Conferences

Converging point of the scientific community

In summer, the Bogolyubov Laboratory of Theoretical Physics hosted the International Conference "Supersymmetries and Quantum Symmetries" (SQS'24).

These workshops have been regularly organized by the Laboratory of Theoretical Physics every two years since the early 1990s. Historically, the event became one of the first specialized symposia on modern mathematical physics at JINR and it has consistently attracted increased attention from the scientific community. The founding fathers of SQS were well-known theorists Viktor Ogievetsky (Laboratory of Theoretical Physics, Dubna) and Julius Wess (Max Planck Institute, Munich) that were at the origins of such scientific fields as supersymmetry and quantum group theory. Among today's organizers of SQS are their students and their students' students: Evgeny Ivanov, Stepan Sidorov, Anton Sutulin and others.

With the exception of 2001 and 2019, all meetings were held at the Laboratory of Theoretical Physics. In 2001, the Conference was united with the 16th Max Born Symposium in Karpacz near Wroclaw. The SQS'19 meeting held in Yerevan was organized by the JINR Laboratory of Theoretical Physics jointly with the Yerevan Physics Institute. The next meeting, scheduled for 2021, was postponed due to Covid restrictions. It was held in August, 2022 in Dubna as SQS'22. According to tradition, the next SQS meeting is scheduled for 2026.

Until recently, such well-known, extensively working foreign scientists as Kellogg Stell (Imperial College, London), Loriano Bonora (SISSA, Trieste), Ivan Todorov and Vladimir Dobrev (INRNE BAS, Sofia), Dmitry Sorokin (University of Padua and Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology), Georgios Zoupanos (National Technical University of Athens), Olaf Lechtenfeld (University of Hannover) and many others have been regular participants of SQS meetings. One of the characteristic features of the meetings of this series is the active engagement of young generations of theorists from Dubna, Moscow, Dolgoprudny, Tomsk and other Russian centres, as well as from foreign institutes with similar topics. Communication with well-known, already recognized theorists allows young people to gain invaluable experience in the relevant areas of theoretical and mathematical physics and to obtain new scientific information, so to speak, first-hand.

The meeting was opened by Chairman of the Organizing Committee Evgeny Ivanov and JINR Vice-Director Latchesar Kostov. The first participant to speak was Armen Nersesyan (BLTP and YerPI). His partial review report "Comments on some integrable prototypes of supersymmetric mechanics" was dedicated to the consideration of integrable prototypes of N=4 and N=8 supersymmetric mechanics on Kahler manifolds.

The second day of the Conference was completely dedicated to higher spin theories. Mikhail Vasiliev (LPI), one of the founders of this area, gave an interesting report on coupling constants in gauge theories of higher spins. He presented arguments in favor of the fact that such theories in dimensions d > 4 contain infinitely many independent coupling constants.

On Wednesday, the Conference programme was the most intense. The problems of superstring theory, supergravity, holographic duality and conformal field theories were discussed. On Thursday, scientific discussions were limited to the first half of the day, since after lunch an interesting boat excursion along the Volga was organized for the participants. The following two days of the Conference were also very fruitful. It is worth noting the reports of Tsvetan Vetsov (Sofia University) and Nikita Kolganov (MIPT and LPI) that were dedicated to the topic of "Krylov complexity" as a measure of the complexity and chaos of quantum systems that is currently popular in mathematical physics.

Vyacheslav Spiridonov (BLTP) presented the report "Weak supersymmetry and uperconformal indices" that is based on his recently published article in the collection dedicated to the memory of Academician V.A.Rubakov. Although the title of the report literally coincides with the title of the report by Andrey Smilga, given at SQS'22, it contains a number of new results concerning the union between Smilga's weak supersymmetry (A.Smilga, 2003) and parasupersymmetric quantum mechanics constructed by Rubakov and Spiridonov in 1988. Spiridonov's report aroused particular interest among the organizers of the meeting Evgeny Ivanov and Stepan Sidorov, since in 2013, they developed a superfield approach to SU(2¦1) supersymmetric quantum mechanics, in which SU(2¦1) supersymmetry is identical to A.Smilga's "weak supersymmetry". A joint discussion of these issues with V.Spiridonov, A.Nersesyan and A.Smilga via conference call allowed clarifying some "dark" points.

Over 80 scientists took part in the Conference. Most of them represented Russian research centres in Dolgoprudny, Dubna, Moscow and Tomsk. Among the participants were also Russian scientists from Protvino, St. Petersburg, Syktyvkar and Chernogolovka, foreign physicists from Armenia, Bulgaria, Greece, Italy and France (partially with online participation).

Despite the difficulties that have arisen in recent years with direct communication between Russian and foreign leading specialists in the field of supersymmetry and mathematical physics, SQS meetings still play an important role as one of the links of this united community of scientists. Understanding it, JINR Directorate provides all-round support for holding SQS meetings in Dubna, both in the current 2024 and in the future. The fruitful tradition should be carried on and strengthened.

Chairman of the Organizing Committee Evgeny IVANOV,
Scientific Secretary Stepan SIDOROV