HermannFest – Conference in honour of Hermann Nicolai's 70th birthday

Conference

Start: Sep 13, 2022
End: Sep 16, 2022
Location: Main building Max Planck Campus Potsdam
Room: large lecture hall
Host: Quantum Gravity and Unified Theories
Contact: hermannfest@aei.mpg.de

This scientific conference focuses on themes surrounding symmetries in supergravity and quantum gravity. These are central in the research of Hermann Nicolai whose contributions have sparked many important developments.

What are the consequences and incarnations of symmetry in gravity? This question has driven the research of Hermann Nicolai and many other researchers over the past decades. One outstanding question is whether supersymmetry, an attractive theoretical construction relating matter and force particles, is realised in nature. What would be the consequences at low energies or for cosmology? Combining supersymmetry with gravity one is inevitably led to supergravity model that are highly constrained and exhibit many unexpected additional features. The hidden global symmetries found in maximal supergravity have repercussions in string theory and could potentially be used to constrain the quantisation of gravity and the construction of M-theory. Are hyperbolic Kac-Moody symmetries like E10 more fundamental than supersymmetry? What is the relation of these observations to properties of the supermembrane? These and similar questions will be discussed in this conference on the occasion of Hermann Nicolai's 70th birthday.