Charlotte Fløe Kristjansen receives Simons Collaboration grant
Charlotte Fløe Kristjansen is one of 15 PI’s who receive funding for a Simons Collaboration entitled “The Virtue of Defects.”
The collaboration is led by Jaume Gomis from the Perimeter Institute and involves researchers from Caltech, MIT, Princeton, Stony Brook, Yale etc. The collaboration will run for four years with the possibility of prolongation for another three years. The collaboration is interdisciplinary and with PIs from theoretical high energy physics, theoretical condensed matter physics and quantum information theory.
The overarching theme of the collaboration is the study of extended operators and defects, which provide a unifying perspective on a remarkably broad range of questions in theoretical and computational physics and mathematics. Boundaries, interfaces, lattice defects, and impurities are ubiquitous in condensed matter systems, while Wilson--'t Hooft lines, vortex lines, and surface operators, describing heavy charged particles and strings in gauge theories, are fundamental objects in high-energy physics. R'enyi twist defects, which encode measures of quantum entanglement, similarly connect the subject to quantum information theory. Extended operators also play an important role in modern mathematical physics, with deep connections to the Langlands program, knot and link invariants, and homotopy theory. More recently, they have emerged as key ingredients in rigorous advances in the understanding of lattice systems. By bringing together researchers across these areas, the collaboration aims to exploit these connections and develop new ideas and methods that transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries.
Link to the Simons announcement: https://www.simonsfoundation.org/2026/08/11/new-simons-collaboration-explores-defects-in-physics/