Limit shapes and their phase transitions: classical and quantum by Dimitri Gangardt

Program : Hydrodynamics, Fluctuations, and Noise in quantum and classical systems

ORGANIZERS : Jacopo De Nardis (Cergy Paris University, France), Gautam Mandal (ICTS-TIFR, Bengaluru, India) and Tridib Sadhu (TIFR, Mumbai, India)

DATE : 01 December 2025 to 12 December 2025

VENUE : Ramanujan Lecture Hall, ICTS Bengaluru

Understanding nonequilibrium thermodynamics remains a major challenge across statistical physics. Over the past two decades, significant progress has come from multiple fronts.

In classical systems, nonlinear fluctuating hydrodynamics has revealed universal structures in ballistic transport, while the Macroscopic Fluctuation Theory (MFT) has provided access to thermodynamic fluctuations in stochastic systems.

Parallel breakthroughs in isolated quantum systems—driven by cold-atom experiments—have prompted a rethinking of thermalization, chaos, and transport. Concepts such as Generalized Gibbs Ensembles, Generalized Hydrodynamics (GHD), many-body localization, and dynamical and measurement-induced phase transitions have emerged. Many of these quantum tools mirror classical ones: GHD is a deformation of hard-rod gas theory, and charge-transport statistics in chaotic quantum matter are governed by classical MFT, with quantum corrections layered on top. Even the full counting statistics of quantum charge flow echo current fluctuations in classical lattice gases.

A third front arises from string theory, particularly through the AdS/CFT correspondence. Here, black hole geometries map onto relativistic Navier–Stokes equations via the fluid-gravity duality; thermal relaxation corresponds to quasi-normal mode decay, and entanglement growth becomes geometric surface evolution. Matrix-model techniques likewise illuminate thermalization in low-dimensional fermionic systems.

Despite these converging themes, the classical, quantum, and string-theory communities rarely interact. This workshop aims to bring these three communities together through focused talks, pedagogical lectures, and discussion sessions, fostering new collaborations on nonequilibrium hydrodynamics.

CONTACT US
hydrodynamics@icts.res.in
PROGRAM LINK
https://icts.res.in/program/hydrodyna... Hydrodynamics in an Exclusion
Process with Long-Range Interactions
Jérôme Dubail