15th Annual Kavli IPMU Symposium held | University of Tokyo

On Sunday, April 24, 2022, the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU) of the University of Tokyo Institute of International Studies said, “15 years of achievements and prospects for the WPI Kavli IPMU-Mathemists Program We have held a public symposium entitled “ Physicists, Astronomers, A Journey of Discovery.” The World Top Research Center Program (WPI) is a project of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology that aims to build a “visible” research center where top researchers from around the world come together, take pride in excellent research, and high research and environmental standards Accredited as a WPI Center in 2007, Kavli IPMU has produced numerous integrated research results in fields such as mathematics, physics, and astronomical sciences, including many international joint research papers.This symposium is intended for the general public to present the achievements of the past fifteen years as a WPI Center Moving forward as a permanent research organization at the University of Tokyo 15 years of support as a WPI Center and transition to WPI Academy completed, done for the purpose of preparing the Arier. Given the current situation of the outbreak of the novel coronavirus disease, guests and speakers will only gather in the Yasuda Hall of the University of Tokyo, and the audience will watch the online distribution of Yasuda Hall from all over the country. About 1020 people participated.


The seminar was chaired by Hiromi Yokoyama, Deputy Director of Kavli IPMU. Following opening remarks by President Teru Fujii, Director of the Office of Research Promotion Takashiro Ikeda of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, and Akira Okawa, Director of the WPI Program at the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Hiroshi Oguri, Director of the Kavli IPMU gave a public lecture titled “15 Years of Kavli IPMU Achievements and Prospects”. Mr. Oguri will present the history of the organization and its activities from the time of its establishment to the present, and the main research findings, as well as “Space and Mathematics” related to his research and research activities at Kavli IPMU. We also introduced the future prospects of the connection, including the history of development. Subsequently, the first video message was presented, Mr. Cynthia M. Friend, President of the Kavli Foundation in the United States, who has donated to the Kavli IPMU since 2012, and Hitoshi Murayama, Senior Director of the Kavli IPMU. A congratulatory letter was presented to the professor.


Subsequently, Kavli IPMU researchers astronomy, mathematics and physics gave lectures. First, Professor Masahiro Takada gave a lecture titled “Dark Components Explorated by Subaru”, which has been acquired so far by the HSC (Hyper Suprime-Cam) Ultra-wide-field primary focus camera (HSC) installed on the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii. Various search results were made. As a future possibility, the observational cosmology research led by Kavli IPMU will enter the second phase with the spectroscopic observation of the PFS (Prime Focus Spectrograph), which will begin large-scale observations in 2024. He noted that further research development is expected. By analyzing the huge amount of big data obtained from observations using the power of artificial intelligence. The second lecture, titled “The Hidden Mystery of Singularities” by Professor Yukari Ito Kavli IPMU, explains what singularities are in the case of curves and curved surfaces, and further afield, and also mentions his involvement in fields of physics such as the Big Bang, black holes, and string theory. Then, I will concretely present the kind of subtlety of the singularities that I am studying, at which time I will understand by projecting the pictures on the board that I am considering and looking for them by putting them into shapes and graphs. I showed it easily. In addition, he presented activities for the dissemination of mathematics, which he is working on in addition to mathematics research, and mentioned the activities of creating a network of female researchers. And in the third IPMU Professor Mark Fagins Kavli’s lecture “Don’t Wait Anymore! Supernova Neutrinos”, in 1987 a supernova neutrino from supernova SN 1987A was observed in Kamiokande, the predecessor of the Candy supernova. It has been observed since SN 1987A, although supernova explosions occur frequently in different galaxies in the universe and are not a rare phenomenon. He mentioned that he suggested in a research paper with a theorist in 2004 that it would be better to add gadolinium to pure water to observe cosmic neutrinos in the background of supernovae in space. After moving to the Kavli IPMU, we performed detailed verification experiments and knew that addition began in the summer of 2020 after Super-Kamiokande repair work, and now the concentration of addition is gradually increasing, and its predictions indicated an increase in the frequency of observations of supernova background neutrinos.


Subsequently, Robert Quimby, Director of the Mount Laguna Observatory, who was a member of the Kavli IPMU, Professor Susan Revert from the Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Bern, and Christian Schnell from the Department of Mathematics, Stonebrook, New York University (Christian Schnell) also played a video message from Three professors are researchers, and he talks about his memories of his time at Kavli IPMU and his recent career, including how it relates to his current career. Finally, the closing was concluded with a speech by Hiroaki Ihara, Executive Vice President of the University of Tokyo.