The Physics Colloquium has been arranged regularly since the fall semester of 2021. The detailed schedule and talk information of this semester are as follows.
For inquiries or suggestions of future speakers, please contact the colloquium working group (Prof. Jane Lixin Dai, Prof. Tran Trung Luu, Prof. Yanjun Tu, Prof. Chenjie Wang, and Prof. Shizhong Zhang).
September 23, 2026 (Wed) 3:30 p.m.
September 30, 2026 (Wed) 4:00 p.m. (Cancelled)
October 7, 2026 (Wed) 4:00 p.m. (Cancelled)
October 21, 2026 (Wed) 10:30 a.m. (Cancelled)
October 28, 2026 (Wed) 3:30 p.m.
November 4, 2026 (Wed) 3:45 p.m.
November 18, 2026 (Wed) 10:30 a.m.
December 2, 2026 (Wed) 4:00 p.m.
Can AI Turn a Physics Paper into a Validated Scientific Program?
Lessons from Quantum Many-Body Programming
Speaker: Prof. Yi ZHOU
Affiliation: Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Date: September 23, 2026 (Wed)
Time: 3:30 p.m.
Venue: MB237, 2/F, Main Building, Main Campus, HKU
Poster: Download
Abstract:
Can an AI read a physics paper and turn it into trustworthy research code? In quantum many-body physics, papers often leave implicit the index ordering, gauge choices, fermionic signs, truncation rules, contraction strategy, and scaling decisions that determine whether an implementation is correct.
In this colloquium, I will present a human-in-the-loop “Paper-to-Program Many-Body” workflow that externalizes this hidden knowledge before coding. A virtual research group of AI agents extracts the theory, reviews an implementation-ready specification, and generates code tested by physics oracles and production-scale checks.
Two case studies show promise and limits. For DMRG, specification-guided implementations succeeded in 16 of 16 tested pairings, versus 6 of 13 direct attempts. For the sign-sensitive Pfaffian conversion of paired-fermion states to matrix product states, the workflow produced 11 validated passes among 26 audited runs, versus none under direct prompting after provenance and scale auditing. The remaining failures expose a second bottleneck: even with a good specification, current agents differ in their ability to reason, debug, and construct scalable scientific software.
The broader lesson is that reliable AI-assisted science requires more than better code generation. It requires explicit knowledge externalization, expert review, and validation protocols that make both successes and failures auditable.
Date: September 30, 2026 (Wed) (Cancelled)
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Venue: MWT5, 1/F, Meng Wah Complex, Main Campus, HKU
Date: October 7, 2026 (Wed) (Cancelled)
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Venue: MWT5, 1/F, Meng Wah Complex, Main Campus, HKU
Intense attosecond pulse generation from visible to soft x-rays (Cancelled)
Speaker: Prof. Yuxi FU
Affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Ultrafast Optical Science and Technology, Xi’an Institute of Optics and Precision Mechanics (XIOPM), Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Date: October 21, 2026 (Wed)
Time: 10:30 a.m.
Venue: MB201, 2/F, Main Building, Main Campus, HKU
Poster: Download
Abstract:
Since the first demonstration of attosecond pulse generation and characterization at the beginning of this century, attosecond science has attracted a lot of attention due to its significant potential applications in revealing dynamics of electrons. Up to now, isolated attosecond pulses can be generated by high-order harmonic generation (HHG), free electron laser (FEL) and laser driven plasma emission. Attosecond facilities have also been constructed or proposed in different countries. In this presentation, I will show our work on generating attosecond pulses in the soft x-ray, XUV and visible regions, with potential maximum peak power reaches GW and even TW-class. These high-energy isolated attosecond pulses will be significant for high resolution spatial-temporal imaging, ultrafast dynamics capturing of electrons, and strong attosecond laser field physics.
Key Reference:
- T. Feng et al., Photonics Research 14(9):3992-3998 (2026)
- Y. Ma et al., Ultrafast Science 6, 0188 (2026)
- B. Xue et al., Science Advances 6(16): eaay2802 (2020)
Strong lensing by galaxy clusters: from detailed modeling to statistical lensing
Speaker: Prof. Massimo Meneghetti
Affiliation: INAF Observatory of Astrophysics and Space Science (OAS)
Date: October 28, 2026 (Wed)
Time: 3:30 p.m.
Venue: MB237, 2/F, Main Building, Main Campus, HKU
Poster: Download
Jointly organised by the Department of Physics and the HKIAA
Abstract:
The inner regions of galaxy clusters provide unique laboratories for testing the predictions of the cold dark matter (CDM) paradigm and investigating the role of environmental processes in shaping galaxy formation and evolution. Strong gravitational lensing offers a powerful means of probing the mass distribution of galaxy clusters, from the scales of individual galaxies to the large-scale cluster environment.
In this talk, I will review the state of the art in galaxy cluster mass modeling, highlighting how the combination of high-resolution imaging and spectroscopic observations enables increasingly precise reconstructions of their mass distributions. I will then discuss the ongoing transition from detailed modeling of individual systems to statistical strong-lensing studies of large cluster samples. In particular, I will present ongoing efforts to assemble an unprecedented sample of strong-lensing galaxy clusters using observations from the Euclid mission. Finally, I will introduce recent work aimed at developing a large, publicly accessible database of simulated gravitational lenses, designed to enable systematic statistical comparisons between observations and theoretical predictions. Together, these developments open new opportunities to test the CDM paradigm and improve our understanding of the interplay between dark matter and baryonic processes in galaxy clusters.
Key Reference:
- Euclid Collaboration, Bergamini, Meneghetti et al. 2026, A&A 711, 33
- Euclid Collaboration, Holloway et al., 2026, A&A, 711,30
- Bergamini et al. 2023, A&A, 674, A79
- Meneghetti et al. 2023, A&A, 678, 2
- Meneghetti et al. 2022, A&A, 668, 188
- Meneghetti et al. 2020, Science
Date: November 4, 2026 (Wed)
Time: 3:45 p.m.
Venue: MB237, 2/F, Main Building, Main Campus, HKU
Date: November 18, 2026 (Wed)
Time: 10:30 a.m.
Venue: KKLG109, LG1/F, K.K. Leung Building, Main Campus, HKU
Date: December 2, 2026 (Wed)
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Venue: CYCP1, LG1/F, Chong Yuet Ming Chemistry Building, Main Campus, HKU