous Belgian 

scientific institutions. 

We thus thought that it would be particularly appropriate 

to mark our 95th Anniversary by a special event and by a 

new initiative. And we thought that there would be no better 

way to do this than: 

- to launch the International Solvay Chair in Physics; and 

- to celebrate two leading physicists of exceptional stature, 

who have deeply influenced the development of modern 

physics by penetrating ideas of exceptional breadth: 

Professors Chen Ning Yang and Ludwig Faddeev who are 

with us tonight. 

••• 

Professors Yang and Faddeev were already legendary figures 

when I was a student. The papers written by each of them on 

the fundamental forces in Nature were among the first that 

I studied. To be able to meet both of them in Brussels this 

evening is a dream of my youth that becomes reality. 

In the limited amount of time allocated to me, I will not be 

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able to review here their entire cv’s and contributions to physics. 

I will only survey a few salient points. 

••• 

Professor CN Yang made an outstanding impact on physics, 

through his remarkable contributions which cover a spectacularly 

broad range, from particle physics and the theory of 

the fundamental forces to statistical mechanics and condensed 

matter physics. 

Let me start with particle physics. We know that there are 

four fundamental forces in Nature: the electromagnetic 

force, the weak nuclear force, the strong nuclear force and 

the gravitational force. It turns out that the first three of 

these four fundamental forces are described, in the so-called 

standard model, by a theory co-developed by Professor Yang. 

These theories are known, in our physicists’ jargon, as the 

“Yang-Mills gauge theories”. So, we now understand electromagnetism 

and the nuclear forces (electroweak model and 

quantum chromodynamics) in terms of ideas developed by 

Yang ... when he was only 31 years old. 

Slightly later, at the age of 33, he was at the center of a revolution 

that shocked the entire physics community. It was 

believed until then that the laws of physics are parity-invariant, 

or, as it is also said, mirror-symmetric. The mirror 

image of any physical experiment, it was thought, could be 

also actually performed because there is no intrinsic difference, 

at a fundamental level, between left and right. This 

was challenged in 1956 by Yang and Lee, who pointed out 

that the weak nuclear force should violate parity. Their 

exceptional and precious understanding of phenomenology 

led them to further suggest experiments that would esta- 

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blish this weird property. The experiments were immediately 

performed and by early 1957, their results were released. 

They validated Yang and Lee’s bold – and then thought to be 

shocking – insight that parity is violated. This made the 

front page of many newspapers. And that same year, in 

October, they got the Nobel Prize! Yang was only 34. In view 

of the traditional prudence of the Nobel Foundation that 

usually waits for many years before crowning a scientific 

achievement, this is exceptional. I think it is perhaps the only 

instance of an almost instant Nobel recognition. 

But these unique scientific achievements are not all. 

Professor Yang’s work in statistical mechanics had an equally 

important impact through his analysis of spin systems and 

spontaneous magnetization, phase transitions, and the socalled 

Yang-Baxter equations, which opened the way to rich 

physical and mathematical developments. 

Many people have compared the work of Yang with that of 

the famous British physicist Maxwell of the 19th century, 

who also left an indelible imprint on field theory and statistical 

mechanics. I fully endorse this view. 

The scientific achievements of Professor Yang are characterized 

by deepness, originality and exceptional breadth. The 

importance of some of his work has been very often appreciated 

by the community only 15 to 20 years later (the instant 

recognition of parity non invariance described above is an 

exception). The career of Professor Yang perfectly illustrates 

that theoretical fundamental research at the best level is not 

made by big programs (which are usually fashion-inspired), 

but by men and women of exceptional imagination and 

creativity, who are given the means to pursue freely their 

investigations. 

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This is a philosophy that we share at the International Solvay 

Institutes. It is thus a great pleasure and a great honor for 

me to make Professor Yang Honorary Member of the Solvay 

Institutes. 

Professor Yang, if you could please come here. In the name of 

the Institutes, I would like to offer you on this occasion a 

book on the history of the Solvay Institutes. Please note that 

the history is not finished and is still being written! 

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Professor Ludwig Faddev is one of the greatest figures 

that dominate mathematical physics. As I just mentioned, 

the comparison can be made between the works of 

Maxwell and of Yang. I would like to venture another 

comparison in the case of Faddeev, with the great French 

mathematical physicist Henri Poincaré. Physicists are 

proud to count him as a physicist; and mathematicians 

are equally proud to count him as a mathematician. 

Again, the breadth of Faddeev’s work is exceptional. 

He made unique contributions to quantum field theory 

where, in particular, he showed how to quantize consistly the 

Yang-Mills gauge theories mentioned above, in a manner 

compatible with the general physical principles of gauge 

invariance and unitarity. This required the introduction of 

new, somewhat spurious, particles that cannot be directly 

seen but that are nevertherless necessary for the consistency 

of the formalism. These have been given since the picturesque 

name of “Faddeev-Popov ghosts”. (This gives you an 

idea of the sense of humour of physicists.) This pioneering 

development opened the way to a thorough investigation of 

the quantum properties of the Yang-Mills gauge theories 

and contributed to settle the theoretical foundations of the 

standard model of the fundamental forces used in particle 

physics today and verified with a remarkable accuracy. 

Before this work, Professor Faddeev was already a hero in 

the physics community thanks to his resolution of the 

famous quantum scattering problem for three particles, 

a brilliant tour de force that paved the way to the theory 

of few-body systems that is in common use today. 

Professor Faddeev has also made major contributions to 

quantum integrable systems, which have found applications 

in condensed matter physics. His new approach to the 

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theory of spin chains has led to the discovery of entirely new 

mathematical structures known today as “quantum groups” 

and now studied also “per se” by mathematicians. 

His school in mathematical physics, called in the past the 

Leningrad school and today the Saint-Petersburg school, is 

famous throughout the world, as testified by the list of participants 

to the Solvay Workshop that starts tomorrow, 

many of whom are with us this evening. 

Professor Faddeev is member of various academies: the 

Academies of Sciences of Russia (formally of the USSR, of 

which he became a full member at the unusually young age 

of 42) and of France, as well as the National Academy of the 

United States. He received also numerous prestigious international 

awards and prizes, including the Dirac Medal, the 

Dannie Heinemann Prize and the Max Planck Medal. 

Professor Faddeev is a member of the Solvay International 

Committee for Physics. He has helped us enormously in the 

last years. This, combined with his exceptional scientific stature, 

made him a natural candidate for the First 

International Solvay Chair in Physics. We are extremely 

happy and honoured that he accepted our offer. 

Starting this year, the International Solvay Chair in Physics 

will be given every year, for one or two months, to an eminent 

scientist who will come to Brussels to give a series of 

specialized lectures on a subject of his or her choice, together 

with an inaugural lecture aimed at a wider audience. These 

chairs are meant to be prestigious. With Professor Faddeev 

as first chair holder, we are setting the highest possible scientific 

standards. We shall make sure that excellence is maintained 

in the subsequent years – I can announce already 

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that the 2007 chair holder will most likely be Sir Michael 

Berry and the 2008 one will most likely be Nobel Laureate 

David Gross. 

For all these reasons, it is a great pleasure and a great honor 

to make Professor Faddeev also Honorary Member of the 

Solvay Institutes. 

Professor Faddeev, if you could please come here. In the 

name of the Institutes, I would like to also offer you on this 

occasion a book on the history of the Solvay Institutes. 

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If we are still here 95 years after the creation of the Institutes, 

we owe it to the Solvay family who through many generations 

– now 5! – has continuously supported and trusted our 

activities. I would like to thank them in the name of the 

world scientific community. I would like to extend my thanks 

to the Solvay company which is also generously supporting 

us. That today’s ceremony takes place in the house where 

Ernest Solvay lived for many years is very symbolic and 

makes this event almost a family affair. 

I would also like to thank our other sponsors whose support 

is essential: the Belgian National Lottery, the Government of 

the French Community of Belgium, the Foundation David 

and Alice Van Buuren as well as the Hotel Metropole. Finally, 

it is a great pleasure to acknowledge the crucial help given 

to us by the two universities of Brussels, the ULB and the VUB. 

••• 

95 years .... this is not very far from 100 years. We will prepare 

a big event for our 100th anniversary in 2011 and I am 

sure that you will hear about it in due time. 

But you will certainly hear from us before as we are full of 

other exciting projects – including an International Solvay 

Chair in Chemistry – projects which will all materialize in the 

meantime if, as we are confident, we can consolidate our 

financial basis. 

Many thanks for your attention. 

-41-

1 2 

3 

4 

9 5 t h A n n i v e r s a r y o f 

t h e S o l v a y I n s t i t u t e s 

1 L. Faddeev, C.N. Yang 

2 Baron Janssen, M. Henneaux, her Excellency Mrs 

Zhang Qiyue, Ambassador of the Popular Republic 

of China 

3 M. Helbig de Balzac, V. Halloin, F. Reniers, 

Baron Janssen 

4 C.N. Yang, Mrs Yang, Mrs Ge, M.L. Ge, her 

Excellency Mrs Zhang Qiyue, Ambassador of the 

Popular Republic of China 

5 M. Mareschal, G. Latouche, F. Reniers 

6 her Excellency Mrs Zhang Qiyue, Ambassador of 

the Popular Republic of China, A. Brouhns, 

C. Jourquin 

7 L. Faddeev, J-M Solvay, M. Helbig de Balzac 

8 Mrs Ge, M.L GE, F. Lambert 

9 C. Jourquin, J. Van Rijckevorsel, A. Brouhns 

10 P-H Heenen, F. Reniers, G. Latouche 

11 M. Mareschal, P. Gaspard, J. Turner 

12 J. Bricmont, P. Van Moerbeke, P. Gaspard, 

Mrs Solvay, F. Bingen, W. Troost 

13 M. Henneaux, Mrs Solvay, J. Solvay, C.N. Yang, 

Mrs Yang 

14 D. Baye, C. Jourquin, J. Reisse 

5 6

7 8 

9 

1 0 

1 1 

1 2 

1 3 

1 4

W o r k s h o p s , S y m p o s i a a n d S c h o o l s 

o r g a n i z e d b y t h e I n s t i t u t e s

Work, Dissipation, and Fluctuations in Nonequilibrium Physics 

2 2 - 2 5 M a r c h 2 0 0 6


The international Conference “Work, Dissipation, and 

Fluctuations in Nonequilibrium Physics” was held at the 

Free University of Brussels from March 22 to 25, 2006 under 

the auspices of the International Solvay Institutes and was 

co-organized by the Interdisciplinary Center for Nonlinear 

Phenomena and Complex Systems of ULB. This conference 

gathered 84 participants from Australia, Austria, Belgium, 

Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, The Netherlands, 

Spain, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and the United States 

of America. 

Today, the field of nonequilibrium physics is witnessing 

fundamental advances in the understanding of work, dissipation, 

and time asymmetry in out-of-equilibrium systems 

at the scale of nanometers. In these nanosystems, it has 

recently been shown that the nonequilibrium fluctuations 

obey remarkable relationships of great generality and valid 

far from equilibrium. These new relationships have been 

discovered in dynamical systems theory and nonequilibrium 

statistical mechanics during the last fifteen years 

and they characterize the statistical thermodynamics of 

driven Brownian motion, mesoscopic electronic devices, 

stretched single biomolecules, or molecular motors. The 

international conference has timely gathered in March 

2006 the majority of the scientists who have contributed to 

this fundamental breakthrough of contemporary nonequilibrium 

physics. 

We wish to express our gratitude to Marc Henneaux, 

Director of the Solvay Institutes, for supporting this conference 

as a Solvay Workshop. Grégoire Nicolis of the 

Interdisciplinary Center for Nonlinear Phenomena and 

Complex Systems is thanked for his support in the organization 

of the conference. We are grateful to Bernard 

-48-


Derrida of the “Ecole Normale Supérieure” of Paris for 

having proposed to publish the Proceedings in the 

“Comptes Rendus de l’ Académie des Sciences (Paris)”. It is 

our pleasure to thank Mrs Sonia Wellens of the 

Interdisciplinary Center for Nonlinear Phenomena and 

Complex Systems for her essential role in the organization 

and running of the conference. We also thank Mrs 

Dominique Bogaerts, Fabienne De Neyn, Stéphanie 

Deprins, and Isabelle Juif of the Solvay Institutes for their 

help during the conference. 

Pierre Gaspard and Christian Van den Broeck 

-49-


Scientific Committee 

J.R. Dorfman (College Park, USA) 

D. Evans (Canberra, Australia) 

C. Jarzynski (Los Alamos, USA) 

G. Nicolis (Brussels, Belgium) 

S. Tasaki (Tokyo, Japan) 

H. van Beijeren (Utrecht, The Netherlands) 

Organising Committee 

Pierre Gaspard (Brussels, Belgium) 

Christian Van den Broeck (Hasselt & Brussels, Belgium) 

-50-


Invited Speakers 

C. Appert-Rolland (Paris, France) 

C. Bustamante (Berkeley, USA) 

S. Ciliberto (Lyon, France) 

R. Coalson (Pittsburgh, USA) 

E.G.D. Cohen (New York, USA) 

G. Crooks (Berkeley, USA) 

C. Dellago (Vienna, Austria) 

B. Derrida (Paris, France) 

D. Evans (Canberra, Australia) 

G. Gallavotti (Roma, Italy) 

G. Hummer (Bethesda, USA) 

C. Jarzynski (Los Alamos, USA) 

K. Kinosita (Tokyo, Japan) 

J. Kurchan (Paris, France) 

C. Maes (Leuven, Belgium) 

G. Morriss (Sydney, Australia) 

S. Mukamel (Irvine, USA) 

L. Peliti (Napoli, Italy) 

H.A. Posch (Vienna, Austria) 

F. Ritort (Barcelona, Spain) 

U. Seifert (Stuttgart, Germany) 

K. Sekimoto (Paris, France) 

S. Tasaki (Tokyo, Japan) 

T. Tel (Budapest, Hungary) 

F. van Wijland (Paris, France) 

R. van Zon (Toronto, Canada) 

-51-


Programme 

Wednesday, 

22 March 2006 

9h30-9h50 

Chair: 

9h50-10h30 

Welcome and opening address 

P. Gaspard (ULB, Belgium) 

C. Jarzynski (Los Alamos National 

Laboratory, USA) 

“Microscopic reversibility, macroscopic 

irreversibility, and nonequilibrium work 

theorems” 

10h30-11h10 

F. Ritort (Universitat de Barcelona, Spain) 

“The nonequilibrium thermodynamics of 

small systems” 

11h10-11h40 

Coffee break 

11h40-12h20 

D. J. Evans (Austrialan National University, 

Australia) 

“The fluctuation and nonequilibrium free 

energy theorems – Theory & experiment” 

12h20-12h40 

C. Van den Broeck (Universiteit Hasselt, 

Belgium) 

“Fluctuation and dissipation: Three case 

studies” 

12h40-14h30 

Lunch 

-52-


Programme 

Wednesday, 

22 March 2006 

Chair: 

14h30-15h10 

R. Lefever (ULB, Belgium) 

K. Kinosita (Waseda University, Japan) 

“Chemo-mechanical energy transduction in a 

rotary molecular motor F1-ATPase” 

15h10-15h40 

G. Hummer (National Institute of Health, 

Maryland, USA) 

“Thermodynamics and kinetics from 

nonequilibrium single-molecule pulling 

experiments” 

15h40-16h10 

R. Coalson (University of Pittsburgh, USA) 

“Calculating ion permeation through 

biological channel proteins” 

16h10-16h40 

Coffee break 

16h40-17h10 

R. Kawai (University of Alabama, USA) 

“From Brownian motor to Brownian 

refrigerator” 

17h10-17h40 

K. Sekimoto (Université Paris 7, France) 

“Autonomous free energy transducers 

under thermal fluctuations” 

-53-


Programme 

Thursday, 

23 March 2006 

Chair: 

9h30-10h10 

G. Nicolis (ULB, Belgium) 

E. G. D. Cohen (The Rockfeller University, 

USA) 

“Fluctuation relations in nonequilibrium 

driven Langevin systems” 

10h10-10h50 

S. Ciliberto (Laboratoire de Physique de 

l’ENSL, France) 

“Experimental results on the fluctuations in 

out-of-equilibrium systems” 

10h50-11h10 

Group photo 

11h10-11h30 

Coffee break 

11h30-12h10 

B. Derrida (Ecole Normale Supérieure de 

Paris, France) 

“Some exact results on the current and 

density fluctuations in one dimensional 

non-equilibrium systems” 

12h10-12h40 

C. Maes (KULeuven, Belgium) 

“Nonequilibrium ensembles » 

12h40-14h30 

Lunch 

-54-


Programme 

Thursday, 

23 March 2006 

Chair: 

14h30-15h00 

C. Maes (KULeuven, Belgium) 

S. Mukamel (University of 

California, USA) 

“Fluctuation theorems in quantum 

systems” 

15h00-15h30 

S.Tasaki (Waseda University, Japan) 

“Nonequilibrium fluctuations in 

some quantum systems” 

15h30-15h50 

D. Alonso (Fritz-Haber Institut, 

Germany) 

“Atoms in non-Markovian 

environments” 

15h50-16h10 

W. De Roeck (KULeuven, Belgium) 

“Rigorous effective expressions 

for microscopic fluctuations” 

16h10-16h40 

Coffee break 

16h40-17h00 

T. Monnai (Waseda University, Japan) 

“Decay to the nonequilibrium 

steady state of thermal diffusion 

process in a tilted periodic potential” 

17h00-17h20 

T. Gilbert (ULB, Belgium) 

“Fluctuation theorem applied to 

the Nosé-Hoover thermostated 

Lorentz gas” 

17h20-17h40 

A. Gomez Marin (Universitat de 

Barcelona, Spain) 

“Heat fluctuations in Brownian 

transducers” 

-55-


Programme 

Friday, 

24 March 2006 

Chair: 

9h30-10h00 

F. Cornu (Université Paris-Sud, 

France) 

U. Seifert (Universität Stuttgart, 

Germany) 

“Entropy production along a 

stochastic trajectory” 

10h00-10h30 

C. Appert-Rolland (Université Paris XI, 

France) 

“Systems with Markov dynamics: 

Thermodynamic formalism and 

dynamic entropies” 

10h30-10h50 

P. Gaspard (ULB, Belgium) 

“Entropy production and time 

asymmetry in dynamical randomness” 

10h50-11h10 

Coffee break 

11h10-11h40 

F.vanWijland (Université de Paris VII, 

France) 

“ Power injected in a heated 

granular gas” 

11h40-12h10 

R. van Zon (University of Toronto, 

Canada) 

“Short-time fluctuations of 

displacements and work” 

12h10-12h50 

G. Gallavotti (Università di Roma, 

Italy) 

“Thermostats and 

irreversibility time scale” 

12h50-14h30 

Lunch 

-56-


Programme 

Friday, 

24 March 2006 

Chair: 

14h30-15h00 

B. Duplantier (CEA/Saclay, 

France) 

G. Crooks (Lawrence Berkeley Natl. 

Lab., USA) 

“Beyond Boltzmann-Gibbs 

statistics: Maximum entropy 

hyperensembles out-of-equilibrium” 

15h00-15h30 

J. Kurchan (PMMH-ESPCI, Paris, 

France) 

“Mapping reaction paths in phase 

space” 

15h30-16h00 

C. Dellago (Universität Wien, 

Austria) 

“The Jarzynski identity as a 

computational tool” 

16h00-16h30 

L. Peliti (Università “Federico II”, 

Napoli, Italy) 

“Evaluating large deviation 

functions” 

16h30-17h00 

Coffee break 

17h00-19h30 

Poster session 

20h00 

Banquet 

-57-


Programme 

Saturday, 

25 March 2006 

Chair : 

9h30-10h10 

C. Van den Broeck 

(Universiteit Hasselt, Belgium) 

H. van Beijeren (Utrecht Universiteit, 

The Netherlands) 

10h10-10h40 

G. Morriss (University of New 

South Wales, Australia) 

“Lyapunov exponents and 

vectors” 

10h40-11h10 

Coffee break 

11h10-11h40 

H. A. Posch (Universität Wien, 

Austria) 

“On thermostats and negative 

specific heat” 

11h40-12h00 

A. Fingerle (Max-Planck-Institut, 

Germany) 

“Relativistic fluctuation theorems” 

12h00-12h30 

R. MacKay (IHES, France) 

“Ergodic pumping: a mechanism 

to drive biomolecular conformation 

changes” 

12h30-12h50 

Closing remarks 

-58-


List of participants 

Name 

Institution 

ALONSO Sergio 

ALONSO RAMIREZ Daniel 

ANDRIEUX David 

APPERT-ROLLAND Cécile 

BASIOS Vasileos 

BOLLE Désiré 

BOON Jean Pierre 

BRUERS Stijn 

CILIBERTO Sergio 

CLEUREN Bart 

COALSON Rob 

COHEN E.G.D. 

CORNU Françoise 

CROOKS Gavin 

DAEMS David 

del RIO Ezequiel 

DELLAGO Christoph 

DE ROECK Wojciech 

DERRIDA Bernard 

DUPLANTIER Bertrand 

EVANS Denis J. 

FINGERLE Axel 

GALLAVOTTI Giovanni 

GARCIA CANTU Anselmo 

GASPARD Pierre 

GERRITSMA Eric 

GILBERT Thomas 

GIURANIUC Vasile Claudiu 

GOMEZ-MARIN Alex 

GROSFILS Patrick 

Fritz-Haber Institut Berlin, Germany 

Facultad de Fisicas Tenerife, Spain 

Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium 

Université Paris XI, France 


KULeuven, Belgium 



ENS Lyon, France 

Universiteit Hasselt, Belgium 

University of Pittsburgh, U.S.A. 

The Rockfeller University, New York, U.S.A. 

Université Paris-Sud, France 

Lawrence Berkeley Natl. Lab.Berkeley, U.S.A. 


Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, Spain 

Universität Wien, Austria 


Ecole Normale Supérieure Paris, France 

CEA/Saclay, Gif-sur-Yvette, France 

Australian National University, Canberra, Australia 

Max Planck Institut, Göttingen, Germany 

Università di Roma « La Sapienza », Italia 






Universitat de Barcelona, Spain 


-59-


Name 

Institution 

HENNEAUX Marc 

HERNANDEZ CONCEPCION Ethel 

HEYLEN Rob 

HUMMER Gerhard 

IMPARATO Alberto 

JACOBS Tim 

JAIN Sudhir R. 

JARZYNSKI Christopher 

KARPOV Evgueni 

KAWAI Ryoichi 

KINOSITA Kazuhiko 

KURCHAN Jorge 

LECOMTE Vivien 

LEFEVER René 

LESNE Annick 

LUTSKO Jim 

Mc EWEN Jean-Sabin 

MACKAY Robert 

MAES Christian 

MALLICK Kirone 

MARESCHAL Michel 

METENS Stephane 

MEURS Pascal 

MEYSMAN Filip 

MONNAI Takaaki 

MORRISS Gary 

MUKAMEL Shaul 

NAUDTS Jan 

NAVEZ Patrick 

NERI Izaak 


Facultad de Fisica, Tenerife, Spain 


National Institute of Health, Maryland, U.S.A. 

Complesso Universitario di Monte S.Angelo, Napoli, 

Italy 


Utrecht Universiteit, The Netherlands 

Los Alamos National Laboratory, U.S.A. 


University of Alabama at Birmingham, U.S.A. 

Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan 

PMMH-ESPCI Paris, France 

Université Paris XI, France 


Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France 



IHES Bures-sur-Yvette, France & University of Warwick, 

United Kingdom 


CEA/Saclay, Gif-sur-Yvette, France 


Université de Paris VII, France 


Netherlands Instituut voor Ecologie, The Netherlands 

Department of Applied Physics, Tokyo, Japan 

University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia 

University of California, Irvine, U.S.A. 

Antwerp Universiteit, Belgium 



-60-


Name 

Institution 

NICOLIS Grégoire 

PARRONDO Juan 

PELITI Luca 

POSCH Harald A. 

REMACLE Vincent 

RITORT Felix 

SEIFERT Udo 

SEKIMOTO Ken 

SERVANTIE James 

SOKOLOVSKY Alexander 

TASAKI Shuichi 

TATYANENKO Dmitry 

VAN BEIJEREN Henk 

VANDECAN Yves 

VAN DEN BROEK Christian 

VAN DEN BROEK Martijn 

VAN DER STRAETEN Erik 

VANDERZANDE Carlo 

VAN WIEREN Maarten 

VAN WIJLAND Frédéric 

VAN ZON Ramses 

VEDERNIKOV Andrei 

VELARDE Manuel 

VISCARDY Sébastien 

VISCO Paolo 


Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain 

Università « Federico II »Complesso Monte S. Angelo, 

Napoli, Italy 

Universität Wien, Austria 

Sales Technical Support Manager Energy 

Atos Origin, Zaventem, Belgium 

Universitat de Barcelona, Spain 

Universität Stuttgart, Germany 

Université Paris VII & PCT, ESPCI Paris, France 


Dnepropetrovsk National University, Ukraine 

Waseda UniversityTokyo, Japan 


Utrecht Universiteit, The Netherlands 




Universiteit Antwerpen, Belgium 


Eurandom, Eindhoven, The Nederlands 

Université de Paris VII, France 

University of Toronto, Canada 


Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain 


Laboratoire de Physique Théorique, Orsay, France 

-61-

M o d a v e S u m m e r S c h o o l i n M a t h e m a t i c a l 

P h y s i c s 6 - 1 2 A u g u s t 2 0 0 6

M o d a v e S u m m e r S c h o o l 6 - 1 2 A u g u s t 2 0 0 6 

After the success of the first Modave Summer School, a 

second edition was organized by a group of young physicists 

from the Service de Physique Théorique et 

Mathématique of the ULB, the Theoretical Particle Physics 

Group of the VUB and the Service de Mécanique et 

Gravitation of the UMH. The event benefited from the support 

of the International Solvay Institutes. 

In modern theoretical physics, a very strong mathematical 

background is required for the understanding of many profound 

physical issues. Unfortunately, in usual schools and 

workshops addressed to young physicists these mathematical 

tools are not covered in detail. The Modave philosophy 

is to provide to the beginners in the field these tools necessary 

to go closer to the recent development in physics. 

Another aim of the school is to promote the exchange of 

knowledge between the participants. In this respect, the 

Modave lectures are given by the young researchers themselves 

in the domain where they are becoming experts. 

The summer school consisted of about 5 hours of lectures a 

day, during the morning and the late afternoon. This schedule 

encouraged the participants to interact during the 

afternoon in informal discussions. Various social events 

were organized during the evening. 

Some of the lecturers made their contributions available 

for the international community of physicists by publishing 

an extended electronic version of their talk on the 

Internet. The whole contributions were published in paper 

format in “The Proceedings of the Second Modave Summer 

School”. 

-64-



N. Bouatta, 

S. Cnockaert, 

G. Compère, 

S. de Buyl, 

S. Detournay, 

S. Nevens, 

A. Wijns. 

-65-

Participants 

Joke Adam (KUL), 

Paolo Aschieri (München, 

Germany), 

Xavier Bekaert (IHES), 

Nazim Bouatta (ULB), 

Nicolas Boulanger (UMH), 

Laurent Claessens (UCL), 

Sandrine Cnockaert (ULB), 

Andres Collinucci (KUL), 

Geoffrey Compère (ULB), 

Thomas Creutzig (DESY, 

Hamburg, Germany), 

Sophie de Buyl (ULB), 

Stéphane Detournay (UMH), 

Jarah Evslin (ULB), 

Wen Jiang (Oxford), 

Euihun Joung (Paris VII, France), 

Stanislav Kuperstein (ULB), 

Serge Leclercq (UMH), 

Mauricio Leston 

(Buenos Aires, Argentina), 

Carlo Maccaferri (ULB), 

Vincent Mathieu (UMH), 

Jakob Palmkvist (Albert Einstein 

Institute, Golm, Germany), 

Daniel Persson (ULB), 

Christoffer Petersson 

(Chalmers U., Gothenburg), 

Jan Rosseel (KUL), 

Paul Smyth (KUL), 

Nassiba Tabti (ULB), 

Dieter Van den Bleeken (KUL), 

Vincent Wens (ULB), 

Alexander Wijns (VUB).


Programme 

Lectures: 

BRST Symmetry, String and String Field Theory 

(N. Bouatta, S. Cnockaert, S. Leclercq, C. Maccaferri, 8h) 

Algebraic Geometry and K-Theory 

(J. Evslin, W. Jiang, 5h) 

Representations of the Poincaré Group 

(X. Bekaert, N. Boulanger, 3h) 

Theory of Black Holes 

(G. Compère, 3h) 

Topology of Fiber Bundles and Instantons 

(A. Wijns, A. Collinucci, 4h) 

Hopf Algebras, Quantum Groups 

(P. Aschieri, 3h) 

-67-

B e t h e A n s a t z , 7 5 y e a r s l a t e r 

1 9 – 2 1 O c t o b e r 2 0 0 6


Scientific Committee 

A. Alekseev (Geneva, Switzerland) 

O. Babelon (Paris, France) 

R. Brout (Brussels, Belgium) 

L. Faddeev (St Petersburg, Russia) 

M. Henneaux (Brussels, Belgium) 

P. Kulish (St Petersburg, Russia) 

L. Lipatov (St Petersburg, Russia) 

B. McCoy (Stony Brook, USA) 

T. Miwa (Kyoto, Japan) 

H. Nicolai (Potsdam, Germany) 

P. Van Moerbeke (Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium) 

C.N. Yang 

(Hong Kong) 

The aim of this Solvay Workshop was to pay tribute to Hans 

Bethe at the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his birth. 

Since 2006 was also the 75th anniversary of his famous 

Ansatz it seemed appropriate to dedicate a workshop to 

this major subject. About twenty distinguished scientists 

agreed to present the rich variety of topics and developments 

that originated in Hans Bethe’s famous paper of 

1931. Special attention was devoted to the technical problems 

related to the counting of solutions of the Bethe 

equation for the XYZ model, to the construction of correlation 

functions and to modern applications of the AdS/CFT 

duality. Very strong indications of the exact solvability of 

the N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory were also provided. 

-70-



F. Ferrari (Brussels, Belgium) 

L. Houart (Brussels, Belgium) 

R. Kashaev (Geneva, Switzerland) 

F. Lambert (Brussels, Belgium) 

F. Nijhoff (Leeds, United Kingdom) 

A. Volkov (Brussels, Belgium) 

Invited Speakers 

V. Bazhanov (Canberra, Australia) 

N. Beisert (Princeton, USA) 

K. Fabricius (Wuppertal, Germany) 

M.L. Ge (Nankai, China) 

V. Kazakov (Paris, France) 

V. Korepin (Stony Brook, USA) 

J.-M. Maillet (Lyon, France) 

B. McCoy (Stony Brook, USA) 

N. Reshetikhin (Berkeley, USA) 

H. Saleur (Los Angeles, USA) 

E. Sklyanin (York, United Kingdom) 

F. Smirnov (Jussieu, France) 

B. Sutherland (Salt Lake City, USA) 

M. Staudacher (Potsdam, Germany) 

L. Takhtajan (Stony Brook, USA) 

P. Van Moerbeke (Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium) 

A. Zamolodchikov (Rutgers, USA) 

K. Zarembo (Uppsala, Sweden) 

-71-


Programme 

Welcome Reception at the Solvay House 

Wednesday, 

18 October 2006 

Programme 

Chair: 

R. Brout (ULB, Belgium) 

Thursday, 


9:30 – 9:50 Opening by M. Henneaux, L. Faddeev 

and R. Brout 

9:50 – 10:30 C.N. Yang (Chinese University of Hong Kong, 

Hong Kong) 

10:30 – 10:50 Coffee Break 

Chair: 

A. Alekseev (Université de Genève, 

Switzerland) 

10:50 – 11:30 T. Miwa (Kyoto University, Japan) 

“Density Matrix of the XXZ Spin Chain” 

11:30 – 12:10 F. Smirnov (Laboratoire de Physique théorique 

Hautes Energies, Jussieu, France) 

“Q-Oscillator and Correlation Functions 

for XXZ Model” 

12:10 – 13:45 Lunch 

-72-


Programme 

Thursday, 


Chair: 

O. Babelon (Laboratoire de Physique 

théorique et Hautes Energies, 

Jussieu, France) 

13:45 – 14:25 B. Sutherland (University of Utah, USA) 

“The Asymptotic Bethe Ansatz” 

14:25 – 15:05 V. Korepin (University of New-York, USA) 

“XXX Spin Chain: from Bethe Solution to 

Open Problems” 

15:05 – 15:45 K. Fabricius (Bergische Universität 

Wuppertal, Germany) 

“An Elliptic Current Operator for the Eight 

Vertex Model” 


16:20 – 17:00 V. Bazhanov (Australian National 

University, Australia) 

“Analytic Theory of the Eight-Vertex 

Model” 

17:00 – 17:40 N. Reshetikhin (University of Berkeley, 

USA) 

“The 6-Vertex Model with Fixed Boundary 

Conditions” 

Banquet at the Hotel Metropole 

-73-


Programme 

Friday, 

Chair: 

H. Nicolai (Max-Planck-Institut, 

Germany) 


9:30 – 10:10 B. McCoy (Institute for Theoretical 

Physics, New-York, USA) 

“The Six Vertex Model at Roots of Unity: 

Loop Algebra Symmetry and 

Representation Theory” 

10:10 – 10:50 J.-M. Maillet (Ecole Normale Supérieure 

de Lyon, France) 

“Correlation Functions of Heisenberg 

Spin Chains : the Algebraic Bethe Ansatz 

Approach” 


11:10 – 11:50 L. Lipatov (Petersburg Nuclear Physics 

Institute, Russia) 

“Transcendentality Property of N=4 

Supersymmetric Gauge Theories” 

11:50 – 12:30 N. Beisert (Princeton University, USA) 

“The S-Matrix of AdS/CFT” 

12:30 – 14:00 Lunch 

-74-


Programme 

Friday, 

Chair: 

L. Takhtajan (Stony Brook 

University, USA) 


14:00 – 14:40 H. Saleur (CEA Saclay, France) 

“Enlarged Symmetries of Spin Chains and 

Loop Models” 

14:40 – 15:20 E.Sklyanin (University ofYork,United Kingdom) 

“Bethe Equations: Towards an Exact 

Solution” 

15:20 – 16:00 V. Kazakov (Université Paris-VI, France) 

“Classical Limit of the Bethe Ansatz for 

Stringy Sigma Models” 


16:20 – 17:00 P. Van Moerbeke (Université Catholique 

de Louvain, Belgium) 

“Critical Infinite-Dimensional Diffusions 

and Non-linear Equations for their 

Transition Probabilities” 

17:00 – 17:40 A. Zamolodchikov (Rutgers University, USA) 

“Integrable Boundary Interactions” 

-75-


Programme 

Saturday, 

Chair: 

V. Korepin (University of New-York, 

USA) 


9:30 – 10:10 M.L. Ge (Nankai University, China) 

“Yang-Baxter Equation and Quantum 

Information” 

10:10 – 10:50 M. Staudacher (Max-Planck-Institut, 

Potsdam, Germany) 

“The Hubbard Model and the AdS/CFT 

Correspondence” 


11:10 – 11:50 K. Zarembo (Uppsala Universitet, Sweden) 

“Bethe Ansatz in Stringy Sigma-Models” 

-76-



Name 

Institution 

ALEKSEEV A. 

BABELON O. 

BARNICH G. 

BAZHANOV V. 

BEISERT N. 

BOUATTA N. 

BROUT R. 

COLOMO F. 

CRAPS B. 

ENGLERT F. 

FABRICIUS K. 

FADDEEV L. 

FERRARI F. 

FORTE L. 

GASPARD P. 

GE M.L. 

GRIGORIEV M. 

HENNEAUX M. 

HOUART L. 

KASHAEV R. 

KAZAKOV V. 

KOREPIN V. 

LAMBERT F. 

LIPATOV L. 

MACCAFERRI C. 

MAILLET J-M. 

MANOJLOVIC N. 

Université de Genève, Switzerland 

Laboratoire de Physique théorique et Hautes Energies, 

Jussieu, France 


Australian National University, Australia 

Princeton University, USA 



INFN Firenze, Italy 

Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium 


Bergische Universität Wuppertal, Germany 

V.A. Steklov Mathematical Institute, St Petersburg, 

Russia 




Nankai University, China 

Lebedev Institute, Russia 



Université de Genève, Switzerland 

Université Paris-VI, France 

University of New-York, USA 

Vrije Universiteit Brussels, Belgium 

Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute, Russia 


Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, France 

Universidade do Algarve, Portugal 

-77-


-78-



Name 

Institution 

McCOY B. 

MIWA T. 

NAGY Z. 

NAUDTS J. 

NICOLAI H. 

NIJHOFF F. 

PERSSON D. 

PRONKO A. 

REJ A. 

RESHETIKHIN N. 

RODRIGUEZ-PLAZA M. 

SALEUR H. 

SCHOMBLOND C. 

SEVRIN A. 

SKLYANIN E. 

SMIRNOV F. 

SPINDEL P. 

SPRINGAEL J. 

SUTHERLAND B. 

STAUDACHER M. 

TAKHTAJAN L. 

VAN MOERBEKE P. 

VOLKOV A. 

WIJNS A. 

YANG C.N. 

ZAMOLODCHIKOV A. 

ZAREMBO K. 

Institute for Theoretical Physics, New-York, USA 

Kyoto University, Japan 

Universidade do Algarve, Portugal 


Max-Planck-Institut, Germany 

University of Leeds, United Kingdom 


INFN Firenze, Italy 

Max-Planck-Institut, Potsdam, Germany 

University of Berkeley, USA 

Universidad Madrid, Spain 

CEA Saclay, France & University of Southern California, 

USA 



University of York, United Kingdom 

Laboratoire de Physique théorique et Hautes Energies, 

Jussieu, France 

Université de Mons-Hainaut, Belgium 


University of Utah, USA 

Max-Planck-Institut, Potsdam Germany 

Stony Brook University, USA 

Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium 



Chinese University of Hong Kong 

Rutgers University, USA 

Uppsala Universitet, Sweden 

-79-

C O L L O Q U I A

C O L L O Q U I A 

« FROM MICRO - TO NANOELECTRONICS : 

A QUANTUM LEAP » 

Professor Klaus von KLITZING 

(Max-Planck-Institut für 

Festkörperforschung Stuttgart - Germany) 

Tuesday May 16, 2006 

Abstract 

“The scaling laws for the miniaturization of microelectronic 

devices break down if the wave nature and the discrete 

charge of electrons dominate the electronic properties. 

These quantum phenomena do not mark the end in the 

miniaturization of devices but open the possibility to 

create new devices with new functions where for example 

the energy quantization of electrons in confined structures, 

tunnel phenomena through barriers and single electron 

charging of small islands play an important role. 

The talk gives an overview about the physics, technology 

and application of semiconductor quantum structures and 

discusses some recent basic research activities of my group 

in this field.” 

-82-


« THEMATIC MELODIES OF TWENTIETH 

CENTURY PHYSICS : QUANTIZATION,, 

SYMMETRY AND PHASE FACTOR » 

Professor C. N. YANG 

(Chinese University, Hong Kong & Tsinghua 

University, Beijing - China) 

Wednesday October 18, 2006 

Abstract 

“It has been said that the 20th century was the century of 

physics. There are ample reasons to support this statement: 

it was in that century that man discovered, for the first 

time since our ancestors discovered fire, the second and 

vastly stronger source of energy: nuclear power. It was in 

that century that man learned to manipulate electrons to 

create the transistor and the modern computer, transforming 

thereby human productivity and human lives. It was 

in that century that man learned how to probe into structures 

of atomic dimensions, discovering thereby the double-helix, 

a key to the secrets of life. It was in that century 

that man ceased to be earth-bound, taking first steps on 

the moon. In short, it was a century in which man made 

unprecedented progress on many fronts of human activities. 

And these progresses were largely ushered in by 

breathtaking advances in the science of physics. 

It is hard not to be impressed by the decisive roles that the 

climatic developments in 20th century physics had played 

-83-


in human history. But decisive as they are in human history, 

they do not represent, in fact, the true glory of the development 

of the science of physics in the 20th century. 

The true glory of physics in the 20th century lay instead in 

the deepened understandings of important primordial 

concepts which date from the beginning of human civilization: 

that of space, of time, of motion, of energy, and of 

force. 

In all of these primordial concepts, there have been profound 

revolutions in our understanding, revolutions that 

had brought forth a more beautiful, more subtle, more precise 

and more unified description of nature. 

There have been in recent years studies of many aspects of 

the detailed history of twentieth century physics. It is not 

my purpose to delve into these subjects here. 

What I propose to do is instead to look into this history for 

the broad motifs of the developments, and to trace the 

three main strands that had persistently woven through its 

conceptual advances, appearing again and again in a 

variety of forms, singly or intertwined, like the thematic 

melodies of symphonic music. We shall see that these three 

melodies together define the tone and the flavour of the 

main developments of physics in the 20th century.” 

-84-


« THE CONFRONTATION BETWEEN GENE- 

RAL RELATIVITY AND EXPERIMENT» 

Professor Clifford M. WILL 

(McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences, 

Department of Physics, Washington 

University, St. Louis - USA) 

Tuesday December 5, 2006 

Abstract 

“We review the experimental evidence for 

Einstein's general relativity. Tests of the 

Einstein Equivalence Principle support the 

postulates of curved spacetime, while 

solar-system experiments strongly 

confirm weak-field general relativity. 

We describe the status of the recently 

concluded Gravity Probe B gyroscope 

experiment. Binary pulsars provide tests 

of gravitational-wave damping and of 

strong-field general relativity. Recently operational laser 

interferometric gravitational-wave observatories, and a 

future space interferometer, may provide new tests via the 

properties of gravitational waves.” 

-85-

Workshops, Conferences and Schools sponsored by the Institutes

I n t e r n a t i o n a l C o n f e r e n c e o n T h e o r e t i c a l 

A s p e c t s o f R e a c t i v i t y 5 - 7 A p r i l 2 0 0 6 .


The aim of the conference was to give the audience an 

impression of theoretical aspects of chemical reactivity, as 

it can now be studied starting from the electronic structure 

of atoms, molecules,... using a variety of quantum mechanical 

methodologies. Both more fundamental and applied 

aspects (wave function vs. DFT reactivity descriptors, dynamics, 

aromaticity, organic and inorganic reactions, biosystems, 

zeolites, ...) have been addressed. For this purpose 13 

internationally renowned speakers have delivered talks (40 

minutes each) on various approaches/applications. 

Contributed lectures have been given by a selected number 

of foreign participants and representatives of a number of 

Belgian research groups. A poster session has given ample 

space and time for presentation of research results by all 

other participants. 

Themes: 

The sessions has covered the following topics: 

I. Aromaticity 

II. Reactivity - Conceptual DFT 

III. Dynamics 

IV. Biological Systems 

V. Catalysis 

-90-

A s p e c t s o f R e a c t i v i t y 5 - 7 A p r i l 2 0 0 6 

Organising Committee: 

Local Organising Committee: 

P. Geerlings (Brussels – VUB) (Chair) 

F. De Proft (Brussels – VUB) 

C. Van Alsenoy (Antwerp – UA) 

D. Lamoen (Antwerp – UA) 

M. Waroquier (Ghent – RUG) 

P. Bultinck (Ghent – RUG) 

J. Liévin (Brussels – ULB) 

R. Schoonheydt (Louvain – KUL) 

M.T. Nguyen (Louvain – KUL) 

PG. Boon 

A. Borgoo 

F. De Proft 

P. Geerlings 

S. Loverix 

G. Roos 

D. Sorgeloos 

G. Vandeperre 

Invited Speakers: 

P. von Ragué Schleyer (University of Georgia, Athens, USA) 

P. W. Fowler (University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom) 

J. Hutter (Universität Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland) 

M. Sprik (University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom) 

J.M.L. Martin (Weizmann Institute of Science, Rechovot, Israel) 

R. G. Parr (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA) 

P. W. Ayers (McMaster University Hamilton, Ontario, Canada) 

P. K. Chattaraj (Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India) 

M. Solà (Universitat de Girona, Girona, Spain) 

D. A. Dixon (The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, USA) 

W. Domcke (Lehrstuhl für Theoretische Chemie, Garching, Germany) 

U. Röthlisberger (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale, Lausanne, Switzerland) 

R.A. van Santen (Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, Eindhoven, The Netherlands) 

-91-


Programme 

8h30 - 9h30 

Registration 

Wednesday, 

5 April 2006 

9h30 - 9h45 : Welcome address by : 

M. Henneaux, Director of the Solvay 

Institutes 

P. Geerlings, Chair of the Scientific 

and Organising Committee 

Morning Session I: 

Chairman : P. Geerlings 

9h45 - 10h30 : 

Invited Lecture I1 

P. von Ragué Schleyer (University of 

Georgia, Athens, USA) 

“New,Superior Measures of Aromaticity” 

10h30 - 11h15 : 

Coffee Break 

Morning Session II: 

Chairman : P. Bultinck 

11h15 - 12h00 : 


P. W. Fowler (University of Sheffield, 

Sheffield, United Kingdom) 

“Ring Currents and Aromaticity: 

Counting the Electrons that Count” 

12h00 - 12h25 : 

Contributed Lecture C1 

R. Ponec (Institute of Chemical 

Process Fundamentals, Czech 

Academy of Sciences, Czech Republic), 

P. Bultinck and R. Carbó-Dorca 

“Generalized Population Analysis as a 

Means to Quantify Aromaticity” 

12h25 - 14h00 : 

Lunch 

-92-


Programme 

Wednesday, 

5 April 2006 

Afternoon Session I: Chairman : D. Lamoen 

14h00 - 14h45 : Invited Lecture I3 

J. Hutter (Universität Zürich, Zürich, 

Switzerland) 

“First Principles Simulations of 

Liquids and Solutions” 

14h45 - 15h30 : 


M. Sprik (University of Cambridge, 

Cambridge, United Kingdom) 

“Redox Potentials and Reorganization 

Energies from Vertical Energy Gaps : 

Car-Parinello Implementation” 

15h30 - 15h55 : 


R. Pollet (Laboratoire Francis Perrin, 

CEA, Gif-sur-Yvette, France), 

C. Boehme and D. Marx 

“Car-Parrinello Simulations of 

Desorption and Reactivity of Glycine 

at a Water-pyrite Interface at "ironsulfur 

world" Prebiotic Conditions” 

15h55 - 16h30 : 

Coffee Break 

-93-


Programme 

Wednesday, 

5 April 2006 

Afternoon Session II: Chairman : C. Van Alsenoy 

16h30 - 17h15 : Invited Lecture I5 

J.M.L. Martin (Weizmann Institute of 

Science, Rechovot, Israel) 

“The Challenge ofTransition States in DFT” 

17h15 - 17h40 : 


K. Hemelsoet, V. Van Speybroeck, D. 

Moran, L. Radom and M. Waroquier 

(Center for Molecular Modeling, 

Universiteit Gent, Gent, Belgium) 

“Reactivity of Radical Reactions 

involving Polycyclic Aromatic 

Hydrocarbons” 

17h40 - 18h05 : 


Y. Simón-Manso, M. Marquez and C. 

Gonzalez, (Interdisciplinary Network 

of Emerging Sciences and Technology 

(INEST Group), PM-USA, Richmond, 

VA and Center for Theoretical and 

Computational Nanosciences, 

National Institute of Standards and 

Technology (NIST), Gaithersburg, MD) 

“The Substituent Effects in the 

Context of Temperature-Dependent 

Density Functional Theory” 

-94-


Programme 

Thursday, 

Sessions in Honour of Professor R. G. Parr's 

85th birthday 

6 April 2006 

8h30 - 8h40 : 

Introduction : F. De Proft 

Session I : 

Chairman : F. De Proft 

8h40 - 9h25 : 


R. G. Parr (University of North Carolina, 

Chapel Hill, USA) 

“Some Comments on Molecular 

Density-Functional Theory” 

9h25 - 10h10 : 


P. W. Ayers (McMaster University 

Hamilton, Ontario, Canada) 

“Why Does the Hard-Soft Acid-Base 

Principle Work ? Insights Obtained by 

Considering Acid (or Base) Exchange 

Reactions” 

10h10 - 10h40 : 

Coffee Break 

-95-


Programme 

Thursday, 

6 April 2006 

Session II: 

10h40 - 11h25 : 

Chairman : W. J. Mortier 


P. K. Chattaraj (Indian Institute of 

Technology, Kharagpur, India) 

“Excited State Reactivity in Static and 

Dynamic Situations” 

11h25 - 11h50 : 


O. Anatole von Lilienfeld and M. E. 

Tuckerman (Department of 

Chemistry, New York University, 

New York, USA) 

“Grand-canonical Ensemble Density 

Functional Theory for Nuclei and 

Electrons” 

11h50 - 12h15 : 


T. Leyssens, P. Geerlings and D. Peeters 

(Laboratoire de Chimie Quantique, 

Université Catholique de Louvain, 

Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium) 

“On the Importance of the External 

Potential on Group Electronegativity” 

12h15 - 14h00 : 

Lunch 

-96-


Programme 

Afternoon Sesssion I: 

Chairman : M. Waroquier 

Thursday, 

6 April 2006 

14h00 - 14h45 : 


M. Solà, F. Feixas, E. Matito and J. 

Poater (Universitat de Girona, Girona, 

Spain) 

“Electron Delocalization in 

Aromatic Molecules” 

14h45 - 15h10 : 


L. Joubert, M. Pavone, V. Barone and C. 

Adamo (Laboratoire d'Electrochimie 

et de Chimie Analytique, Ecole 

Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de 

Paris, France) 

“Static and Dynamic Quantum 

Chemical Topology: a Prototype SN2 

Reaction as a Test Case” 

15h10 - 15h35 : 


C. Morell, A. Grand and A. Toro-Labbé 

(CEA DRFMC/SCIB/LAN, Grenoble, 

France) 

“A New Dual Descriptor for 

Chemical Reactivity” 

15h35 - 16h05 : 

Coffee Break 

-97-


Programme 

Thursday, 

6 April 2006 

Afternoon Session II: Chairman : M. T. Nguyen 

16h05 - 16h50 : 


D. A. Dixon, S. Li, R. Craciun, M. H. 

Matus, D. j. Grant and M. T. Nguyen 

(The University of Alabama, 

Tuscaloosa, USA) 

“Computational Approaches to the 

Prediction of Reaction Kinetics for 

Chemical Hydrogen Storage and 

Catalysis” 

16h50 - 17h15 : 

17h15 - 17h40 : 

17h40 - 18h05 : 


M. V. Ganduglia-Pirovano, V. Brázdová, 

T. K. Todorova and J. Sauer (Institut für 

Chemie, Humboldt-Universität, 

Berlin, Germany) 

“Reducibility and Reactivity: 

Towards Understanding Properties 

and Functions of Supported Metal 

Oxide Catalysts” 


G. Heydenrych, J. Dillen and H. 

Raubenheimer (Department of 

Chemistry and Polymer Science, 

University of Stellenbosch, South 

Africa) 

“A DFT Study of the Catalytic 

Hydrocyanation of Ethylene” 


P. Sautet, D. Loffreda, F. Delbecq and F. 

Vigne (Laboratoire de Chimie, Ecole 

Normale Supérieure de Lyon, France) 

“Catalytic Reactivity and Selectivity at 

Metal Surfaces from a DFT Approach” 

-98-


Programme 

Morning Session I: Chairman : J. Liévin 

Friday, 

7 April 2006 

8h30 - 9h15 : 


W. Domcke (Lehrstuhl für Theoretische 

Chemie, Garching, Germany) TBA 

9h15 - 9h40 : 


P. Mignon, S. Loverix, J. Steyaert and P. 

Geerlings (Center for Surface 

Chemistry and Catalysis, Katholieke 

Universiteit Leuven and General 

Chemistry Department (ALGC), Vrije 

Universiteit Brussel) 

“The Influence of the Aromatic 

Stacking Interaction on the H- 

Bonding Capacity in Biomolecules” 

9h40 - 10h05 : 


E. Broclawik, M. Radon and A. Rajjak 

Shaikh (Institute of Catalysis, Kraków, 

Poland) 

“Oxyferryl Active Site in Cytochrome 

CYP 3A4: Quantum Chemical study on 

Properties and Metabolism Mechanism” 

10h05 - 10h40 : 

Coffee Break 

-99-


Programme 

Morning Session II : Chairman : R. Schoonheydt 

Friday, 

7 April 2006 

10h40 - 11h25 : 


U. Röthlisberger (Ecole Polytechnique 

Federale, Lausanne, Switzerland) 

11h25 - 12h10 : 


R.A. van Santen (Technische Universiteit 

Eindhoven,Eindhoven,The Netherlands) 

“Chemical Reactivity of Heterogeneous 

Catalysts” 

12h10 - 12h25 : 

Closing of the Conference 

-100-



Name 

Institution 

AL MOKHTAR Lamsabhi 

ALFAIA Antonio 

ALTINBAS OZPINAR Gul 

ANDRES Juan 

AVIYENTE Viktorya 

AYERS Paul 

BALAWENDER Robert 

BALAZS Pinter 

BARAL PRAVAS Kumar 

BENNASSER Safi 

BERSKI Slawonir 

BLOCKHUYS Frank 

BOON Greet 

BORGOO Alex 

BOROWSKI Tomasz 

BOULANGER Marie-Laure 

BROCLAWIK Ewa 

BULTINCK Patrick 

CARBO-DORCA Ramon 

CAUET Emilie 

CHAMORRO Eduardo 

CHATTARAJ PRATIM Kumar 

CHERMETTE Henry 

CHEVREAU Hilaire 

CICAK Helena 

CINAR Zekiye 

CLIMA Sergiu 

DE COOMAN Hendrik 

Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Spain 

Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal 

Marmara University, Turkey 

Universidad Jaume I, Spain 

Bogazici University, Turkey 

Mc Master University, Canada 

Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy 

of Sciences, Poland 


Karl Franzens Universität, Austria 


University of Wroclaw, Poland 




Institute of Catalysis and Surface Chemistry, Cracow, 

Poland 


Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland 

Universiteit Gent, Belgium 



Universidad Andres Bello, Santiago - Chile 

Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, India 

Université Claude Bernard Lyon I, France 

Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris - France 

University of Zagreb, Croatia 

Yildiz Technical University, Istanbul - Turkey 



-101-


DE DOBBELAERE Christopher 

DE MOOR Bart 

DE PROFT Frank 

DECLERCK Reinout 

DELEUZE Michael 

DILLEN Jan 

DIXON David 

DJAFFAR Kehffache 

DOMCKE Wolfgang 

ELANANY Mohamed 

FIAS Stijn 

FLEURAT-LESSARD Paul 

FOWLER Patrick 

FRANCOIS Jean-Pierre 

GANDUGLIA-PIROVANO Maria 

GEERLINGS Paul 

GENIX Pierre 

GHAMMAMY Shahriar 

GHYSELS An 

GOPINADHANPILLAI Gopakumar 

GRAND André 

GÜELL SERRA Mireia 

GURUSAMY Perumal 

HEMELSOET Karen 

HENDRICKX Marc 

HUTTER Juerg 

JANSSENS Sara 

JANSSENS Stoffel 

JOUBERT Laurent 

KILIC Murat 

KNIPPENBERG Stefan 

KRYACHKO Eugène 

LAMOEN Dirk 






University of Stellenbosch, South Africa 

The University of Alabama, USA 

Université des Sciences et de la Technologie 

H. Boumedienne, Algeria 

Technische Universität München, Germany 

Université de Namur, Belgium 


ENS Lyon, France 

University of Sheffield, United Kingdom 


Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Germany 


Bayer Cropscience, Lyon, France 

IKI University, Iran 



Commissariat à l’Energie atomique, Grenoble, France 

Universitat de Girona, Spain 

SRI S. Ramasamy Naidu Memorial College, India 



Universität Zürich, Switzerland 



Ecole Nationale Sup. De Chimie de Paris, France 

Yildiz Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey 


Université de Liège, Belgium 


-102-


LARSSON Per-Erik 

LESTHAEGHE David 

LEYSSENS Tom 

LIEVENS Peter 

LIEVIN Jacques 

LORIES Xavier 

LOVERIX Stefan 

MANCA Gabriele 

MARINI Alberto 

MARTIN J.M.L. 

MATITO E 

MIGNON Pierre 

MIHALIC Zlatko 

MINTMIRE John 

MITORAJ Mariusz 

MOENS Jean 

MONBALIU Jean-Christophe 

MORELL Christophe 

MORTIER Wilfried J. 

NGUYEN THANH Lam 

NGUYEN Vinh Son 

OLASZ Andras 

PARR R.G. 

PASSALACQUA Alessio 

PAUWELS Ewald 

PEETERS Daniel 

PHAM CAM Nam 

PIDKO Evgeny 

POATER Albert 

POATER Jordi 

POLLET Rodolphe 

POLO Victor 

PONEC Robert 

University of Bath, United Kingdom 







Università di Pisa, Italy 

Università di Pisa, Italy 

Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel 

Universitat de Gerona, Spain 


University of Zagreb, Croatia 

Oklahoma State University, USA 

Uniwersitytet Jagiellonski, Cracow, Poland 



Commissariat à l’Energie atomique, Grenoble, France 

ExxonMobil Chemical Europe Inc., Belgium 



BUTE Budapest Technical University, Hungary 

University of North Carolina, USA 

Università Di Modena e Reggio Emilia, Italy 




Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, The Netherlands 


Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands 

CEA Saclay, France 

Universidad Jaume I, Spain 

Institute of Chemical Process Fundamentals 

Czech Academy of Sciences, Czech Republic 

-103-


RAMIREZ-CUESTA AJ 

RINSKOPF Nathalie 

ROBIETTE Raphaël 

ROETHLISBERGER Ursula 

ROOS Goedele 

SABBE Maarten 

SABLON Nick 

SADHEGI GARMAROUDI Babak 

SAUTET P. 

SCHINDLER Michael 

SCHOONHEYDT Robert 

SIMON-MANSO Yamil 

SOLA Miquel 

SPRIK Michiel 

STAELENS Nicolas 

STEVENS Franky 

SUWATTANAMALA Akapong 

TALIPOV Marat 

TERSAGO Karla 

TIELENS Frederik 

TORRENT-SUCARRAT Miquel 

VAECK Nathalie 

VAN ALSENOY Christian 

VAN CAUTER Karen 

VAN DAMME Sofie 

VAN ERP Titus 

VAN FLETEREN Diederik 

VAN NECK Dimitri 

VANOMMESLAEGHE Kenno 

VAN SANTEN Rutger A. 

VAN SPEYBROECK Véronique 

Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, United Kingdom 



Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale Lausanne, Switzerland 




Islamic Azad University, Tonekabon, Iran 

Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, France 

BayerCrop Science Research, Germany 


National Institute of Standards and Technology 

Gaithersburg, USA 


University of Cambridge, United Kingdom 

Facultés Universitaires Notre-Dame de la Paix 

(Namur), Belgium 


Universidade do Porto, Portugal 

Institute of Organic Chemistry, Ufa, Russian Federation 

Universiteit Antwerp, Belgium 

Université Pierre et Marie Curie, France 



Universiteit Antwerp, Belgium 



Centre of Surface Science and Catalysis Heverlee, 

Belgium 




Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, The Netherlands 


-104-


VANSTEENKISTE Peter 


VELDEMAN Nele 


VERCAUTEREN Daniel 

Facultés Universitaires Notre-Dame de la Paix de 

Namur, Belgium 

VERDONCK Stijn 


VON LILIENFELD-TOAL Otto Anatole New-York University, USA 

VON RAQUE SCHLEYER Paul University of Georgia, USA 

WAROQUIER Michel 


YAZYEV Oleg 

Institut des Sciences et Ingénierie chimiques 

Lausanne, Switzerland 

ZAMANPOURNIAVARAN M. Teacher Training University Tehran, Iran 

-105-

Doctoral School “Quantum Field Theory, Strings and Gravity”

Doctoral School “Quantum Field Theory, Strings and Gravity” 

In 2006, the Solvay Institutes have helped to launch an 

international advanced doctoral school on quantum field 

theory, strings and gravity, combining forces from the ULB, 

the VUB, the university of Amsterdam and various institutions 

in Paris led by the Ecole Normale Supérieure. [It is to 

be noted that this school is a module of the FNRS doctoral 

thematic school “Physique et Astrophysique” in the 

“Communauté Française de Belgique”.] 

In view of the remarkable success of the initiative, the 

International Solvay Institutes plan to continue to support 

the school and to provide grants to some of the best foreign 

students – in addition, of course, to supporting ULB and 

VUB participants – , fulfilling thereby a will of Ernest Solvay 

to help promising beginning researchers. 

One of the driving forces behind the set up of the school 

has been ULB Professor Frank Ferrari, member of the Solvay 

Institutes, who describes the project as follows. 

Genesis 

The most prestigious American Universities, like Princeton or 

Harvard, all have top-level Doctoral Schools. A large number 

of high-level courses are taught by the best Professors, to 

introduce the graduate students to the latest developments 

in research. This greatly enhances the ability of the students 

to understand their field at large, boosts their motivation, 

and helps them to become more mature and to acquire 

independence at an early stage. These Schools clearly play a 

leading rôle in the quality of research in the United States. 

They also act like powerful magnets to attract the best graduate 

students from around the world, in particular from 

Asia. 

-108-


In the field of abstract theoretical/mathematical physics, the 

advantage given to the U.S.-trained researchers by the existence 

of these School is considerable. In this particular area 

of research, there exists a huge conceptual and technical gap 

between Masters-level studies and top-level research papers. 

The Schools aim at filling this gap, by providing introductions 

to advanced mathematical and theoretical concepts, 

that are essential in understanding current research, but 

cannot be taught at the undergraduate level. 

Organizing similar Schools in Europe has appeared to be 

extremely difficult. The main reason is the lack of a proper 

funding of European Universities compared to their 

American counterparts. It is usually very difficult to a 

European institution to allocate resources for organizing 

and teaching at such Schools, which are by nature attended 

by a limited number of students. These constraints have led 

us to consider organizing a School at the international level, 

building on the resources and expertises of several institutions, 

and allowing to enroll students on a much larger base. 

This idea is also in line with the Bologna philosophy, that 

encourages european universitities to collaborate in students 

training. 

The project was most welcomed in several leading institutions. 

It was decided that the School would last three 

months, with lectures given in École Normale Supérieure in 

Paris (one month), U.L. Brussels and V.U. Brussel (one month) 

and the U. of Amsterdam (one month). All the beginning graduate 

students of the participating groups would have to 

attend. Funding to cover the travel expenses of the students 

could be provided by research grants (including support 

from the Solvay Institutes for the ULB and VUB students), at 

least to help launch the project. The International Doctoral 

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School Paris/Brussels/Amsterdam on Quantum Field Theory, 

Strings and Gravity was born. 

The first year of operation 

The School was run for the first time during the fall of 2006. 

Many research laboratories, on top of the organizing institutions, 

have sent their students to attend the lectures (this 

includes, in France, École Polytechnique, the U. Pierre et Marie 

Curie, the U. Paris Sud, the Commissariat à l’Énergie 

Atomique, and several other laboratories ouside the Paris 

area ; in Switzerland, the E.T.H. Zürich). Overall, about 30 students 

attended 180 hours of lectures taught by 18 Professors 

in 3 different countries. 

The content of the lectures is chosen to take into account the 

most recent developments in research, and can thus vary 

from one year to the other. However, there is a large base of 

knowledge that will be taught each year, in order to maintain 

a high level of consistency and accessibility to beginning 

graduate students. This care in presenting the subjects in a 

consistent and accessible way is one of the main characteristic 

of the School, and distinguishes it sharply from the usual 

“Summer Schools”, which always focus on extremely specialized 

subjects and whose content changes entirely from one 

year to the other. 

On top of its training purposes, another aspect of the School 

that was particularly appreciated is to offer the students the 

possibility to meet leading researchers from neighbouring 

countries, to discuss their thesis projects in new stimulating 

environments, and to create early links with the young generation 

of european researchers in their field. We expect that 

this will help building synergies between the students home 

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institutions and will favour in a very efficient way fruitful 

collaborations within Europe. 

Future prospects 

In the future, we shall invite more institutions to send their 

students to the School (including K.U. Leuven, U. of Utrecht, 

some Colleges in London, etc…). The three-months structure 

with lectures given in Paris, Amsterdam and Brussels should 

remain unchanged. 

Finding proper funding will also be necessary, most importantly 

to pay for the students travelling and accomodation 

expenses. The help of the International Solvay Institutes is 

particularly precious. We shall also study the possible fundings 

from the European Commission in the new Framework 

Programme. 

Frank Ferrari 

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S e m i n a r s a n d V i s i t o r s

S e m i n a r s a n d V i s i t o r s 

The list includes the seminars organized by the 

International Solvay Institutes as well as the seminars, discussion 

groups and journal clubs co-organized with the 

“Service de Physique théorique” of the ULB, the “Theoretical 

Particle Group” of the VUB and the “High Energy Physics 

and Relativistic Field Theory Group” of the KUL. 

S e m i n a r s 

1. Algèbres d’endomorphismes et théories de jauge, 

Emmanuel Sérié (Paris XI, France) – January 24, 2006. 

2. Three dimensional Gödel spacetime, particles and black 

holes, Geoffrey Compère (ULB, Belgium) – January 25, 2006. 

3. Multiloop amplitudes in String and M-theory, Pierre 

Vanhove (CEA/Saclay, France) – February 8, 2006. 

4. Observations on cohomological sigma models, Giulio 

Bonelli (SISSA, Trieste, Italy) – February 14, 2006. 

5. On recent developments in topological brane theory, 

Giulio Bonelli (SISSA, Trieste, Italy) – February 15, 2006. 

6. Symmetric group in Poisson noise analysis, T. Hida 

(Meijo University, Nagoya, Japan) and Dr Si Si (Aichi 

Prefectural University, Japan) – February 15, 2006. 

7. Moduli Integrals, Ground Ring and Four-Point Function 

in Minimal String Theory, Alexander Belavin (Landau 

Institute, Russia) – February 15, 2006. 

8. Four dimensional supergravity coupled to scalar and 

tensor fields, Mario Trigiante (Torino Politecnico, Italy) – 

February 22, 2006. 

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9. Warped throats and cascading gauge theories, Angel 

Uranga (Universidad autonoma de Madrid, Spain) – 

February 22, 2006. 

10. Introduction to GAMMA, Ulf Gran (KULeuven, Belgium) – 

March 1, 2006. 

11. Holographic Cosmology, Thomas Hertog (CERN, 

Switzerland) – March 1, 2006. 

12. Fun with fluxes, Frederik Denef (KULeuven, Belgium) – 

March 8, 2006. 

13. Bubbling AdS and Vacuum String Field Theory : a correspondence, 

Carlo Maccaferri (ULB, Belgium) – March 8, 2006. 

14. Time-like T-dualities and Triple-extended algebra’s, 

Arjan Keurentjes (VUB, Belgium) – March 15, 2006. 

15. D-branes on N=1 backgrounds: superpotentials and D- 

terms, Luca Martucci (KULeuven, Belgium) – March 15, 2006. 

16. Discussion on the new WMAP results – March 22, 2006. 

17. Aspects of topological M-Theory, Bengt Nilsson 

(Chalmers/Göteborgs Universitet, Sweden) – March 22, 

2006. 

18. Generalised Complex Geometry and Gauge/Gravity 

duality, Michela Petrini (LPTHE, Paris, France) – March 29, 

2006. 

19. Symmetries and Canonical Noncommutative 

Spacetime, Xavier Calmet (ULB, Belgium) – March 29, 2006. 

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20. Perturbed 2D Quantum Gravity and Strings in Curved 

Space, Gastón Giribet (Universidad de Buenos Aires, 

Argentina) – April 5, 2006. 


21. Analytic Solution for Tachyon Condensation in Open 

String Field Theory, Martin Schnabl (CERN, Switzerland) – 

April 19, 2006. 

22. On brane partons and singleton strings, Laura Tamassia 

(Uppsala Universitet, Sweden) – April 26, 2006. 

23. Supersymmetry in 10 Dimensions, Sven Kerstan 

(Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, The Netherlands) – April 26, 

2006. 

24. Holographic Wilson Loops, Filippo Passerini (KULeuven, 

Belgium) – May 3, 2006. 

25. Derivative corrections to the Born-Infeld action and N=2 

boundery superspace, A. Wijns (VUB, Belgium) – May 3, 2006. 

26. Geometric Transitions, Black Rings and the Black Hole 

Information Paradox, Iosif Bena (IAS Princeton, USA) – May 9, 

2006. 

27. Tits-Satake projections of homogeneous special geometries, 

J. Rosseel (KULeuven, Belgium) – May 10, 2006. 

28. On the Sasaki-Einstein/Gauge theory correspondence, 

Sergio Benvenuti (Università di Pisa, Italy) – May 10, 2006. 

29. Classification of supersymmetric backgrounds of string 

theory, D. Roest (King’s College London, United Kingdom) – 

May 17, 2006. 

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30. Liouville time, RG flow and a cosmological solution, 

Domenico Orlando (Ecole Poliytechnique, France)– May 17, 

2006. 

31. Very Basic Supergravity, Dan Freedman (Massachussetts 

Institute of Technology, USA) – May 24 and June 2, 2006. 

32. Long Range Scattering for the Maxwell-Schroedinger 

System,Giorgio Velo (Università di Bologna,Italy) – June 2,2006. 

33. Exploring the Star Algebra of Open String Field Theory, 

Nazim Bouatta (ULB, Belgium) – June 14, 2006. 

34. On a Relation between Logarithmic Operators and 

Degenerate Representations of the Virasoro Algebra, 

Gastón Giribet (Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina) – 

June 14, 2006. 

35. Constructing partition functions for non-Lagrangian 

dynamics: general methods and examples, Alexey Shaparov 

(Tomsk State University, USA) – September 14, 2006. 

36. Conformal Holography and an AdS Instanton, Sebastian 

de Haro (AEI Potsdam, Germany) – September 28, 2006. 

37. Twistor Strings and Supergravity, Mohab Abou Zeid 

(VUB, Belgium) – October 5, 2006. 

38. From Fundamental Strings to Small Black Holes, Miguel 

Costa (Universidade do Porto, Portugal) – October 26, 2006. 

39. Cosmology/Domain-wall correspondence, Kostas 

Skenderis (Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands) – 

November 9, 2006. 

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40. Recoil and annihilation of low-dimensional D-branes, 

Oleg Evnin (VUB, Belgium) – November 9, 2006. 


41. Interacting cubic vertices involving spin 3 fields and 

consistency of the deformed gauge algebra, Serge Leclercq 

(Université Mons-Hainaut, Belgium) – November 16, 2006. 

42. The exact numerical treatment of inflationary models, 

Christophe Ringeval (Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium) – 


43. Scaling cosmologies in Gauged Supergravity, Thomas 

Van Riet (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, The Netherlands) – 


44. Supergravity D-terms and D7 branes, Antoine Van 

Proeyen (KULeuven, Belgium) – November 23, 2006. 

45. Null deformed Domain Wall, Alessio Celi (Universidad 

de Barcelona, Spain) – November 30, 2006. 

46. N=1 domain wall solutions of massive type II supergravity 

as generalized geometries, Silvia Vaula (Universidad de 

Madrid, Spain) – November 30, 2006. 

47. Numerical computation of Kahler potential in N=1 

string compactifications, Michael Douglas (Rutgers 

University, USA) – December 7, 2006. 

48. Evolution of Bubbles in an Inhomogeneous Background – 

Does Inflation Always Win ?, Chethan Krishnan (ULB, 

Belgium) – December 7, 2006. 

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49. Application of the entropy function formalism to extremal 

black holes in 4 and 5 dimensions, Jan Perz (Universität 

München, Germany) – December 14, 2006. 

50. A personal view of the discovery of color, O.W. Greenberg 

(Maryland University, USA) – December 21, 2006. 

51. Models of Vacuum Structure : Dark Energy, Inflation and 

Black Hole Evaporation, Robert Brout (ULB, Belgium) – 

December 21, 2006. 

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Hundreds of scientists came to Brussels from all over the 

world to participate in the various activities organized by 

the International Solvay Institutes.These scientists are listed 

in the corresponding sections. 

V i s i t o r s 

i n 2 0 0 6 

The present section reviews only the scientific visits of 

researchers who came for longer periods and who received 

a research grant from the Institutes, starting first with the 

visits that took place in the context of cooperation agreements. 

Cooperation agreements 

In the context of the cooperation agreements signed by the 

International Solvay Institutes with the Centro de Estudios 

Científicos (Valdivia, Chile) and with the Lebedev Physical 

Institute in Moscow, the following scientists visited the 

Institutes: 

Date 

Visitors 

24 April – 21 May 2006 Prof. Maxim Grigoriev, 

22 September - Lebedev Physical 

22 October 2006 Institute, Moscow, Russia 

5 – 8 April 2006 Prof. Gastón Giribet, Universidad 

5 – 19 June 2006 de Buenos Aires, Argentina and 

Centro de Estudios Científicos, 

Valdivia, Chile 

The joint work that resulted from the collaborations with 

these institutions has led to published articles or preprints: 

1. G. Barnich, M. Grigoriev - Parent Form for Higher Spin 

Fields on Anti-de Sitter Space - JHEP 0608: 013, 2006. 

2. G. Barnich, M. Grigoriev – BRST Extension of the Non- 

Linear Unfolded Formalism – in "Quantum Theory and 

Symmetries IV, volume 2" - ed. V.K. Dobrev, Heron Press 

2006: 547-557. 

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V i s i t o r s 

i n 2 0 0 6 

3. C. W. Bunster, S. Cnockaert, M. Henneaux, R. Portugues - 

Monopoles for Gravitation and for Higher Spin Fields - 

Phys. Rev. D73: 105014, 2006. 

4. M. Henneaux , C. Teitelboim – Electric-Magnetic Duality 

in Gravity – in “Deserfest: A Celebration of the Life and 

Works of Stanley Deser” – eds. J.T. Liu, M.J. Duff, K.S. Stelle 

and R.P. Woodard – World Scientific (Singapore: 2006). 

5. M. Henneaux, C. Martinez, R. Troncoso, J. Zanelli – 

Asymptotic Behavior and Hamiltonian Analysis of Anti-de 

Sitter Gravity coupled to Scalar Fields - e-Print Archive: 

hep-th/0603185. 

6. M. Grigoriev – Off-shell Gauge Fields From BRST 

Quantization - e-Print Archive: hep-th/0605089. 

7. Higher Spin Gauge Theories - R. Argurio, G. Barnich, G. 

Bonelli, M. Grigoriev eds, Proceedings of the Solvay 

Workshops and Symposia (n° 1), 2006 (197 pages). 

In the context of the cooperation agreements with the 

Meijo University at Nagoya (Japan), the following scientists 

visited the Institutes: 

Date 

Visitors 

12-18 February 2005 Prof. T. Hida 

Meijo University at Nagoya, 

Japan 

Prof. Si Si 

Aichi Prefectural University, 

Japan 

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Other visits 

Date 

Visitors 

12-19 February 2006 Prof. A.A. Belavin, Landau 

Institute, Moscow, Russia 

20-22 March 2006 Prof. Bengt Nilsson, Göteborg 

Universitet, Sweden 

4-14 July 2006 Prof. A. Gomberoff, Andrés 

Bello Universidad, Santiago, Chili 

4-9 July 2006 Dr. A. Kleinschmidt, Max-Planck- 

Institut, Potsdam, Germany 

2-30 September 2006 Prof. S. L. Lyakovich and Dr. 

A.A. Sharapov, Tomsk State 

University, Russia 

22-26 October 2006 Prof. Jan Troost, Ecole Normale 

Supérieure, Paris, France 

The joint work that resulted from these visits has led to 

published articles or preprints: 

8. M. Banados, G. Barnich, G. Compère, A. Gomberoff – 

Three Dimensional Origin of Goedel Spacetimes and Black 

holes – Phys. Rev. D73: 044006, 2006. 

9. S.L. Lyakhovich, A.A. Sharapov – Quantizing Non- 

Lagrangian Gauge Theories: An Augmentation Method - e- 

Print Archive: hep-th/0612086. 

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Doctoral grant 

A long-term doctoral grant has been given to Luca Forte, 

from the University of Naples, to complete his doctoral 

training at the University of Brussels in the group of Marc 

Henneaux (period of stay: 1 May 2006 – 30 April 2007) 

10.L.A. Forte, A. Sciarrino - Standard and Non-Standard 

Extensions of Lie Algebras - J. Math. Phys. 47: 013513, 2006. 

Grants to Belgian scientists 

Grants have also been given to young scientists working 

in Belgium to participate in conferences or doctoral 

schools abroad: Cyril Closset, Daniel Persson, Nassiba Tabti 

and Vincent Wens. 

The pages that follow describe the research interests of 

the following visitors: Prof. M. Grigoriev, Prof. S.L. Lyakhovich 

and Mr L. Forte. 

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Research interests – Maxim Grigoriev 

The research activity during 2006 was mainly aimed at 

developing new general methods for constructing, quantizing 

and studying field theory models of direct physical 

interest. Among those models the focus was on Higher Spin 

(HS) gauge theories where standard methods appear not to 

be sufficiently powerful to handle a theory with an infinite 

number of fields and a sophisticated structure of gauge 

symmetries and auxiliary fields. The appealing feature of 

Higher Spin gauge theories is that the complete interacting 

theory is background independent and contains spin-2 

fields just like Einstein Gravity. This makes it particularly 

relevant in the context of (super)string and (super)gravity 

theories. Another related motivation for studying HS gauge 

theories has to do with the AdS/CFT correspondence where 

the emergence of the HS fields and HS symmetries seems 

inevitable. 

At the level of the free theory a number of concise formulations 

are well-known by now. However, once the interactions 

are turned on the non-Abelian structure of the theory 

appears to be highly involved in most of the formulations, 

in particular, because the Higher Spin interactions 

necessarily involve higher derivatives. The only known 

approach where the HS algebra is realized transparently is 

Vasiliev's unfolded formulation achieved at the price of 

introducing infinitely many auxiliary fields and gauge 

symmetries. Despite the considerable breakthrough in 

understanding the structure of HS theories provided by the 

unfolded framework, this formulation lacks a transparent 

realization of the Lagrangian structure. In particular, in the 

nonlinear theory the complete interacting theory is only 

known at the level of equations of motion. Moreover, the 

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relation between the unfolded formulation of the theory 

and more familiar approaches remains rather involved. 

First of all this concerns the well-known BRST first-quantized 

approach familiar in the context of String Field 

Theory. Putting both approaches into a unified framework 

is particularly crucial for understanding the relation 

between String theory and HS theory and also in the context 

of AdS/CFT correspondence. 

The aim of the current research activity is to construct a 

unified formulation which generalizes both the standard 

BRST first-quantized approach and Vasiliev's unfolded formalism. 

The first step in this direction (Barnich, Grigoriev, 

Semikhatov, Tipunin, 2004) was done by constructing a 

first order parent theory for any linear gauge theory on 

Minkowski space-time, whose various reductions reproduce 

both the standard BRST first-quantized formulation 

and the unfolded formulation. In 2006 the parent theory 

for free higher spin gauge fields on constant curvature 

spaces (Barnich, Grigoriev, 2006) has been proposed. As in 

the previously considered flat case, both the first-quantized 

BRST and Vasiliev's unfolded formulations can be reached 

by two different straightforward reductions. The parent 

theory itself is formulated using a higher dimensional 

embedding space and turns out to be geometrically 

extremely transparent and free of the intricacies of both of 

its reductions. 

In the nonlinear case, the BRST extension of the nonlinear 

unfolded formalism has been constructed and shown to 

correspond (Barnich, Grigoriev, 2005) to the non- 

Lagrangian version of the Alexandrov-Kontsevich- 

Schwartz-Zaboronsky procedure familiar in the context of 

topological theories. Using this approach the nonlinear 

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parent formulation for off-shell HS fields on an AdS background 

has been constructed (i.e., the formulation of constraints, 

gauge symmetries, gauge algebra, and Bianchi 

identities but without dynamical equations). It was shown 

that after linearization over the AdS solution, the theory 

takes the form of the off-shell version of the free parent 

theory constructed before (Grigoriev, 2006). 

The general pattern underlying the off-shell nonlinear theories 

of this type was also identified. Namely, it was shown 

that the equations of motion of the off-shell theory can be 

identified with the operator BFV-BRST master equation 

(nilpotency condition) for some quantum constrained system 

(Grigoriev, 2006). More precisely, the off-shell HS gauge 

theory (both on flat and AdS space) is described by the free 

scalar particle quantized in the framework of (the appropriately 

generalized) Fedosov quantization. 

The results obtained in 2006 have been published in the 

following papers: 

1. G. Barnich, M. Grigoriev, “Parent form for higher 

spin fields on anti-de Sitter space,” JHEP 0608, 013 

(2006) [arXiv:hep-th/0602166]. 

2. M. Grigoriev, “Off-shell gauge fields from BRST 

quantization,” arXiv:hep-th/0605089. 

These results were presented in a talk at the international 

conference “QUARKS-2006”, May 19-25, 2006, Repino, 

Russia. 

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They were also presented in the following seminar talks: 

1. October 14, 2006, Math. Department, Université 

Claude Bernard – Lyon I, France 

2. November 21, 2006, Scuola Normale Superiore, 

Pisa, Italy 

3. December 11, 2006, Scuola Internazionale 

Superiore di Studi Avanzati, Trieste, Italy. 

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Research interests – Simon Lyakhovich 

QUANTIZING NON-LAGRANGIAN GAUGE THEORIES: 

AN AUGMENTATION METHOD 

S.L. LYAKHOVICH AND A.A. SHARAPOV 

Classical dynamics can be consistently formulated in terms 

of equations of motion alone. The variational principle, 

being a useful tool for studying various aspects of classical 

dynamics, is not needed to have the classical theory defined 

as such. Many of the field theory models arising in the context 

of modern high-energy physics are not Lagrangian; the 

list of examples includes the non-linear higher-spin gauge 

theories, higher-dimensional superconformal theories, selfdual 

gauge fields, etc. 

When the classical theory is to be promoted to the quantum 

level, it becomes insufficient to have only the classical 

equations of motion, one or another extra structure is 

needed. What is the extra structure depends on a particular 

quantization framework. 

To implement the deformation quantisation, the equations 

of motion should be first written in the (constrained) 

Hamiltonian form, and it is the Poisson structure which is 

the extra ingredient defining the quantisation. If the 

Poisson bracket is non-degenerate, the Hamiltonian equations 

can be brought to the variational form. It is the symplectic 

two-form, being the inverse to the Poisson tensor, 

that serves as an integrating multiplier for the inverse variational 

calculus problem. With degenerate Poisson bracket, 

the deformation quantisation still works well, although no 

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variational principle is possible anymore for these dynamics. 

In the field theoretical context, however, the deformation 

quantization approach is of a limited utility, for several 

reasons. In particular, it breaks relativistic covariance. 

Furthermore, for many field-theoretical models of a considerable 

physical interest are known neither actions nor 

Poisson structure. On the other hand, the path-integral 

quantization, being fully compatible with manifest relativistic 

covariance and space-time locality, suits well the 

needs of modern field theory. Till recently, the existence of 

the action principle has been considered as a necessary 

pre-requisite of the path-integral quantization. From this 

viewpoint, the path-integral quantization was more limited 

than the deformation quantisation, although for variational 

systems both methods are proved to be equivalent to 

each other. 

In our recent works, the latest of which has been finalized 

in the Solvay Institutes, we have expanded the framework 

of the path-integral quantization beyond the range of variational 

systems. The key point in this progress was the 

identification of a general structure, called the Lagrange 

anchor, which is determinative for the path-integral quantization 

in the same sense as the Poisson bracket defines 

deformation quantisation in terms of a star-product. The 

Lagrange anchor is a geometric object that can be interpreted 

in many different ways. In particular, whenever the 

classical equations of motion admit an integrating multiplier 

bringing them to the variational form, the Lagrange 

anchor is the inverse of this multiplier. The integrability 

conditions for the multiplier translate then to certain compatibility 

conditions between the Lagrange anchor and 

equations of motion. The crucial point is that these conditions 

do not require the Lagrange anchor to be invertible: in 

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contrast to the integrating multiplier, the anchor can be a 

degenerate operator that can also include space-time 

derivatives. So, the anchor may exist even when no integrating 

multiplier is admitted by the equations of motion, 

much like as a (degenerate) Poisson bracket is more general 

than the symplectic two-form. The key observation is 

that the Lagrange anchor allows one to construct an equation 

defining the quantum partition function for the 

dynamical system whose classical equations do not necessarily 

follow from the variational principle. This equation 

reduces to the Schwinger-Dyson equation (SDE) whenever 

the anchor is revertible, ensuring the classical action to 

exist. For the Lagrangian case, the partition function 

defined by the SDE is a Fourier transform of the Feynman 

probability amplitude, being the exponential of the classical 

action. For the non-Lagrangian theory, the corresponding 

amplitude is a more general distribution admitting 

different representations and interpretations that can be 

utilized for computing quantum mechanical effects in the 

non-Lagrangian systems. At first, by making use of the 

Lagrange anchor, the amplitude of the non-Lagrangian 

field theory in d dimensions can be brought to the form of 

the Feynman amplitude of the Lagrangian, topological field 

theory in d+1 dimensions. Another convenient representation 

for the amplitude is obtained with the help of an augmentation 

procedure. By this procedure, the originally non- 

Lagrangian field theory is absorbed by augmented 

Lagrangian theory on the same space-time manifold. The 

latter is not generally equivalent to the original one as it 

has more physical degrees of freedom than the original 

theory. However, the extra degrees of freedom are factorized 

out in a certain regular way both at classical and quantum 

levels. 

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The proposed path integral quantisation method gives also 

due regard to the gauge structure of the non-Lagrangian 

theory, which is more rich structure than that of the 

Lagrangian systems. In particular, in the non-Lagrangian 

case there is no pairing between gauge symmetry transformations 

and Noether identities, unlike Lagrangian theory. 

This nontrivial gauge structure can be still described well 

by proposed BRST complex that reduces to the standard BV 

field-antifield construction whenever the Lagrange anchor 

is invertible. 

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Research interests : Luca Antonio Forte 

I am interested in mathematical physics in its broad sense; 

in particular my research focuses now on certain infinite 

dimensional Lie algebras (called Borcherds-Kac-Moody 

algebras) and their application to classical and quantum 

physics. Kac-Moody algebras generalize the Lie algebras of 

the classical groups, but include also affine algebras and 

indefinite algebras. Affine algebras are also known as current 

algebras (or loop algebras) and found many applications 

in conformal field theory, integrable systems and statistical 

mechanics. Indefinite algebras are much more complicated 

and at the moment there are not many mathematical 

results about them. Hyperbolic Kac-Moody algebras 

(a subclass of the indefinite ones) have recently found 

interesting applications in supergravity/string theories 

thanks to the work of M. Henneaux, T. Damour, H. Nicolai, F. 

Englert, L. Houart, P. West and others. Two cases which 

deserve more investigation are pure gravity in 4 dimensions 

and supergravity in 11 dimensions; these theories 

seem to be described by two hyperbolic Kac-Moody algebras, 

A1 ++ and E8 ++:=E10 , respectively, whose Dynkin diagrams 

are: 

These algebras control the asymptotic limit of the two previously 

mentioned theories towards a cosmological singu- 

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larity. In particular, it has been shown that, in this limit, the 

dynamics of the two theories is equivalent to the motion of 

a massless particle bouncing off the walls of a billiard 

which is identified with the Weyl chamber of the A1 ++ and 

E10 . These billiards (all hyperbolic billiards) exhibit ergodic, 

mixing, chaotic behaviour from a classical point of view. I 

am currently studying what could be the approach to the 

quantum chaos in these billiards. It is natural to consider 

the quantization of this system trough the analysis of the 

Laplace-Beltrami operator defined in the billiard-domain 

with suitable boundary conditions. The eigenfunctions of 

the Laplacian have periodic (automorphic) properties with 

respect to the discrete group generated be the reflections 

through the walls of the billiard; this group coincides with 

the so-called Weyl group of the corresponding Kac-Moody 

algebra. Looking at the Weyl-Kac formula (denominator 

identity) 

one is tempted to use it to create automorphic functions, 

periodic with respect to the Weyl group. This is the case for 

some specific examples, as shown by Borcherds. This 

method would allow to find period solutions to the Laplace 

equations from the algebraic properties of the domain in 

which one wants to solve the problem. In principle, one 

could also try to interpret the multiciplities of imaginary 

roots of the Kac-Moody algebra in term of the spectrum of 

the Laplacian inside the Weyl chamber of the algebra and 

viceversa. Both problems are very interesting and not 

solved in any case. 

During my stay in Bruxelles, I have continued my research 

on (generalized) Kac-Moody algebras, benefiting a lot from 

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many discussions with the people in the research groups of 

F. Englert and M. Henneaux. The work begun in Napoli, with 

my master thesis, is fitting very well with the friendly and 

stimulating atmosphere of the Service de Physique 

théorique & mathématique. In particular, I am spending 

the last year of my Napoli PhD program here in Brussels, 

where I am also writing my PhD thesis. I am currently developing 

some ideas born in Napoli and matured here under 

the grant given to me and the freedom allowed to me by 

the International Solvay Institutes. 

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R e s e a r c h c a r r i e d o u t i n t h e g r o u p s 

o f t h e D i r e c t o r a n d o f t h e D e p u t y D i r e c t o r


Their scientific activities have been supported by research 

funds from the FNRS, the FWO, the IISN (convention 

4.4505.86), the “Interuniversity Attraction Poles 

Programme – Belgian Science Policy” and the European 

Commission FP6 programme MRTN-CT-2004-005104. 

MEMBERS 

Permanent Members: 

Riccardo Argurio (FNRS/ULB) 

Glenn Barnich (FNRS/ULB) 

Ben Craps (VUB) 

Frank Ferrari (ULB) 

Marc Henneaux (ULB) 

Laurent Houart (FNRS/ULB) 

Franklin Lambert (VUB) 

Micheline Musette (FWO/VUB) 

Alexander Sevrin (VUB) 

Postdoctoral Members: 

Mohab Abou Zeid (PAI-IUAP/VUB) 

Francesco Bigazzi (FNRS/ULB) 

Thomas Durt (FWO/VUB) 

The groups of the Director and of the Deputy Director are 

respectively affiliated with the ULB (“Physique théorique et 

mathématique”) and the VUB (“Theoretische Natuurkunde”). 

-136-

o f t h e D i r e c t o r a n d o f t h e D e p u t y D i r e c t o r 

Oleg Evnin (VUB) 

Jarah Evslin (PAI-IUAP/ULB) 

Arjan Keurentjes (FWO/VUB) 

Chethan Krishnan (Solvay/ULB) 

Stanislav Kuperstein (PAI-IUAP/ULB) 

Ignace Loris (FWO/VUB) 

Carlo Maccaferri (PAI-IUAP/ULB & EC/VUB) 

Louis Paulot (IISN/ULB) 

Caroline Verhoeven (FWO/VUB) 

Alexander Volkov (VUB) 

Doctoral Students: 

Nazim Bouatta (ULB) 

Sandrine Cnockaert (ULB) 

S. Colin (VUB) 

Geoffrey Compère (ULB) 

Cyril Closset (ULB) 

Sophie de Buyl (ULB) 

Luca Forte (ULB & Naples) 

Ella Jamsin (ULB) 

F. Melakessou (VUB) 

Stijn Nevens (VUB) 

Domenico Orlando (VUB) 

Daniel Persson (ULB) 

Nassiba Tabti (ULB) 

Dimitri Terijn (VUB) 

Vincent Wens (ULB) 

Alexander Wijns (VUB) 

Robert Brout (ULB) and François Englert (ULB), Honorary 

Members of the Institutes since March 2004 and 2004 Wolf 

Prizes for Physics, collaborate with the groups. 

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Research Summary 

Research in mathematical physics (i.e., theoretical physics 

with a strong mathematical content) has continued to be 

pursued along two main, inter-connected, directions: one is 

the investigation of Einstein’s theory of gravity and its generalizations 

(supergravity, string theory and M-theory); the 

other is the study of a variety of topics related to nonlinear 

dynamical systems, ranging from completely integrable 

classical systems and quantum integrable lattices to nonintegrable 

complex systems. 

Gravitation 

Of all the fundamental forces (electromagnetism, gravitation, 

weak and strong nuclear forces), gravity remains the 

most mysterious. In spite of its remarkable successes, 

Einstein’s general theory of relativity, which has led to an 

unprecedented geometrization of physics, is an unfinished 

revolution. The group has a long-standing interest in 

quantum gravity, quantum field theory, string theory and 

M-theory, black holes, cosmology, the cosmological constant 

problem (“dark energy”) and the novel mathematical 

structures underlying these questions. 

Hidden symmetries of theories containing gravity 

A question that has continued to be of central interest in 

2006 is the following: string theory offers the best hope to 

marry consistently Einstein’s theory of gravity with quantum 

mechanics. However, we still have a very poor understanding 

of what string theory actually is. In particular, we 

do not know what its fundamental equations are (compa- 

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rable to, say, the Maxwell equations for electromagnetism 

or the Einstein equations for gravity). Our understanding is 

based on perturbative arguments, supplemented by the 

remarkable insight provided by dualities (which have led to 

“M-theory"). It is generally believed that progress in this 

area will be made if one correctly identifies the fundamental 

symmetries underlying string theory. 

It has long been suspected that infinite-dimensional Kac- 

Moody algebras of Lorentzian type (beyond the affine case) 

should play an important role in this context. The evidence 

came from the unanticipated emergence of large symmetry 

groups in the toroidal dimensional compactification of 

supergravity theories (which describe the low energy limit 

of string models) as well as from the structure of the string 

duality groups. Recently, a new impulse to the subject has 

been provided by the study of the so-called BKL limit of 

gravitational theories in the vicinity of a spacelike singularity, 

in which Weyl groups of Lorentzian Kac-Moody algebras 

of the type mentioned above naturally appear. 

We have continued our investigations in this area. In particular, 

we have analysed the implications of the infinite 

symmetry E10 for the cosmological solutions of elevendimensional 

supergravity. We have given a group-theoretical 

interpretation to solutions found previously and have 

derived new solutions connected with S-branes. We have 

also investigated monopole sources and electric-magnetic 

duality (which is part of the E10 symmetry) for the gravitational 

field. A related subject of research, on which we have 

brought new light on various aspects, has been higher spin 

field gauge theories, which naturally appear when studying 

the realization of these infinite-dimensional algebras. 

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D-branes 

Our research has also focused on the solitonic excitations 

of string theory, called D-branes. In the last years, these 

have come to play an increasingly prominent role. A fascinating 

aspect of D-branes is their close relation to gauge 

theories. The effective low energy dynamics of D-branes is 

described by a Born-Infeld theory. While the Born-Infeld 

action is known to all orders in the abelian case (describing 

a single D-brane), it is not known yet in the non-abelian 

case (describing two or more coinciding D-branes). 

We have pursued our investigations of various properties of 

D- and M-branes. In particular, our research efforts have 

been directed towards acquiring a better understanding of 

systems consisting of multiple coinciding D-branes. Besides 

this we have investigated some geometric features of D-branes. 

String cosmology 

We have also developed an active interest in string inspired 

cosmology. One of the central questions being investigated 

is how to resolve cosmological singularities in the context 

of string theory. We have also continued our research on 

the cosmological constant problem and dark energy, which 

remain puzzles within string theory. 

Supersymmetry and supersymmetric gauge theories 

Finally, we also have a long running interest in supersymmetric 

field theories with 4 or more supercharges, their offshell 

formulation, their relation to complex geometry and 

the restrictions supersymmetry imposes on the effective 

quantum theory. We have also pursued the investigation of 

the remarkable gauge-string duality. 

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Black holes 

We have also continued our investigation of black hole 

physics. In particular, we have studied black holes in Goedel 

spacetimes and the structure of spacetime infinity in various 

contexts. 

Nonlinear dynamics, solitons and 

integrability 

The study of nonlinear integrable models is important for 

several reasons. From the fundamental point of view, these 

models can be seen as a laboratory in which new concepts 

are discovered, the significance of which reaches far 

beyond the truly “integrable” domain. One such concept is 

that of the soliton, which arised originally in 1+1 dimensional 

reductions of 2+1 dimensional integrable models. 

The ongoing research activity on integrable models, in the 

classical as well as in the quantum context, has been concentrated 

on the following topics: 

• The longstanding problem of how to develop a “direct” 

and algorithmic procedure for the construction of 

classical soliton equations as members of infinite 

hierarchies, and for the disclosure of their principal 

integrability features. 

• The study of the extent to which soliton instabilities 

in 1+1 dimensional models may lead to a loss of 

predictability in spite of the integrability of the model, 

and to the occurence of complex multisoliton 

interactions. 

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• The construction of discrete alternatives to continuous 

integrable systems, and their similarity reductions. 

• The problem of obtaining a better understanding of 

the notion of complete integrability in the quantum 

context. 

The 2006 results in this area may be summarized 

as follows. 

• We refined the algorithmic procedure that we 

developed for the construction of the subsequent 

members of the KP and mKP hierarchies, so as to 

obtain canonical bilinear forms from which the full 

reduced hierarchies can be derived (with their 

recursion operator and their bi-hamiltonian 

structure). This led to a new bilinear form for the 

sine-Gordon equation, producing non-standard 

solutions. 

• We confirmed the existence of soliton resonances 

for the KP and CKP equation. Such resonances are 

known to be responsible for instabilities and 

inelastic multisoliton interactions. KP and CKP were 

shown to admit “spider web solutions” which 

exhibit interaction patterns of unexpected 

complexity. 

• Our study of particular hamiltonian systems (of 

generalized Hénon-Heiles type) related to soliton 

equations by “stationary” reduction produced new 

insight into the difference between the concepts of 

Liouville and Painlevé integrability. This research 

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was conducted in collaboration with members of 

the University of Kent at Canterbury. 

• We established a link between discrete versions of 

the Painlevé equations (PI – PVI) and a particular 

family of two dimensional mappings that had been 

overlooked. We showed in collaboration with a 

group of the University of Paris VII-XI that ultradiscretization 

of systems with limit cycli can give 

valuable insight into the structure of such cycli for 

discrete dynamical systems. 

• We also obtained new insight into quantum 

integrability by extending the theory of Hirota’s 

bilinear lattice equation in the spirit of the thermodynamical 

Bethe ansatz. We managed to construct a 

manifestly 3-dimensional alternative to the existing 

Zakharov-Shabat formulation of this fundamental 

integrable model, and extended the proof of 

Zamolodchikov’s periodicity conjecture. 

Fundamental and applied aspects of 

theory 

quantum 

The group also continued its investigation of the potentialities 

of quantum theory with regard to applications in the 

field of quantum information. Various new results were 

obtained on “quantum tomography” : the art of estimating 

the state of a given quantum system (estimation of the 

coefficients of the density matrix). We succeded, in particular, 

to realize NMR entanglement assisted tomography 

experimentally, in collaboration with researchers of the 

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National University of Singapore. More fundamental 

aspects of quantum theory were also investigated, such as 

the interrelation between super selection rules and symmetries 

in quantum field theories. This work was done in 

collaboration with members of the Perimeter Institute in 

Canada. 

The research activity of the two groups in 2006 has resulted 

in 41 publications and 28 preprints as indicated in the publication 

list given below. 

Theses 

3 PhD theses have been successfully completed in 2006: 

Sandrine Cnockaert, Higher Spin Gauge Field Theories. 

Aspects of duality and interactions, 5 May 2006 (ULB) 

Sophie de Buyl, Kac-Moody Algebras in M-theory, 15 June 

2006 (ULB) 

Stijn Nevens, Higher Derivative Corrections to the Abelian 

Born-Infeld Action using Superspace Methods, 22 

September 2006 (VUB) 

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Research Interests – Sophie de Buyl 

One of the main challenges of contemporary physics is the 

unification of the four fundamental interactions. On the 

one hand, the electromagnetic, weak and strong interactions 

have been unified in the general framework of quantum 

field theory, within the Standard Model. Our understanding 

of these interactions relies on particular finitedimensional 

simple Lie algebras though the Yang-Mills 

construction. On the other hand, Einstein’s General 

Relativity is currently the best description of the gravitational 

interaction. It is a classical theory, and as such cannot 

be applied to energy scales larger than the Planck energy. 

Such extreme situations are encountered in the center of 

black holes or at the origin of the universe. This situation is 

clearly not satisfactory and a theory encompassing all fundamental 

interactions must be found. The major problem 

in this quest is to formulate a quantum theory of the gravitational 

interaction. So far, the most promising candidate 

for such a unification is M-theory, a hypothetic theory that 

is supposed to contain all superstring theories in different 

limits as well as its conjectured low energy limit, eleven 

dimensional supergravity. A powerful guide for the formulation 

of theories is the 

knowledge of their 

symmetries. For the 

gravitational interaction, 

there are some 

indications that infinite 

dimensional Lie 

algebras (Kac-Moody 

algebras) might have a 

role to play. 

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One of the reasons to think that infinite-dimensional 

Kac-Moody algebras could be symmetries of gravitational 

theories comes from Cosmological Billiards, which 

shed a new light on the work of Belinskii, Khalatnikov 

and Lifshitz (BKL). BKL gave a description of the asymptotic 

behaviour, near a space-like singularity, of the general 

solution of Einstein's empty spacetime equations in 

D=4. They argued that, in the vicinity of a space-like singularity, 

Einstein's equations - which are a system of 

partial differential equations in 4 variables (t, xi ) - can 

be approximated by a 3-dimensional family, parametrised 

by (xi), of ordinary differential equations with 

respect to the time variable. This means that the spatial 

points effectively decouple. Using Hamiltonian methods, 

these chaotic successions have been shown to possess 

an interpretation in terms of a billiard motion on 

the Poincaré disk. More recently, the billiard interpretation 

has been generalised to any spacetime dimensions 

and p-form field. The remarkable result obtained thanks 

to this work is that when one studies very specific theories, 

the shape of the billiard happens to be the fundamental 

Weyl chamber of some Lorentzian Kac-Moody 

algebra. For instance, this is true for pure gravity in D


In the Kasner-like case, the BKL asymptotic behaviour has 

been rigorously proven. Indeed, the Einsteins equations 

have been rewritten, for variables u which are the differences 

between a Kasner regime and the exact solution, in 

terms of a Fuchsian system 

where the matrix A(x) is required to satisfy some positivity 

condition, while the “source term” f on the right hand side 

is required to be “regular”. The basic property of Fuchsian 

systems that we shall use is that there is a unique solution 

to the Fuchsian equation which vanishes as t tends to zero. 

I am interested in giving a similar formulation in the chaotic 

case, the main difficulty coming from the fact that now 

there exists no analytic expression for the asymptotic solution. 

This formulation could be enlightening for the structure 

that is kept asymptotically, for instance the metric 

might reduce to a flag. 

The main interest of these Cosmological Billiards is certainly 

the fact that they reveal some Kac-Moody algebras. A pessimist 

would think that these algebras are only relevant in 

this limit while an optimist will take this as a signal of a 

more fundamental symmetry of the gravitational interaction. 

A natural question to decide if the optimist or the pessimist 

is right is therefore: is it possible to make this symmetry 

manifest? The construction of theories explicitly 

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invariant under some KM algebras is a way of tackling this 

problem. If one focuses on 11 dimensional supergravity, the 

idea is to construct a theory invariant under E10 or E11. 

Indeed E10 -the overextension of the finite dimensional 

simple Lie algebra E8 - is the KM algebra controlling the 

asymptotic behaviour of eleven dimensional supergravity 

in the vicinity of a space-like singularity and E11 – the very 

extension of E8 – will give a more covariant formulation of 

the theory. The Dynkin diagram of E11 is, 

and the one of E10 is obtained by deleting the node labelled 1. 

Inspired by the ``hidden symmetries'' in D=3, the KM invariant 

actions have been constructed as geodesic motion on 

the coset space E10/K(E10) (or E11/K(E11)). These actions contain 

an infinite number of fields and only the lowest ‘level’ 

fields have been interpreted as supergravity fields at a 

given spatial point. A nice feature in that construction is 

that space(time) is not a basic ingredient, rather it is hoped 

to be encoded in the dynamics. A first step to see how 

space-time could emerge can be to seek solutions to the 

Kac–Moody invariant actions that are identifiable as supergravity 

solutions depending on two space-time coordinates. 

Understanding how the ‘hidden’ E9 affine symmetry 

of D=11 supergravity acts from the point of view of the E10- 

invariant actions could provide a way of finding the spatial 

dependence. A better understanding of infinite–dimensional 

subalgebras would be of great importance in that 

context. In this infinite number of fields, there are tensors 

with the correct index structure to be the spatial derivative 

of all the lowest ‘level’ fields. The higher ‘level’ fields may 

also be interpreted as candidates for higher spin fields 

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because of their index structure and some of the fields 

might be auxiliary fields. It is possible that the KM invariant 

formulation is only a very complicated way of describing 

eleven dimensional supergravity in which there are 

infinitely many dual fields associated to each field. 

Recently, some very promising results have also been 

obtained regarding the incorporation of quantum corrections 

into the structure of the Kac–Moody algebras related 

to string and M–theory. This opens up the tantalising possibility 

that M–theoretical corrections are encoded in E10 and 

this would tell us that the Kac-Moody invariant formulation 

is deeper than a complicated version of supergravity. 

The current proposals are certainly too naïve to be the final 

answer but it seems that Kac-Moody algebras have a role to 

play. The non-linear realisation of E10 or E11 could be a new 

piece in the M-theory puzzle. 

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Research interests – Daniel Persson 

One of the major themes in theoretical high energy physics 

during the last century has been the concept of symmetry. 

The natural starting point for understanding a physical 

theory is to ask what kind of symmetries the theory might 

have because knowledge about the group structure of the 

Lagrangian for the theory is invaluable for a complete characterization 

of the dynamics. 

My research is based on asking exactly these questions in 

the context of string theory, which is an attempt at constructing 

a physical theory that unifies the laws of gravity 

with the laws of quantum mechanics. At this point, string 

theory is only well understood in its low energy limit, where 

it can be described by an ordinary effective field theory. One 

way to probe string theory beyond this limit is to investigate 

the symmetries of the low energy description and 

then use this to gain information about the full theory, 

whose symmetry group is expected to contain the symmetry 

of the low-energy theory as a subgroup. 

M-theory Cosmology and E10 

There are indications that the infinite-dimensional Kac- 

Moody algebra E10 should play an important role in understanding 

the underlying symmetry of string and M-theory. 

One of the main motivations behind this claim comes from 

studying the behaviour of M-theory close to a big bangtype 

singularity. It turns out that in this limit the dynamics 

has an alternative description in terms of a billiard motion 

in a space with negative curvature bounded by hyperplanes, 

called walls. The collisions against the billiard walls 

are geometric reflections which form a discrete reflection 

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group known as a Coxeter group. Coxeter groups have been 

well known to mathematicians for centuries as the discrete 

groups describing the symmetries of regular polytopes, 

such as the equilateral triangle or the square, and of the 

Platonic solids, such as the pyramid or the cube. To physicists, 

Coxeter groups are more commonly known as the 

Weyl groups describing the reflections in the roots of a Lie 

algebra. The appearance of Coxeter groups in the cosmological 

limit of gravity might therefore signal the existence 

of a large Lie algebra symmetry in the theory. For the case of 

M-theory the Coxeter group in question is precisely the 

Weyl group of E10, thus hinting at the possibility that the 

full E10 algebra is a hidden symmetry of the theory. 

Geometric Configurations and Subalgebras of E10 

In our paper “Geometric configurations, regular subalgebras 

of E10 and M-theory cosmology” (w. M. Henneaux, M. 

Leston and P. Spindel) we analyzed the correspondence 

between E10 and the cosmological regime of M-theory 

from a new perspective. It was known before that cosmological 

solutions of M-theory can be encoded in so-called 

geometric configurations. These are a set of points and 

lines drawn on a plane following certain predetermined 

rules. The connection to M-theory is such that each line in a 

configuration becomes associated to an electric field component 

in the gravitational solution. In our work we 

showed that because of this correspondence there is a 

duality between subalgebras of E10 and geometric configurations. 

Moreover it is customary to describe Lie algebras in 

terms of geometric figures called Dynkin diagrams and 

hence it follows that our result reveals a duality between 

two completely different kinds of geometric figures, name- 

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ly geometric configurations and Dynkin diagrams. 

A famous example of a geometric configuration is the 

Desargues configuration constructed by the 17th century 

French mathematician Gérard Desargues with the purpose 

of proving a theorem in geometry. We found that this configuration 

is dual to another famous configuration known 

as the Petersen graph , found by the 19th century Danish 

mathematician Julius Petersen. We can understand the 

duality in the following way: the Desargues configuration 

encodes the properties of a certain cosmological solution 

to eleven-dimensional supergravity and the Petersen graph 

is the Dynkin diagram describing the subgroup of E10 on 

which the particle dynamics reproduce the gravitational 

solution in question. 

The duality between configurations and Dynkin diagrams 

revealed a new class of Coxeter subgroups of the Weyl 

group of E10. In a follow up paper, entitled “A Special Class 

of Rank 10 and 11 Coxeter Groups”, we extended our previous 

results and classified all Coxeter groups of the same 

type. These subgroups are rare within E10, so it is satisfactory 

to have such a concrete way of constructing them. 

The Desargues configuration. 

Future Prospects 

An immediate extension of our results is to further make 

use of the correspondence between E10 and M-theory within 

the present region of validity, for example by constructing 

more complicated M-theory solutions by exploiting 

the integrability of the Kac-Moody invariant Lagrangians. 

The Petersen graph. 

At a more fundamental level it is essential to understand 

the role of the infinite number of fields originating from 

the Kac-Moody algebras. These are believed to incorporate 

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M-theoretic degrees of freedom beyond the supergravity 

limit. One intriguing possibility is that the infinite tower of 

fields should be interpreted as a kind of Taylor expansion in 

spatial derivatives, similar to the unfolding phenomenon 

occurring in higher spin theories. 

To conclude, I feel that although some progress has been 

made, the deep connections between Kac-Moody algebras 

and String/M-theory still remains to be understood and it 

is important to further pursue active research in these 

directions. 

Another pressing issue, also related to the previous paragraph, 

is to investigate whether or not the E10 model is big 

enough to incorporate higher order quantum corrections. 

Perhaps the best way to approach this problem is to start 

from the theory compactified to three spacetime dimensions 

where the E8 symmetry becomes manifest. If one can 

find a way to relate for example curvature corrections to 

higher order invariants of E8 it might be possible to extrapolate 

these results to the full E10 case, and hence to obtain 

information about the compatibility between E10 and 

higher order corrections to eleven-dimensional supergravity. 

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Research interests – Alexander Wijns 

High energy physics is the part of fundamental physics that 

is concerned with the laws of nature at distances smaller 

than the radius of the proton. Traditionally this effectively 

involves only three of the four known forces of nature, 

namely the weak and strong nuclear forces, and electromagnetism. 

This is because the gravitational force is much 

weaker than the other forces, so that in every practical 

sense, it plays no role in the description of microscopic phenomena. 

At least this is the case here on earth. According to 

the general theory of relativity, gravity is a consequence of 

the curvature of space-time caused by the presence of matter 

(or energy), but even in the neighbourhood of the sun, 

this curvature is too small to have any essential influence 

on microscopic phenomena. There are, however, circumstances 

in which the curvature of space-time becomes so 

large or the energy so high, that gravity becomes an equal 

competitor to the other forces. This would be the case in the 

neighbourhood of a black hole or right after the big bang. 

In these circumstances general relativity breaks down and 

one needs a quantum mechanical theory of gravity to really 

understand the situation. This however turns out to be 

notoriously difficult, since general relativity and quantum 

mechanics are fundamentally incompatible. It is even 

quite thinkable that the forces as we know them cease to 

exist as such at very high energies (which means short distances) 

and become part of a very different picture, which 

only starts resembling our world at sufficiently ‘large’ distances. 

This very different picture would be part of an even 

more fundamental theory, the most successful candidate 

for such a theory being string theory. 

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In string theory, elementary particles such as electrons, 

quarks and photons are actually tiny vibrating strings, so 

tiny even that with our current technology, on would have 

to build a particle accelerator bigger than the solar system 

to acquire the energies needed to actually ‘see’ this. In trying 

to formulate a fully consistent quantum mechanical 

theory of these vibrating and interacting strings, one 

arrives at a formalism which offers a natural setting in 

which all four fundamental forces can be incorporated and 

seems to have everything in store for a fully consistent 

description of quantum gravity. This does not mean that in 

string theory just anything is possible. Its consistency 

requirements are so strong that they even put constraints 

on the properties of the very space-time in which the 

strings move. Even more fascinatingly, string theory 

changes our ‘classical’ idea of what space-time actually is! 

Although string theory has become a vast and well developed 

subject, we are still far from uncovering its most 

important implications concerning space-time, particle 

physics and cosmology. It is quite clear these days that 

string theory is not even necessarily a theory of mere 

strings anymore. For instance, a very important ingredient 

in all of these insights are higher dimensional objects 

called D(irichlet)-branes, which turn out to be as fundamental 

to string theory as the strings themselves. They are 

the objects that have occupied most of my attention during 

my research so far, so I will describe them in a little more 

detail now. 

There are essentially two kinds of strings. Closed strings are 

associated with the gravitational force and open strings 

with what physicists call the gauge sector (after an abstract 

symmetry that is associated with the nuclear and electromagnetic 

forces, that is called gauge symmetry). In a cer- 

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tain limit, D-branes can be described as fixed ‘hyperplanes’ 

on which open strings have to end. More generally however, 

we know that they are much more than just fixed higher-dimensional 

surfaces, but actually have to be thought of 

as full-fledged, dynamical ingredients of string theory. 

Given this fact it is quite important to finds means to 

describe these dynamical aspects of D-branes and one such 

way is by looking at a theory which actually lives on the 

branes themselves, which effectively encodes the way in 

which D-branes interact with strings and with each other. 

Because of its close relation to open strings, it turns out 

that the theory living on a D-brane is a gauge field theory, a 

generalization of the field theory used to describe electromagnetic 

fields. This for instance, has led people to postulate 

that we might actually live on a D-brane and things 

like electromagnetic fields are nothing but the low energy 

effect of open strings ending on the brane. This D-brane 

theory is already quite well understood when one has a single 

D-brane, well separated from other D-branes, but what 

happens when more of these objects coincide? It turns out 

that in this case things get a lot more intricate. Not only 

does the gauge theory on the branes become much more 

difficult (namely something called a non-abelian gauge 

theory), the very position of the branes has to be described 

by matrix-valued coordinates! This is only one example 

where string theory alters the everyday notions we have 

about geometry. 

A lot of my research over the years has been related to 

understanding this non-abelian theory that lives on a stack 

of D-branes, but lately (especially in 2006) it has shifted 

somewhat in a related direction. In order to understand 

better what to expect of this non-abelian theory, it could be 

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very helpful to understand the theory on a single D-brane 

as completely as possible. To achieve this, we took a step 

back and started reanalyzing the open strings themselves, 

be it in a slightly updated fashion. Namely, to make string 

theory a consistent theory, one needs a very powerful, but 

as of yet unobserved, symmetry called supersymmetry. In 

certain space-times this even gets promoted to what we 

call extended supersymmetry, which turns out to be an 

extremely powerful ingredient, without which our method 

would become practically unfeasible. To understand our 

reason to return to the string perspective, recall that 

strings actually determine the environment they live in. 

Closed strings (related to gravity) tell you what kind of 

space-time they want to live in, but open strings, since they 

end on D-branes, also determine the geometry and dynamics 

of these branes. In other words, by studying the strings 

that end on a D-brane, we can determine the structure of 

the field theory living on the brane itself. This kind of reasoning 

is one of the very novel features of string theory and 

is at the heart of some of its successes! 

Pushing this further, we are now studying all possible consistency 

requirements that can exist on the boundary of 

open strings that live in certain interesting geometries. 

This will bring us one step closer to determining all possible 

ways in which D-branes can exist within certain geometries 

which are useful for trying to connect string theory to 

the lower energy physics that we already know. A lot of 

aspects of D-branes still need to be uncovered and remain 

crucial for a full understanding of string theory. This is clear 

from the various places where the success of string theory 

depends heavily on the existence of D-branes. Examples of 

this are the description of black holes within string theory, 

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the existence of something called holography which physicists 

think should be a feature of any suitable candidate of 

a quantum theory of gravity, the hope that string theory 

could one day teach us a lot about the strong nuclear force 

and, not in the least, the new and exciting ways in which 

‘string geometry’ differs so much from ordinary ‘classical 

geometry’. 

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Publications 2006 

1. M. Abou Zeid, C. M. Hull – A Chiral Perturbation 

Expansion for Gravity – JHEP 0602:057, 2006 – 

[e-Print Archive: hep-th/0511189]. 

2. R. Argurio, M. Bertolini, C. Closset, S. Cremonesi – On 

Stable Non-Supersymmetric Vacua at the Bottom of 

Cascading Theories - JHEP 0609: 030, 2006 – [e-Print 

Archive: hep-th/0606175]. 

3. R. Argurio, G. Ferretti, C. Petersson – Massless Fermionic 

Bound States and the Gauge/Gravity Correspondence - 

JHEP 0603: 043, 2006 – [e-Print Archive: 

hep-th/0601180]. 

4. I. Bakas, D. Orlando, P.M. Petropoulos – Ricci Flows and 

Expansion in Axion-Dilaton Cosmology – JHEP 0701:040, 

2007 – [e-Print Archive: hep-th/0610281]. 

5. M. Banados, G. Barnich, G. Compère, A. Gomberoff – 

Three Dimensional Origin of Goedel Spacetimes and 

Black holes – Phys. Rev. D73: 044006, 2006 – [e-Print 


6. G. Barnich, M. Grigoriev – Parent Form for Higher Spin 

Fields on Anti-de Sitter Space – JHEP 0608: 013, 2006 – 


7. G. Barnich, M. Grigoriev – BRST Extension of the Non – 

Linear Unfolded Formalism – in "Quantum Theory and 

Symmetries IV, volume 2" – ed. V.K. Dobrev, Heron Press 

2006: 547-557 – [e-Print Archive: hep-th/0504119]. 

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8. X. Bekaert, N. Boulanger, S. Cnockaert, S. Leclercq – On 

Killing Tensors and Cubic Vertices in Higher-Spin Gauge 

Theories – Fortsch. Phys. 54: 282-290, 2006 – e-Print 

Archive: hep-th/0602092. 

9. X. Bekaert, N. Boulanger et S. Cnockaert – Spin Three 

Gauge Theory Revisited – JHEP 0601: 052,2006 – [e-Print 

Archive : hep-th/0508048]. 

10. X. Bekaert, S. Cnockaert, C. Iazeolla, M.A. Vasiliev – 

Nonlinear Higher Spin Theories in Various Dimensions – 

in Proceedings of the Solvay Workshop on Higher Spin 

Gauge Theories, R. Argurio, G. Barnich, G. Bonelli et M. 

Grigoriev eds., 2006 - [e-Print Archive: hep-th/0503128]. 

11. F. Bigazzi, A.L. Cotrone, L. Martucci, W. Troost – Meson 

decays from string splitting – arXiv : hep-th/0611253. 

13. L. Bonora, C. Maccaferri, R.J. Scherer Santos, D.D. Tolla – 

Bubbling AdS and Vacuum String Field Theory – Nucl. 

Phys.B749:338-357,2006 – [e-Print Archive:hep-th/0602015]. 

14. N. Boulanger, S. Cnockaert, S. Leclercq – Parity Violating 

Vertices For Spin-3 Gauge Fields – Phys. Rev. D73: 065019, 

2006 – [e-Print archive : hep-th/0509118]. 

15. P. Bouwknegt, J. Evslin, B. Jurco, V. Mathai, H. Sati – Flux 

Compactifications of Projective Spaces and the S- Duality 

Puzzle – Adv. Theor. Math. Phys. 10: 345-394, 2006 – 


12. S. Bolognesi, J. Evslin – Stable vs. Unstable Vortices in 

SQCD – JHEP 0603: 023, 2006 – [e-Print Archive: hepth/0506174]. 

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17. S. Colin, T. Durt, R. Tumulka – On superselection rules in 

Bohr-Bell theories – J. Phys. A. 39 (2006), 15403-15419. 

18. B. Craps, O. Evnin, S. Nakamura – DO-brane recoil 

revisited – JHEP 0612 : 081, 2006. 

19. B. Craps – Big bang models in string theory – Class. 

Quant. Grav. 23 : S849-S881, 2006. 

20. B. Craps, A. Rajaraman, S. Sethi – Effective dynamics of 

the matrix big bang – Phys. Rev. D 73 : 106005, 2006. 

21. T. Damour, A. Hanany, M. Henneaux, A. Kleinschmidt, H. 

Nicolai – Curvature Corrections and Kac-Moody 

Compatibility Conditions - Gen. Rel. Grav. 38: 1507-1528, 

2006 – [e-Print Archive: hep – th/0604143]. 

22. S. de Buyl, M. Henneaux, Louis Paulot – Extended E(8) 

Invariance of 11-Dimensional Supergravity – JHEP 

0602: 056, 2006 – [e-Print Archive: hep-th/0512292]. 

23. T. Durt – About Weyl and Wigner tomography in finite 

dimensional Hilbert spaces – Open system and 

Information Dyn 13 (2006), 1-11. 

24. T. Durt – Factorization of the Wigner distribution in 

prime power dimensions – Int. Journ. of laser Phys. 16 

(2006), 1557-1564. 

16. C. W. Bunster, S. Cnockaert, M. Henneaux, R. Portugues – 

Monopoles for Gravitation and for Higher Spin Fields – 

Phys. Rev. D73: 105014, 2006 – [e-Print Archive: hepth/0601222]. 

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25. T. Durt – About the Mean King’s problem and discrete 

Wigner distributions – Journ. Mod. Phys. B 20 (2006), 

1742-1760. 

26. J. Evslin, M. Fairbairn – Photon Mixing in Domain Walls 

and the Cosmic Coincidence Problem – JCAP 0602: 011, 

2006 – [e-Print archive: hep-ph/0507020]. 

27. J. Evslin, H. Sati – Can D-Branes Wrap Nonrepresentable 

Cycles? – JHEP 0610: 050, 2006 – [e-Print Archive: hepth/0607045]. 

29. L.A. Forte, A. Sciarrino – Standard and Non-Standard 

Extensions of Lie Algebras – J. Math. Phys. 47: 013513, 

2006 – [e-Print Archive: hep-th/0506048]. 

30. M. Henneaux – BRST Quantization – article in 

“ Encyclopedia of Mathematical Physics” – eds. J.-P. 

Françoise, G.L. Naber and T.S. Tsun – Elsevier (2006) 

31. M. Henneaux – Constrained Systems – article in 

“Encyclopedia of Mathematical Physics” – eds. J.-P. 

Françoise, G.L. Naber and T.S. Tsun – Elsevier (2006) 

32. M. Henneaux, C. Teitelboim – Electric-Magnetic Duality 

in Gravity – in “Deserfest: A Celebration of the Life and 

Works of Stanley Deser” – eds. J.T. Liu, M.J. Duff, K.S. Stelle 

and R.P. Woodard – World Scientific (Singapore: 2006). 

28. F. Ferrari – The Proof of the Dijkgraaf-Vafa Conjecture 

and Application to the Mass Gap and Confinement 

Problems – JHEP 0606: 039, 2006 – [e-Print Archive: hepth/0602249]. 

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33. M. Henneaux, M. Leston, D. Persson, P. Spindel – 

Geometric Configurations, Regular Subalgebras of E(10) 

and M-Theory Cosmology – JHEP 0610: 021, 2006 – [e- 

Print Archive: hep-th/0606123]. 

34. A.N.W. Hone, V. Novikov, C. Verhoeven – An integrable 

hierarchy with a perturbed Hénon-Heiles system – Inv. 

Problems 22 (2006) 2001-2020. 

35. L. Houart – Kac-Moody Algebras in Gravity and M-theories 

– AIP Conf. Proc. 841: 298-305, 2006 –[e-Print archive: 

hep-th/0511009]. 

36. F. Lambert, J. Springael – From soliton equations to their 

zero-curvature formulation – in “Bilinear Integrable 

Systems from Classical to Quantum, Continuous to 

Discrete”, Eds L. Faddeev, P. Van Moerbeke and F. 

Lambert, Nato Sciences Series II : Mathematics, Physics 

and Chemistry, 201, Springer-Verlag 2006, 147-159. 

37. J. Maes, A. Sevrin – A Note on N=(2,2) superfields in two 

dimensions – Phys. Lett. B642 (2006) 535-539 [e-Print 


38. S. Nevens, A. Sevrin, W. Troost, A. Wijns – Derivative corrections 

to the Born-Infeld action through beta-function 

calculations in N=2 boundary superspace – JHEP 0608 

(2006) 086 [e-Print Archive : hep-th/0606255]. 

39. N. Tabti – Signatures of Kac-Moody invariant theories – 

Physicalia Mag. 28 (2006) 182-193. 

40. C. Verhoeven, M. Musette, R. Conte – On reductions of 

some KdV-type systems and their link to the quartic 

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Hénon-Heiler Hamiltonian – in “Bilinear Integrable 

Systems from Classical to Quantum, Continuous to 

Discrete”, Eds L. Faddeev, P. Van Moerbeke and F. 

Lambert, Nato Sciences Series II : Mathematics, Physics 

and Chemistry, 201, Springer-Verlag 2006, 363-374. 

41. R. Willox, J. Hietarinta – On the bilinear forms of 

Painlevé’s 4th equation- in “Bilinear Integrable Systems 

from Classical to Quantum, Continuous to Discrete”, Eds 

L. Faddeev, P. Van Moerbeke and F. Lambert, Nato 

Sciences Series II: Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry, 

201, Springer-Verlag 2006, 375-390. 

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Preprints 

42. M. Abou Zeid, C.M. Hull, L.J. Mason – Einstein Supergravity 

and New Twistor String Theories – e-Print Archive: hepth/0606272. 

43. R. Argurio, M. Bertolini, S. Franco, S. Kachru - Gauge/Gravity 

Duality and Meta-stable Dynamical Supersymmetry 

Breaking - e-Print Archive: hep-th/0610212. 

44. G. Barnich, G. Compère - Classical Central Extension for 

Asymptotic Symmetries at Null Infinity in Three 

Spacetime Dimensions - e-Print Archive: gr-qc/0610130. 

45. L. Bonora, N. Bouatta, C. Maccaferri - Towards Open- 

Closed String Duality: Closed Strings as Open String 

Fields - e-Print Archive: hep – th/0609182. 

46. R. Brout - The Causet Mechanism for the Creation of 

Energy - e-Print Archive: gr-qc/0607012. 

47. A.S. Carstea, A. Romani, J. Satsuma, R. Willox, B. 

Grammaticos – Continuous, discrete and ultra-discrete 

models of an inflammatory response – Physica A, 364 

(2006), 276-286. 

49. A. Collunici, J. Evslin – Twisted Homology – e-Print 


48. S. Cnockaert - Higher Spin Gauge Field Theories: Aspects 

of Dualities and Interactions - e-Print Archive: hepth/0606121. 

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50. A. Collinucci, A. Wijns – Topology of Fiber Bundles and 

Global Aspects of Gauge Theories – e-Print Archive: hepth/0611201. 

51. M. Courbage, T. Durt, M. Saberi – Two-level Friedricks 

model and kasnic phenomenology – accepted for 

publication in Phys. Lett. A (2006). 

52. M. Courbage,T. Durt, M. Saberi – Non exponential quantum 

mechanical decay laws in neutral kaons – submitted for 

publication to J. Phys A (2006). 

54. S. de Buyl - Kac-Moody Algebras in M-theory – e-Print 


55. S. Deser, M. Henneaux – A Note on Spin Two Fields in 

Curved Backgrounds – e-Print Archive: gr-qc/0611157. 

56. J.F. Du, M. Sun, X. Peng, T. Durt – NMR realization of 

entanglement-assisted qubit covariant SIC-POVM – 

accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. A (2006). 

57. T. Durt, J. Corbett – Quantum Mechanics interpreted in 

Quantum Real Numbers –submitted for publication to 

Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics. 

58. J. Evslin - Twisted K-Theory as a BRST Cohomology – 

e- Print Archive: hep-th/0605049. 

53. B. Craps, O. Evnin, S. Nakamura – Local recoil of extended 

solitons : a string theory example – accepted for 

publication in Journ. of High Energy Physics, hepth/0608123. 

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59. J. Evslin - What Does(n't) K-theory Classify? – e-Print 


60. W. Fischler, V. Kaplunovsky, C. Krishnan, L. Mannelli, 

M. Torres – Meta-Stable Supersymmetry Breaking in a 

Cooling Universe – e-Print Archive: hep-th/0611018. 

61. M. Henneaux, M. Leston, D. Persson, P. Spindel – A Special 

Class of Rank 10 and 11 Coxeter Groups – e-Print Archive: 

hep-th/0610278. 

62. M. Henneaux, C. Martinez, R. Troncoso, J. Zanelli – 

Asymptotic Behavior and Hamiltonian Analysis of Antide 

Sitter Gravity coupled to Scalar Fields - e-Print 


63. A.N.W. Hone, V. Novikov, C. Verhoeven – An extended 

Hénon-Heiles system – submitted for publication to 

Physics Lett. A (2006). 

64. A. Keurentjes – Determining the Dual – e-Print Archive: 

hep-th/0607069. 

66. F. Lambert, J. Springael, S. Colin, R. Willox – An elementary 

approach to soliton hierarchies – submitted for publication 

to J. Phys. Soc. Jpn (2006). 

67. I. Loris, G. Nolet, I. Daubechies, F.A. Dahlen – Tomographic 

inversion using L1 norm regularization of wavelet 

coefficients – submitted to Geophysical J.International. 

65. S. Kuperstein, O. Mintkevich, J. Sonnenschein – On the 

pp-wave Llimit and the BMN Structure of New Sasaki- 

Einstein Spaces – e-Print Archive: hep-th/0609194. 

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69. A. Volkov – On the periodicity conjecture for Y-systems – 

accepted for publication in Commun. Math. Phys. 

(2006). 

Edition 

Higher Spin Gauge Theories – R. Argurio, G. Barnich, G. 

Bonelli and M. Grigoriev eds, Proceedings of the Solvay 

Workshops and Symposia (n° 1) (197 pages). 

68. L.Paulot – Infinite-Dimensional Gauge Structure of 

d=2 N=16 Supergravity – e-Print Archive: hepth/0604098. 

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Invited Talks at 

conferences, seminars and schools 

1. January 5, 2006 : Glenn Barnich, “Thermodynamics of 

Gödel black holes” – CECS, Valdivia, Chile. 

2. January 12, 2006 : Marc Henneaux, “Magnetic sources 

for gravitation and for Higher Spins” – Centro de 

Estudios Cientificos, Valdivia, Chile. 

3. January 14, 2006 : Mohab Abou Zeid, “Twistor Strings 

and Supergravity” – EU Network RTN Meeting, CERN, 

Genève, Switzerland. 

4. January 15, 2006 : Mohab Abou Zeid, “Twistor strings 

and supergravity” – Invited talk given at the Institute 

of Mathematics, German University of Cairo and the 

Cairo International Conference on High Energy Physics, 

Egypt. 

5. January 16, 2006 : Glenn Barnich, “Thermodynamics of 

Gödel black holes” – UNAM, Mexico City, Mexico. 

6. January 16-20, 2006 : Ben Craps, “Big Bang Models in 

String Theory” – Invited lecture series at EC-RNT School 

on Strings, Supergravity and Gauge Theories, CERN, 

Genève, Switzerland. 

7. January 25, 2006 : Alexandre Sevrin, “Supersymmetry 

and Geometry : a Solved Example” – Theoretical Physics 

Colloquium, Utrecht Universiteit, The Netherlands. 

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8. February 15, 2006 : Ben Craps, “A big bang model in 

string theory” – HEP/GR Wednesday Seminar, University 

of Cambridge, United Kingdom. 

9. February 17, 2006 : Ben Craps, “A big bang model in string 

theory” – Seminar, Durham University, United 

Kingdom. 

11. March 7, 2006 : Marc Henneaux, “BKL Billiards and 

Lorentzian Kac-Moody algebras in four and higher 

dimensions ” – Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, 

University of Santa Barbara, California, USA. 

12. March 21, 2006 : Alexander Wijns,“Derivative corrections 

to the Born-Infeld action and N=2 boundary super 

space” – Instituut voor Theoretische Fysica, 

Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, The Netherlands. 

13. March 26, 2006 : Ben Craps, “Een moderne kijk op de 

oerknal” – Meesterklassen, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, 

Belgium. 

14. March 28, 2006 : Marc Henneaux, “Hidden Symmetries 

of Gravity” – Stockholms Universitet, Sweden. 

15. March 28, 2006 : Franklin Lambert, talk following the 

presentation of the movie picture“ Einstein’s Big Idea” – 

VUB, Belgium. 

10. February 27, 2006 : Mohab Abou Zeid,“Iteration relations 

of planar amplitudes in N=4 super Yang-Mills theory”- 

Theory Division, CERN, Genève, Switzerland. 

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16. March 2006 : Geoffrey Compère, “Three dimensional 

Gödel spacetimes and black holes” – FYNU-FYMA, 

Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium. 

17. April 7-8, 2006 : Alexander Volkov, “On Zamolodchikov’s 

conjecture” – Workshop “Operator equations in quantum 

optics”, Universiteit Antwerp, Belgium. 

18. April 13, 2006 : Ben Craps, “Matrix description of a big 

bang singularity” – Seminar, Queen Mary, University of 

London, United Kingdom. 

19. April 13, 2006 : Arjan Keurentjes,“Determining the dual” 

– Instituut voor Theoretische Fysica, Groningen, 

The Netherlands. 

20. April 22 - 27, 2006 : Marc Henneaux, Course of lectures 

on “Hidden Symmetries of gravitational theories” – 4th 

International School on Field Theory and Gravitation, 

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. 

21. April 25, 2006 : Ben Craps, “Einstein bekeken n°3 : back 

to the future”- Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium. 

22. May 3, 2006 : Ben Craps, “Matrix description of a big 

bang singularity” – Seminar, SISSA, Trieste, Italy. 

23. May 11, 2006 : Frank Ferrari, “The Proof of the Dijkgraaf- 

Vafa Conjecture and application to the mass gap and 

confinement problems” – Ecole Normale Supérieure, 

Paris, France. 

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24. May 20, 2006 : Glenn Barnich, “Thermodynamics of 

Gödel black holes” – Spring School and Workshop on 

Quantum Field Theory and Hamiltonian Systems, 

Calimanesti-Caciulata, Roumania. 

25. May 22, 2006 : Franklin Lambert, “An elementary 

approach to integrable hierarchies of solitons equations” 

– Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianopolis, 

Brazil. 

26. May 23, 2006 : Marc Henneaux, “Hidden Symmetries of 

Gravity and Lorentzian Kac-Moody Algebras” – 

University of California, Davis, U.S.A. 

27. May 26, 2006 : Alexander Wijns, “D-brane effective 

action and boundary superspace” – Summer School on 

High Energy Physics and Astrophysics, Cargese, Corsica. 

28. June 13, 2006 : Glenn Barnich, “Higher spin fields on 

anti-de Sitter space” – Université de Mons-Hainaut, 

Belgium. 

29. June 14, 2006 : Ben Craps, “Matrix description of a big 

bang singularity” – Oral contribution at Satellite work 

shop of Strings 2006 Gravitation and Cosmology Fudan 

University Shanghai, China. 

30. June 15, 2006 : Ben Craps, “Matrix description of a big 

bang singularity” – Invited talk at 06 Strings Satellite 

Conference, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China. 

31. June 22-July 1, 2006 : C. Verhoeven, “Spiderweb solutions 

for the CKP equation” - 2006 Gallipole Workshop on Nonlinear 

Physics : Theory and Experiment, Gallipoli, Turkey. 

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32. July 6, 2006 : Frank Ferrari , “Gauge invariance and 

Super Yang-Mills theory” – Conference “QCD and String 

Theory”, Centro de ciencias de Benasque, Spain. 

33. July 20/22/23 2006 : Frank Ferrari, “Supersymmetric 

Gauge Theories, Matrix Models and Geometric 

Transitions” – XVth Oporto meeting on Geometry, 

Topology and Physics : Mathematical aspects of super 

symmetry, Universidade do Porto, Portugal. 

34. August 23, 2006 : Marc Henneaux, “Geometric 

Configurations, Regular Subalgebras of E10 and M- 

Theory Cosmology” – Centro de Estudios Cientificos, 

Valdivia, Chile. 

35. August 23, 2006 : Ben Craps, “A matrix big bang” - 

Invited talk at the first Cambridge-Mitchell Texas 

conference : time dependent backgrounds and the 

cosmic singularity in string and M Theory , University 

of Cambridge, United Kingdom. 

36. September 1, 2006 : Ben Craps, “Cosmological 

Singularities” – Invited overview talk at 38th 

International Symposium Ahrenshoop on the Theory of 

Elementary Particles : Recent Developments in 

String/M-theory and field Theory, Berlin, Germany. 

37. September 10 & 11,2006 :Mohab Abou Zeid,“Twistor- strings 

and supergravity”- Twistors, Strings and Gauge Theory 

Workshop, Perimeter Institute, Waterloo, Canada. 

38. September 14, 2006 : Ben Craps, “Dynamics of lowdimensional 

D-branes: recoil and local recoil”, 

Rencontres théoriciennes, IHP, Paris, France. 

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39. October 2 &3, 2006 : Mohab Abou Zeid, “Lectures on 

twistor strings and gravity” – Institute for Mathematical 

Sciences, Imperial College London, United Kingdom. 

40. October 6, 2006 : Glenn Barnich, “Higher spin fields on 

anti-de Sitter space” – Università degli Studi Milano, Italy. 

41. October 8, 2006 : Mohab Abou Zeid, “Twistor- strings 

and supergravity” – RTN Midterm Meeting and 

workshop, Napoli, Italy. 

42. October 10, 2006 : Riccardo Argurio, “Metastable 

Supersymmetry Breaking and Gauge/Gravity Duality” – 

RTN workshop, Napoli, Italy. 

43. October 13, 2006 : Nassiba Tabti, “Gravitational theories 

coupled to matter as invariant theories under Kac- 

Moody algebras” - RTN Midterm Meeting and workshop, 

Napoli, Italy. 

44. October 2006 : Carlo Maccaferri, “Exercises in 

Superstring Theory” – 1st International Doctoral School 

(Paris/Brussels/Amsterdam), ULB, Belgium. 

46. October 30 & 31 and November 3, 2006 : Riccardo 

Argurio, “Supersymmetric Gauge Theories” - 1st 

International Doctoral School 


45. October and November 2006 : Frank Ferrari, “Non- 

Perturbative aspects of quantum field theory” - 1st 

International Doctoral School 


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47. October 30 – November 8, 2006 : Ben Craps, 

“Introduction to D-branes” - 1st International Doctoral 

School (Paris/Brussels/Amsterdam), ULB, Belgium. 

48. November 2006 : Carlo Maccaferri, “Introduction to 

Open String Field Theory” – 1st International Doctoral 

School (Paris/Brussels/Amsterdam), ULB, Belgium. 

49. November 1 & 8, 2006 : Mohab Abou Zeid, “Lectures on 

twistor strings and gravity” – invited lectures given at 

CQUEST and the University of Sogang, Seoul, Korea. 

50. November 6, 2006 : Marc Henneaux, “Hamiltonian 

Formalism of General Relativity I” – Institut Henri 

Poincaré, Paris, France. 

51. November 7, 2006 : Marc Henneaux, “Hamiltonian 

Formalism of General Relativity II” – Institut Henri 

Poincaré, Paris, France. 

52. November 13, 2006 : Ben Craps, “The Cosmic Microwave 

Background: How Cosmology has become a precision 

Science” – Physics Colloquium, KULeuven, Belgium. 

54. November 16, 2006 : Mohab Abou Zeid, “Twistor- strings 

and supergravity” – University of Tokyo, Japan. 

53. November 15, 2006 : Mohab Abou Zeid, “Symmetries, 

conservation laws and gauge invariant operators in 

noncommutative field theory” – 21st Nishinomiya- 

Yukawa Memorial Symposium, Yukawa Institute for 

Theoretical Physics, Kyoto, Japan. 

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and supergravity” – KEK, Tsukuba, Japan. 

57. November 26, 2006 : R. Willox,“Canonical bilinear forms 

and bi-hamiltonian structures” – Universiteit Antwerp, 

Belgium. 


and supergravity” – Department ECM, Universidad de 

Barcelona, Spain. 

59. November 30, 2006 : Alexander Volkov,“On the 

periodicity conjecture for Y-systems” – Institut Camille 

Jordan, Université de Lyon I, France. 

60. December 6, 2006 : Mohab Abou Zeid, “Twistor- strings 

and supergravity” – Institut für Physik, Humboldt, 

Universität zu Berlin, Germany. 

61. December 7, 2006 : Ignace Loris, “Seismic tomography 

with wavelets and L1 penalization” – FNRS Wavelets and 

Applications contact group meeting, IRM/KMI Brussels, 

Belgium. 

62. December 13, 2006 : Ben Craps, “A matrix Big Bang” – 

Invited talk at IHP workshop “High Energy, Cosmology 

and Strings”, Paris, France. 

56. November 17, 2006 : Marc Henneaux, “Hyperbolic Kac- 

Moody algebras : the key for understanding gravity ?” – 

Opening lecture at Conference on “Kac-Moody groups 

and Geometry”, Darmstadt Universität, Germany. 

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63. December 14, 2006 : Marc Henneaux, Seminar “Hidden 

Symmetries of Gravitational Theories” – Università di 

Pisa and Scuola Normale, Italy. 

64. December 14, 2006 : Riccardo Argurio, “Metastable 

Supersymmetry Breaking and Gauge/Gravity Duality” – 

Rencontres théoriciennes, Paris, France. 

65. December 2006 : Geoffrey Compère, “Classical central 

extensions for asymptotic symmetries in three 

dimensional spacetimes” – Milano string theory group, 

Milano, Italy. 

66. December 2006 : Geoffrey Compère, “Black holes thermodynamics” 

– Milano string theory group, Milano, 

Italy. 

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M i s c e l l a n e o u s

M i s c e l l a n e o u s 

Publications of 

the International Solvay Institutes 

23rd Solvay Conference on Physics 

The 23rd Solvay Conference on Physics has been put entirely 

on line on the web site of the Institutes: 

http://www.solvayinstitutes.be/Activities/Past/Conseil 

%20Solvay2005/RapporteurTalks.html 

Furthermore, the paper version of the proceedings came 

out of press in January 2007. 

23rd Solvay Conference on Physics 

The Quantum Structure of Space and Time 

Proceedings 

Editors : D. Gross, M. Henneaux, A. Sevrin 

World Scientific Publishing Co. (2007) 

ISBN 981-256-952-9 

ISBN 981-256-953-7 (pbk) 

-180-


Other publication 

Solvay Workshops and Symposia (volume 1) 

Higher Spin Gauge Theories 

Proceedings 

Editors : R. Argurio, G. Barnich, G. Bonelli, M. Grigoriev 

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Francqui Prize to 

Professor Pierre Gaspard 

The Francqui Prize is the highest scientific distinction in 

Belgium. It is awarded each year in recognition of the 

achievements of a young (< 50 years) Belgian scholar or scientist. 

It is the King's privilege to present the Francqui Prize 

personally, during a ceremony which takes place on the 

premises of the University Foundation in Brussels or at the 

Palace of the Academies. 

In 2006, the Francqui Prize was awarded to Professor Pierre 

Gaspard, member of the Solvay local scientific committee, 

for exceptional contributions in uncovering these fundamental 

aspects of nature. 

Professor Pierre Gaspard continues a long and excellent 

Belgian tradition in the field of statistical mechanics. 

He has amassed substantial knowledge leading to a growing 

understanding of chaos theory in order to explain general 

and fundamental laws in classical and quantum 

physics. In particular he has developed a new scattering 

approach in connecting microscopic (and reversible) laws 

to macroscopic (and irreversible) laws of nature, applicable 

to every day life. 

The subatomic world is governed by quantum (wave) 

mechanics. Yet various properties display the fingerprints 

of the underlying classical mechanics. Professor Pierre 

Gaspard played a fundamental role in explaining these 

-182-


effects, in particular in the context of chaotic scattering 

and has thereby been able to analyse experiments in the 

fields of atomic and molecular physics. 

All our congratulations! 

-183-


Remodelling of the Solvay Room 

(“Salle Solvay”) 

The Solvay room (“Salle Solvay”) badly needed renovation. 

In 2006, the Faculty of Sciences of the ULB took the initiative 

to remodel it. The work was finished in September of 

2006. The new Solvay room contains more seats, is equipped 

with the necessary modern projection equipment and 

is much more pleasant and comfortable (more light, better 

disposition of the seats). A definite success! 

We are very grateful to the Faculty of Sciences of the ULB 

for this initiative. 

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-185-

A p p e n d i x : O u t r e a c h 

R a d i o , T e l e v i s i o n & N e w s p a p e r s

R a d i o a n d T e l e v i s i o n I n t e r v i e w s 

Marc Henneaux : 

• January 8, 2006 

La Première RTBF Radio : « Semences de curieux » 

• January 15, 2006 

La Première RTBF Radio : « Semences de curieux » 

Alexandre Sevrin : 

• Radio 1 VRT : « de Wandelgangen » on the scientific 

work of Pierre Gaspard. 

-188-

N e w s p a p e r s 

March 2006 – Focus n° 4 (p. 82), Italy 

June 14, 2006 – Le Soir (p.17) 

October 19, 2006 – La Libre Belgique (p. 28) 

June 14, 2006 – La Libre Belgique (P. 29) 

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March 2006 – Focus n° 4 (p. 82), Italy 

14 June, 2006 – Le Soir (p.17) 

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19 October 2006 – La Libre Belgique (p. 28)


14 June 2006 – La Libre Belgique (P. 29) 

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-195- 

n o t e s

N o t e s 

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