IIP News

news
INTERNATIONAL
INSTITUTE OF
PHYSICS
Natal,
June, 2016
Year I Number 01
Photo by Wallacy Medeiros
Local authorities and IIP guests during the Institute official inauguration
IIP inaugurates new building inside campus
After three years of work
the new building of the
International Institute of
Physics of the Federal University
of Rio Grande do
Norte (IIP-UFRN) was inaugurated
last March 21 in a
special ceremony, attended
by local authorities and
members of the Brazilian
and international scientific
community. The new
building will provide de
IIP with a better infrastructure
and allow the institution
to host its own events
inside its facilities.
“This new space will allow
us to host an even bigger
number of scientific events
for a longer period of time
and bring more scientists
to work in Natal. This facility
is unlike any other that
I have ever seen in Brazil”,
said the IIP Director, Professor
Alvaro Ferraz.
The construction started in
2013 and covers over 4.000
square meters. The building
has an auditorium with
148 seats, two seminar
rooms, three discussion
rooms, a high processing
data laboratory, and more
comfortable offices for researchers.
Inauguration
During the opening ceremony
a crowded auditorium
had the opportunity
to watch a special presentation
by the string quartet
group “Café Quarteto”,
from the University´s Music
Department.
The Rector Angela Paiva
reinforced the commitment
of UFRN with the IIP,
and her personal pleasure
to see the building concluded.
According to Professor Paiva,
the open interchange
of renowned scientists in
the university, enabled by
the institute, and the high
quality of the work presented
by its researchers
are just some of the benefits
brought to the local
scientific community by
the IIP activities.
Representing the post
doctor researchers, Dr. Fabio
Novaes addressed the
present guests, and spoke
about his career as a physicist
and his experience as
post-doctor at the IIP.
The IIP goes further in the
objective of forming new
researchers. They put us
in contact with some of
the main research leaders
of the world, who are
happy to start new collaborations
with us. I consider
myself very lucky
for having this kind of
international experience
inside my own country”,
said Novaes.
From left to right: The new IIP building inside the UFRN Campus; Rector Angela Ferraz with Professors Sergio Rezende and Ivonildo Rego; Prof. Ferraz during his speach in the IIP inauguration

2
IIP News - Year I, number 01
Workshop Physics and Mathematics of Complex Systems
Physicists and Mathematicians
were gathered
at the IIP for two
weeks, in a series of presentations
and debates
regarding challenges
common to both sciences.
The workshop “Physics
and Mathematics
of Complex Systems:
Growing Interfaces,
Nonlinear Dynamics,
Integrability”, hosted
from April 04 to 15, was
the first major scientific
event to take place
at the new IIP building,
and was organized
to promote a unique
synergy of expertise in
physics, as well as in applied
and pure mathematics,
in order to tackle
important theoretical
challenges in non-equilibrium.
According to Professor
Boris Dubrovin, from
SISSA, the event was a
special opportunity to
exchange experiences
with colleagues from a
different science.
“I enjoyed very much
this conference. It
was mainly centered
in physics. I am not a
physicist, I am a Mathematician,
nevertheless
2016 IAC Meeting
I am very interested
in looking into what
physicists do and in
collaborating with
them”, said Professor
Dubrovin.
The local scientific
community, as well as
representatives from
other institutions in
Brazil, were also present
to the event, when
they had the opportunity
to interact with
senior researchers.
Photo by Waldelino Duarte
IAC members during the first day of meeting
The IIP’s International
Advisory Council (IAC)
was reconvened from
March 21 to 22, in order
to discuss the directives to
be taken by the Institute in
its 2017 calendar, as well
as to analyze the results
achieved in the scientific
events of 2015. The IAC
meeting is hosted once
a year by the IIP, and is
composed by renowned
physicists from Brazil and
abroad.
As one of the results from
this year meeting , a set
of events has already
been pre-approved for
next year, including
schools, workshops, and
symposiums on theoretical
physics and related areas.
The event was hosted
during the Inauguration
of the new IIP building,
so the counselors could
be present during the
ceremony that delivered
the new installations.
“This year’s meeting was
very special for us, as it
was the first time that our
council was assembled
in our own building. We
worked very hard to
be here today and the
contribution of each IAC
member was essential
for this to happen”, said
Professor Alvaro Ferraz, IIP
Director.

June, 2016 3
Interview with
Prof. Rodrigo Pereira
Born in Sete Lagoas, Brazil, Rodrigo Pereira had an interest in science since
elementary school and in high school decided to pursue a career in Physics
because of the influence of one of his teachers. After his PhD and spending
sometime in renowned scientific institutions in Brazil and abroad, he is now a full
Professor at the IIP where he will work with Strong Correlated Electron Systems.
In this interview he talks a little more about his work and expectations for the
future of his research in Natal.
ProfessorRodrigo Pereira in his office at the IIP
IIP NEWS - Tell us a little bit about
your career in physics.
PROF. RODRIGO PEREIRA - I did my
undergrad and my masters at UNI-
CAMP, and after that, in 2004 I went
to Canada. I did my PhD at the University
of Britsh Columbia, working
with Professor Ian Affleck, and after
that I did a post-doc at the Kavli Institute
for Theoretical Physics (USA)
for two years.
Since 2010 I’ve been back in Brazil,
working in São Carlos, at the University
of São Paulo and today I’m here
for my first day at the IIP.
I have always worked in condensed
matter physics, strongly correlated
systems, so I’m mainly interested in
applications of field theory matters
to strongly correlated systems. I do
a lot of work on one dimensional
systems, using techniques like bosonisation,
conformal field theories,
sometimes exact methods for integrable
models, but I am also interested
in understanding what one
can measure in an experiment, so at
the same time I try to explain some
physical properties in materials.
IIP NEW - When did you first develop
an interest in science?
Photo by Cyro Lucas Souza
PROF. RODRIGO PEREIRA - I guess
that it was in elementary school. I
was always a bit curious about science,
I was always reading a lot and
trying to understand things, but it
was really in high school that I decided
that I wanted to study physics.
I was very much influenced by a very
good physics teacher that I had. He
started telling me some stuff beyond
what we were learning in school, so I
thought that was interesting.
Since I lived in a small town I had no
idea of what a physicist did at the
time, but I was very interested so I
had decided that I wanted to study
physics.
IIP NEWS - And when did you decide
to pursue a career as a researcher?
PROF. RODRIGO PEREIRA - I guess
I tried to give my small contribution
to this bigger enterprise of human
knowledge and how we try to understand
the world around us and
for me the most interesting things
are those in physics, like to understand
things in the very fundamental
level.
What happens in the level of elementary
parts, how they interact,
and this gives life to the things we
see. This is basically what we are doing
in condensed matter physics.
Put a lot of small things together, let
them interact and out comes all the
properties of materials around us in
all many different colors and flavors,
and I like to make this connection
from very simple fundamental walls
to all this diversity of things that we
see.
IIP NEWS - How was your first contact
with the IIP?
PROF. RODRIGO PEREIRA - That
was shortly after I moved back to
Brazil. I was in São Carlos and together
with Professors Francisco Alcaraz
and José Hoyos, we said that we
wanted to organize a winter school
in statistical physics. At first we
thought about doing it in São Carlos,
but then we learned about the
IIP and how they were organizing so
many events, so I liked the idea. So,
the first time I came here was as an
organizer, and for me it was an interesting
experience as well, because I
was organizing a school that I had
participated before as a student, in a
previous edition in São Carlos.
IIP NEWS - What are you working on
right now?
PROF. RODRIGO PEREIRA - These
days I’ve been mainly thinking about
cold atoms systems. So one of the
things I do is something call quantum
impurity models. What happens
when you have some kind of
system that can be even non interactive,
but you add a different atom
or something that is gonna move in
the system and interact with everything
else, and ask about how that
changes the properties of the system
locally or of this object that is
moving around? So at the moment
I am working on a problem of impurity
in a two dimensional fermy gas,
that has some special kind of interaction
that completely chances all
the properties of the particle that
is moving in that system, and that
uses field theory matters, because
it can show that this kind of interaction
is renormalizable and it moves
to different low energy properties
depending on the fractures on the
model, and I try to understand what
the different possibilities are.
IIP NEWS - What advice would you
give to the students that are joining
the physics course today and want
to join the research career?
PROF. RODRIGO PEREIRA - I would
say go for it. It is worth it. From the
beginning it looks very hard, because
you have to work very hard
and study a lot, and the prospect
of becoming a professor seems so
far away. For me it was like that.
But I really believe that if you work
hard enough the opportunities will
come. You have a lot of chances to
interact with people with similar
interests, meet people from many
different countries, so it’s a very nice
profession and I would recommend
it to everybody who is really excited
about doing research.

4
IIP-UFRN hosts special event to celebrate the
Physicist Day in Brazil
IIP News - Year I, number 01
The IIP and the Department of Theoretical and
Experimental Physics (DFTE-UFRN) held a joint event
last May 19, to celebrate the Brazilian Physicist Day.
During this special activity, the IIP auditorium was
crowded with students, Professors and researchers
from the local scientific community, who participated
in a series of presentations of the university’s research
groups in physics.
Many grad-students were present and could learn
more about the research fields of the IIP and DFTE, as
well as know more about the researchers and visiting
researchers developing their work at the university.
“I liked a lot. It was very interesting to know about the
subjects that the researchers from DFTE and the IIP are
studying”, said Herman Bueno, a 7º semester physics
grad student from UFRN.
According to IIP Professor Dmitry Melnikov, this was
also an opportunity for physicists from IIP and the DFTE
to learn more about the research in progress in the
many groups of both centers.
“I was very happy to see so many participants in this
event, specially the grad-students, who could learn
more about the research lines being studied at the
University. It was very nice to me too, since I got to
know more about my colleagues research here at the
University”, said Professor Melnikov.
More than 100 members of the local scientific
community participated in the 13 lectures offered
during the event, which the organizers hope to
transform into an annual activity.
Professor Carlos Chesmann (DFTE) talks about the use of liquid nitrogen
UFRN students during the Physicist Day Celebration at IIP
“Kerr Scattering coefficient via isomonodromy”
Work developed by researchers Fabio Novaes (IIP-UFRN) e Bruno Carneiro Cunha (UFPE)
In a paper recently published in the Journal of High
Energy Physics, IIP researcher Dr. Fabio Novaes
and Prof. Bruno Carneiro da Cunha from UFPE,
presented a new method to calculate scattering
coefficients of scalar waves propagating around
arotating black hole, the so-called Kerr black hole.
Scalar wave scattering is usually studied through
the Klein-Gordon equation, in a curved background,
to model the behavior of waves when
launched into a black hole. This method analyzes
the waves reflected and transmitted during this
process. The essential quantity calculated is the
scattering coefficient.
Novaes and Carneiro Cunha proposed a way to
express scattering data using the monodromy of
solutions of Klein-Gordon equation, inspired by
previous work of Castro et al. in Class.Quant.Grav.
30 (2013) 165005. The crucial quantity in the expression
is the composite monodromy, which can
be calculated via their novel application of the isomonodromy
deformation of these equations. This
work explores the relationship of isomonodromic
deformations and Painlevé VI τ-function, recently
developed in detail by O. Gamayun, N. Iorgov and
O. Lisovyy in JHEP 1210 (2012) 038 and first discovered
by Japanese mathematicians Jimbo, Miwa
and Ueno in the 1980’s.
Dr. Fábio Novaes now works in new applications
of the method in gravitational waves and in the
relationship between Gravity and Conformal Field
Theory (CFT).

Next Schools & Workshops
June, 2016 5
Events to Come
School and Workshop Strings at Dunes
July 04 to 15
Workshop Fermi-Surface Topology and Emergence
of Novel Electronic States in Strongly Correlated
Systems
July 18 to August 01
Workshop Interference of Magnetism and
Superconductivity
July 18 to September 02
Workshop New Trends in Integrable Models
August 15 to November 25
Workshop Boundary Degrees of Freedom and
Thermodynamics of Integrable Models
August 22 to September 02
International School on Laser-Beam Interactions
(Brazil, France, Italy)
September 08 to 12
Workshop Thermal and Electronic Transport in
Nanostructures
October 31 to November 11
Workshop Topological Effects in Ultra-Cold Atoms
November 14 to 18
Latest publications
Role of The Pion Electromagnetic Form Factor in The Δð1232þ → Γn Timelike Transition. G. Ramalho; M.T. Peña; J. Weil;
H. Van Hees; U. Mosel. Phys. Rev. D - 93, February 11, (2016);
Characterizing the Local Solvation Environment of OH− In Water Clusters With AIMD. Yanier Crespo; Ali Hassanali. J.
CHEM. PHYS. 144, 074304 (2016);
Nonequilibrium critical scaling in quantum thermodynamics. Abolfazl Bayat, Tony J. G. Apollaro, Simone Paganelli,
Gabriele De Chiara, Henrik Johannesson, Sougato Bose, Pasquale Sodano.Phys. Rev. B 93, 201106(R) (2016);
Entanglement structure of the two-channel Kondo model. Bedoor Alkurtass, Abolfazl Bayat, Ian Affleck, Sougato Bose,
Henrik Johannesson, Pasquale Sodano, Erik S. Sørensen, Karyn Le Hur. Phys. Rev. B 93, 081106(R) (2016);
On skew tau-functions in higher spin theory. Melnikov, D.; Mironov, A.; Morozov, A. J High Energy Phys, v. 2016, p. 27, (2016);
Magnetic order of Y3NiSi3-type R3NiSi3 (R=Gd–DY) compounds. A.V. Morozkin, V.O. Yapaskurt, R. Nirmala, S.K. Malik,
S. Quezado, Jinlei Yao, Y. Mozharivskyj, A.K. Nigam, O. Isnard.Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials Volume
398, (2016);
Kerr-de Sitter greybody factors via isomonodromy. Bruno Carneiro da Cunha, Fábio Novaes. Phys. Rev. D 93, 024045 (2016);
Dirac neutrino mass from a neutrino dark matter model for the galaxy cluster Abell 1689. Theodorus M. Nieuwenhuizen.J.
Phys.: Conf. Ser. - 7011 (2016).
Contact us at press@iip.ufrn.br to receive news about our seminars and colloquia in your email.

6
IIP News - Year I, number 01
IIP Photo Galery
New Building
Inauguration
IIP Auditorium
The group “Café Quartet” performs at the
Inauguration
Rector Angela Paiva
Dr. Fabio Novaes
Guests from the scientific community
IIP Staff
IIP guests during the cocktail party
Professor Alvaro Ferraz
INTERNATIONAL
INSTITUTE OF
PHYSICS
Visit our website to know more about our programs and events:
www.iip.ufrn
To see the guidelines for scientific proposals at the IIP visit:
www.iip.ufrn.br/proposalsforeventsdetail
Follow the IIP activities in our Facebook page:
www.facebook.com/iipufrn
Subscribe to our Youtube chanel:
www.youtube.com/iiptv
Newsletter produced by the IIP Communication Office.
Contact us at +55 (84) 3342-2249 (ext. 208) / press@iip.ufrn.br.