{"690837":{"#nid":"690837","#data":{"type":"event","title":"School of Physics Fall Colloquium Series- Dr. Andreas Karch(UT Austin)","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003ESpeaker: \u003C\/strong\u003EDr. Andreas Karch(UT Austin)\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EHost: \u003C\/strong\u003EXueda Wen\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003ETitle: \u003C\/strong\u003EMaking the Great Desert Bloom\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EAbstract:\u003C\/strong\u003E Quantum Field Theory is the language that unites particle physics, nuclear physics, condensed matter physics and mathematics. One particular interesting class of quantum field theories are \u0022Chern-Simons\u0022 theories living in 2 spatial dimensions. They found a powerful role in mathematics decades ago and have been employed to describe the physics behind the quantum Hall effect. After reviewing some of these developments at the interface of particle and condensed matter physics, I will describe a recent application to the world of particle physics, where Chern-Simons matter theories may be the right language to describe the great desert between the weak scale and the Planck scale.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EBio: \u003C\/strong\u003EAndreas Karch is a professor of Physics at UT Austin, where he moved after being on the faculty for close to 20 years at the University of Washington in Seattle. He works on string theory and formal quantum field theory with an eye towards applications in other areas of physics. He did his undergraduate studies at the University of Wuerzburg in Germany, received an MA from UT Austin, his PhD from Humboldt University in Berlin, and did postdocs at MIT and Harvard. He is a fellow of the APS and a PI on the Simons Collaboration on Ultra Quantum Matter.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":"","format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EAbstract: \u003C\/strong\u003EQuantum Field Theory is the language that unites particle physics, nuclear physics, condensed matter physics and mathematics. One particular interesting class of quantum field theories are \u0022Chern-Simons\u0022 theories living in 2 spatial dimensions. They found a powerful role in mathematics decades ago and have been employed to describe the physics behind the quantum Hall effect. After reviewing some of these developments at the interface of particle and condensed matter physics, I will describe a recent application to the world of particle physics, where Chern-Simons matter theories may be the right language to describe the great desert between the weak scale and the Planck scale.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Dr. Andreas Karch(UT Austin) Making the Great Desert Bloom"}],"uid":"36632","created_gmt":"2026-06-22 13:46:20","changed_gmt":"2026-09-10 16:12:29","author":"tkendall8","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","field_event_time":{"event_time_start":"2026-10-26T15:30:00-04:00","event_time_end":"2026-10-26T16:30:00-04:00","event_time_end_last":"2026-10-26T16:30:00-04:00","gmt_time_start":"2026-10-26 19:30:00","gmt_time_end":"2026-10-26 20:30:00","gmt_time_end_last":"2026-10-26 20:30:00","rrule":null,"timezone":"America\/New_York"},"location":"Marcus Nanotechnology room 1116-1118","extras":[],"groups":[{"id":"126011","name":"School of Physics"}],"categories":[],"keywords":[],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[],"email":[],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}