Carter Fest: Black Holes and other Cosmic Systems

A conference in celebration of Brandon Carter's 80th birthday

Brandon Carter is one of the leading figures in general relativity and more specifically in black hole physics. He performed major advances in establishing the famous 'no hair' theorem and the laws of black hole thermodynamics. Various physical concepts are named after him, among which the Carter constant, the Carter tetrad, the Carter time machine and the Carter-Penrose diagrams. Brandon Carter has also developed the theory of superfluidity in relativity, as well as the geometry of cosmic strings and more generally of membranes in spacetime. He is also known in the field of epistemology for having formulated the weak anthropic principle, and in the context of the superstring "landscape" for having formulated the strong anthropic principle.

The conference will focus on the theory of black holes, topological defects in cosmology, the physics of neutron star interiors and the anthropic principle. The aim is to present the latest developments in the above-mentioned areas and to discuss the prospects for future research.

The conference is organized by Éric Gourgoulhon (LUTH, Observatoire de Paris) and Patrick Peter (IAP, Paris) and will take place

• at Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris (IAP) on 4 and 6 July 2022
• at Observatoire de Paris (Meudon campus) on 5 July 2022 (a bus will be organized to bring the participants from IAP to Meudon in the morning and back to IAP in the evening)

Invited speakers:

• Nils Andersson (University of Southampton, UK)

• Richard Battye (University of Manchester, UK)

• Luc Blanchet (IAP, Paris, France)

• Robert Brandenberger (McGill University, Montreal, Canada)

• Bernard Carr (Queen Mary University of London, UK)

• Nicolas Chamel (Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium)

• Christos Charmousis (IJCLab, Orsay, France)

• Piotr T. Chruściel (University of Vienna, Austria)

• Milan M. Ćirković (Astronomical Observatory of Belgrade, Serbia)

• Thibault Damour (IHÉS, Bures-sur-Yvette, France)

• Anne Davis (University of Cambridge, UK)

• Cédric Deffayet (IAP, Paris, France)

• Ruth Durrer (Université de Genève, Switzerland)

• Ruth Gregory (King's College, London, UK)

• David Langlois (APC, Université Paris Cité, France)

• Jean-Pierre Lasota (IAP, Paris, France)

• Jean-Pierre Luminet (LAM, Marseille, France)

• Malcolm MacCallum (Queen Mary University of London, UK)

• Raymond McLenaghan (University of Waterloo, Canada)

• Micaela Oertel (LUTH, Observatoire de Paris, France)

• Roger Penrose (University of Oxford, UK)

• Malcolm Perry (DAMTP, University of Cambridge, UK)

• Reinhard Prix (Albert Einstein Institute, Hannover, Germany)

• Martin Rees (Trinity College, Cambridge, UK)

• Alain Riazuelo (IAP, Paris, France)

• Paul Shellard (DAMTP, University of Cambridge, UK)

• Alexei Starobinsky (Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics, Moscow, Russia)

• Danièle Steer (APC, Université Paris Cité, France)

• Kip Thorne (CalTech, USA)

• Frédéric Vincent (LESIA, Observatoire de Paris, France)

Local organizing  committee: Sandy Artero, Éric Gourgoulhon, Marie Marduel, Patrick Peter, Fabrice Roy

Sponsors: