📅 16-03-2025 | ⏰ 16:00 - 19:00 | 📍 Djanogly Art Gallery

Welcome reception and private viewing of Cosmic Titans

Our workshop will launch by a welcome reception and private viewing of the art-science exhibition Cosmic Titans: Art, Science and Quantum Universe at the Djanogly Art Gallery on the University Park campus. This exhibition unites art and science in a captivating exploration of the quantum universe, celebrating the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology. Quantum science deals with the smallest particles in nature. It is bringing about a revolution in our understanding of the origins of the universe and delivering ground-breaking technology. At the forefront of quantum research are scientists from the University of Nottingham and across the country, whose pioneering work has established both the university and the UK as centres of excellence in this fast-evolving field. The exhibition features new commissions by nine artists who have each spent time working alongside world-leading researchers in quantum physics. Through immersive sculptural installations and photography, they give expression to the excitement, wonder and poetry of cutting-edge scientific discovery that is transforming our future.

📅 17-03-2025 | ⏰ 16:00 - 19:00 | 📍 Senate Chamber

Poster session

We will host a poster session in the UoN Senate Chamber. With around 40 posters on display, this session offers an excellent opportunity for discussion and networking. Refreshments, including nibbles and drinks, will be provided.

Instructions for presenters: Posters should be prepared in A1 format (portrait orientation). We strongly recommend printing your poster in advance. However, a printing service is available on campus if needed.

List of presenters (regularly updated):

Gregor Bals: Progress in the simulation of the holographic superfluid: traps and obstacles
Laura Batini: Decay of the 𝛑-mode in tunnel-coupled quasi-1D Bose-Einstein condensates
Vitor Barroso: Third-sound detectors in accelerated motion
Alessia Biondi: Field theory description of surface and vorticity waves incident on an analogue black hole
Simon Brunner: Gravity in a cavity: exploring analogues of modified cosmology
Cameron Bunney: Circular motion Unruh effect: recent developments
Christopher Burgess: Hyperboloidal method for quasinormal modes of non-relativistic operators
Nadine Cetin: Advancing the formulation of a quantum theory of liquids
Jelte Duchene: Realization of absorptive boundaries for acoustic phonons: simulating infinitely extended systems in quantum field simulators with a quasi-2D Bose-Einstein condensate
Chris Goodwin: Surface imaging in thin-film superfluid helium-4
Sean Gregory & Silvia Schiattarella: Tracking the nonlinear formation of an interfacial wave spectral cascade from one to few to many
Maciej Jarema: Exploring mutual information in 2D field theory simulators
Elinor Kath: Understanding cosmological particle production as 1d scattering problem
Arthur La Rooij: Programmable potentials to simulate synthetic horizons
Carla Martinez Izquierdo: CPW microwave resonator for superfluid thin film surface wave detection
Alvaro Parra-López: Road to observing entangled pairs in BEC analog cosmological expansion
Leo Parry: Circular motion Unruh effect
Everett Patterson: Superposed spacetime as perceived by an accelerated detector
Christian Schmidt: Quantum field simulation of cosmological particle production as a scattering problem
Leonardo Solidoro & Pietro Smaniotto: Black-hole spectroscopy from a giant quantum vortex
Samin Tajik: Field-theoretic detection of the Unruh effect via decaying oscillators
Adam Wilkinson: Superfluid back-action from quantum detectors

📅 18-03-2025 | ⏰ 16:30 - 17:00 | 📍 B23, Physics Building

Photon Bricks workshop

As part of the QTFP Public Engagement Award, we developed Photon Bricks, a custom-built Michelson interferometer kit made entirely from Lego bricks and simple optical components. Designed to make light interferometry accessible and engaging, this kit demonstrates a technique central to many QTFP-funded experiments and gravitational-wave observatories. Join us for this interactive workshop, where you’ll have the chance to explore the Photon Bricks kit up close and see interferometry in action!

📅 18-03-2025 | ⏰ 17:00 - 18:00 | 📍 Physics Building

Tour of the Gravity Laboratory

You will have the opportunity to explore the group’s laboratories. One lab houses the largest hydrodynamic black-hole simulator alongside a custom-built early Universe simulator. The second lab hosts two cryogenic experiments using superfluid helium to study similar phenomena in the quantum regime. Guided by the group’s PhD students and postdocs, the tour will also include a visit to ARTlab, a unique art-science collaboration space co-funded by Silke Weinfurtner. ARTlab provides a creative environment for artist residencies and a range of public engagement activities.

📅 18-03-2025 | ⏰ 18:00 - 19:00 | 📍 B1, Physics Building

QSimFP consortium meeting

The QSimFP consortium will hold a member meeting during the workshop. The agenda will be shared in advance.

📅 19-03-2025 | ⏰ 09:00 - 17:00 | 📍 Djanogly Recital Hall

Art and philosophy day

One day will focus on the broader impact of research within QSimFP and beyond. The relationship between art and science will be explored through a series of talks led by Dr Ulrike Kuchner (School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nottingham), curator of the Cosmic Titans exhibition. The philosophical implications of analogue gravity will be examined in a session organised by Dr Lina Jansson (Department of Philosophy, University of Nottingham), featuring leading philosophers in the field.

📅 19-03-2025 | ⏰ 14:00 - 15:00 | 📍 Djanogly Recital Hall

Lecture by Michael Berry

Professor Sir Michael Berry FRS (University of Bristol) will deliver a public talk titled The Physics of Light in Eighty Pictures for workshop participants and the wider university audience.

Abstract: Classical optics is an ancient subject. But only now have we discovered a library of ‘elementary forms’, that describe light in our everyday world. Rainbows, twinkling stars, sunlight sparkling on water, and the dancing lines of light on the bottoms of swimming-pools, can be understood in a unified way using modern geometry. On fine scales, where wave interference must be considered, different geometries describe the secret lines of light’s darkness, the fingerprints of polarisation in the blue sky – invisible to us but perceived by bees, and the faint pattern of quantum photons. Poets and novelists, as well as painters, have sometimes represented optical phenomena in ways surprisingly close to those of physicists. The talk is nontechnical and entirely visual.

📅 19-03-2025 | ⏰ 18:00 - 19:00 | 📍 Djanogly Recital Hall

Public lecture by Ruth Gregory and Conrad Shawcross

An evening talk by Professor Ruth Gregory (King’s College London) and artist Conrad Shawcross RA on Black Holes will be open to all workshop participants and the public. Every black hole sings its own song in the darkness. Our esteemed speakers will explore the science and art of these elusive giants. Learn how we can observe their collisions in distant parts of the universe.

📅 21-03-2025 | ⏰ 14:00 - 16:00 | 📍 Great Hall, Trent Building

QTFP afternoon

One afternoon will be dedicated to highlighting other research projects and scientific consortia funded through the Quantum Technologies for Fundamental Physics programme. This session will be held in honour of Professor Ian Shipsey.