Carter Fest: Black Holes and other Cosmic Systems

4 juil. 2022, 10:00 → 6 juil. 2022, 18:30 Europe/Paris

IAP, Paris & Observatoire de Paris, Meudon

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:

 

lundi 4 juillet

10:00 → 10:30 Welcome address

Orateur: François Bouchet et Fabienne Casoli

10:30 → 11:00 Seeing Through CCC

Orateur: Roger Penrose (Univ. Oxford)

11:00 → 11:30 Coffee break

11:30 → 12:00 Coalescing Binary Black Holes and Gravity Beyond General Relativity

Orateur: Thibault Damour (IHES)

Damour.pdf

12:00 → 12:30 Brandon Carter and black holes

Brandon Carter is one of the fathers of modern black hole theory. In my talk I will present some of his key contributions to the topic.

Orateur: Piotr Chruściel (Univ. Vienna)

Chrusciel.pdf

12:30 → 13:00 Soft Black Hole Hair

Orateur: Malcolm Perry (Univ. Cambridge)

Perry.pdf

13:00 → 14:30 Lunch break

14:30 → 15:00 Super-massive black hole formation from superconducting strings

Orateur: Robert Brandenberger (McGill University)

Brandenberger.pdf

15:00 → 15:30 Scaling laws for global defects in cosmology

Orateur: Ruth Durrer (Univ. Genève)

Durrer.pdf

15:30 → 16:00 Thermodynamics with Strings and Walls - a Brandon tribute!

Orateur: Ruth Gregory (King's College, London)

Gregory.pdf

16:00 → 16:30 Coffee break

16:30 → 17:00 Cosmic Vortons and Particle Physics Constraints with Brandon

Orateur: Anne Davis (Univ. Cambridge)

Davis.pdf

17:00 → 17:30 Stable cosmic vortons in field theory

Orateur: Richard Battye (Univ. Manchester)

Battye.pdf

17:30 → 18:00 From vortons to gravitational wave constraints on cosmic strings

Orateur: Danièle Steer (APC)

Steer.pdf

18:00 → 18:30 CVOS model for superconducting cosmic strings

Orateur: Paul Shellard (Univ. Cambridge)

Shellard.pdf

18:30 → 18:45 Congratulations and Some Happy Memories

Orateur: Kip Thorne (CalTech)

Congratulations and Some Happy Memories

19:00 → 20:30 Welcome cocktail

mardi 5 juillet

10:00 → 10:30 Doomsday revisited: concise anthropic history of our genus Homo

Orateur: Brandon Carter (LUTH, Obs. Paris)

Carter.pdf

10:30 → 11:00 Astrobiological evolution and the number of critical steps: reasons for (cautious) optimism?

Orateur: Milan Ćirković (Astron. Obs. Belgrade)

Cirkovic.pdf

11:00 → 11:30 Coffee break

11:30 → 12:00 The Anthropic Principle: 50 Years On

Orateur: Bernard Carr (Queen Mary Univ.)

Carr.pdf

12:00 → 12:30 Counterfactual universes: smooth, rough or nuclear-free

Orateur: Martin Rees (Univ. Cambridge)

Rees.pdf

13:00 → 14:30 Lunch buffet / picnic

14:30 → 15:00 Bayesian Reasoning: from the Carter Catastrophe to Testing the No-Hair Theorem

Orateur: Reinhard Prix (AEI Hannover)

Prix.pdf

15:00 → 15:30 Relativistic fluids with a twist

Orateur: Nils Andersson (Univ. Southampton)

Andersson.pdf

15:30 → 16:00 Neutron stars and the dense matter equation of state

Orateur: Micaela Oertel (LUTH, Obs. Paris)

Oertel.pdf

16:00 → 16:30 Coffee break

16:30 → 17:00 Superfluid dynamics in neutron stars

Orateur: Nicolas Chamel (Université Libre de Bruxelles)

Chamel.pdf

17:00 → 17:30 Two discs and a missing triangle: the maximally extended Kerr black hole revisited

Orateur: Malcolm MacCallum (Queen Mary Univ.)

MacCallum.pdf

17:30 → 18:00 Symmetry operatotrs and separation of variables for the Dirac equation

Orateur: Ray McLenaghan (University of Waterloo)

McLenaghan.pdf

mercredi 6 juillet

10:00 → 10:30 Binary Black Hole Inspiral

Orateur: Luc Blanchet (IAP)

Blanchet.pdf

10:30 → 11:00 Binary black hole astrophysics

Orateur: Jean-Pierre Lasota (IAP)

Lasota.pdf

11:00 → 11:30 Coffee break

11:30 → 12:00 Compact objects in modified gravity

Orateur: David Langlois (APC)

Langlois.pdf

12:00 → 12:30 Constructing scalar tensor black holes from Kerr geodesics

Orateur: Christos Charmousis (IJCLab)

Charmousis.pdf

12:30 → 13:00 Brandon, Dirac and Fermi

Orateur: Cédric Deffayet (IAP)

13:00 → 14:30 Lunch break

14:30 → 15:00 Inflationary cosmic hair

Orateur: Alexei Starobinsky (Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics RAS)

Starobinski.pdf

15:00 → 15:30 Carter’s inspirations : from BKL conjecture to Stellar Pancakes

As a beginning researcher I had the chance to benefit from Brandon's wise advice for my early work, from my 1977 thesis on cosmological singularities that he directed to his suggestion to numerically visualize black holes in 1978. Then we could fully collaborate from 1982 to 1986 in a series of pioneering papers on the modelisation of tidal disruption of stars by big black holes.

Orateur: Jean-Pierre Luminet (LAM)

Luminet.pdf

15:30 → 16:00 A visual journey into some Carter-Penrose diagrams

Although it looks simple, the Schwarzschild metric describes a complicated spacetime that is endowed with two asymptotic regions and two singularities. The situation is even more complicated for charged or spinning black holes. Grasping the complexity of these metrics can fortunately be achieved thanks to the celebrated Carter-Penrose diagrams. However, such diagrams do not allow to guess the complexity of the actual visual aspect of these metrics, that is, how a set of celestial spheres are distorted in the presence of strong gravitational fields. Conversely, addressing this issue necessitates to propagate geodesics in metrics that, most of the time, cannot be covered by a unique coordinate system and for which locating photons and oneself in a causal diagram is mandatory. In this talk, I will show a few movies of what an observer would see when travelling within a few black hole metric maximal analytic extensions: Schwarzschild, Reissner-Nordström and, of course, Kerr.

Orateur: Alain Riazuelo (IAP, CNRS, Sorbonne Université)

Movie 1

Movie 2

Riazuelo.pdf

16:00 → 16:30 Probing supermassive compact objects with GRAVITY and the EHT

Orateur: Frederic Vincent

Vincent.pdf

16:30 → 17:00 Coffee break and good bye