Les Houches School of PhysicsSince 1951

The members of the CERN LHCb-Team will meet to review their scientific activities. The recent results, the operation of the current LHCb experiment, as well as the planning of the CERN contributions to the LHCb future upgrade shall be discussed in particular with the young postdocs, in order to identify areas where additional effort would be most welcome. The retreat shall reinforce cooperation and mutual understanding among all members of the team.

The surge of interest in unconventional computing with physical systems has been driven by two main factors: the promise to build more energy-efficient or faster computers if we rethink how we harness physical processes for computing, and the rise of machine learning, which both provides motivation to build efficient machines and methods to reimagine how computers work. This conference will bring together researchers from a range of disciplines including soft matter, biophysics, neuroscience, machine learning, condensed matter, optics, and quantum information science, who typically do not have the opportunity to interact but are all exploring various aspects of computing in physical systems.

The JUICE mission was launched in 2023 and will reach Jupiter in 2031. It will explore the Jupiter system with a particular focus on its largest moon Ganymede. This school will cover the main science topics of the mission with the goal to best prepare the future exploitation and interpretation of its data. Key topics include Jupiter, its atmosphere and magnetosphere, the icy Galilean moons (with an emphasis on Ganymede), minor moons and the dust and ring system. Ground- and space- based observations recently obtained on the Jupiter system, as well as links with exoplanet science, will also be presented.

The meeting explores the latest in our understanding of fundamental biological processes from a physical perspective. Showcasing the cutting-edge in nanotechnology, optics, and quantitative microscopy, we show how observing individual molecules enables the measurement of their mechanics and dynamics. The meeting also includes statistical analysis and modelling using concepts from soft condensed matter, polymer physics, mechanics, and fluidics.

A comprehensive knowledge of planetary composition is essential to understand planet formation and evolution. Since planetary interiors are largely inaccessible, their compositions must often be inferred from atmospheric observations. In this context, deciphering the complex mechanisms linking a planet’s interior to its atmosphere is a key scientific challenge. This winter school will investigate these interactions across diverse planetary environments—from rocky worlds to gas giants—both in the Solar System and beyond.

This workshop on “Long-range interactions in Quantum Systems” will cover recent aspects of quantum many-body systems consisting of long-range interacting particles (magnetic and Rydberg atoms, polar molecules, ions, and solid-state). These synthetic systems have become prominent platforms for quantum simulation, featuring novel quantum phases and out-of-equilibrium phenomena. The workshop will combine tutorials on the various platforms, more specialized seminars and contributed talks from the participants.

This workshop focuses on the study of co-localization and strong coupling between elementary wave excitations in condensed matter systems, including spins, magnons, phonons, and photons. By exploring the shared dynamics of these hybrid particles, the conference aims to advance our understanding of their interactions and their potential applications in next-generation information technologies. Participants will discuss recent breakthroughs, emerging challenges, and future directions in the field, with a particular emphasis on the integration of these phenomena into scalable devices. The workshop will serve as a platform for fostering collaboration and innovation at the intersection of condensed matter physics and quantum information technology.

The search for permanent electric dipole moments (EDMs) of subatomic particles provide a powerful probe of CP violation and physics beyond the Standard Model. This second edition, supported by the Heraeus Foundation, is part of a European initiative to strengthen connexions between experiment and theory, bringing together complementary methods from nuclear, particle, atomic and molecular physics, as well as advanced theoretical calculations.

The workshop will cover the fields of active & living matter and their applications tofundamental problems in biology. It will outline a set of common tools and concepts tounderstand:(1) Collective flows - including microswimmers, flocking behavior, active gels(2) Biological materials - including molecular motors and the cytoskeleton, protein-membrane interactions, dynamics of living tissues in cancer and development

This WE-Heraeus-seminar is dedicated to a highly important topic in current biophysical research – the development and use of fluorescent markers for advanced fluorescence methods such as high-resolution fluorescence microscopy or single-molecule studies in living cells. Through interdisciplinary discussion and courses at the interface between physics, chemistry and biology, we will share the recent knowledge on the selection of fluorescent markers, their photophysical properties, how to understand and exploit them and the type of artifacts they can create.

The workshop aims to bring together prominent scientists in ultrafast and nonlinear optics and applications. The lectures will begin with fundamental concepts, provide overviews of recent research, and delve into future directions. Topics will include a crash course in ultrafast optics, spatio-temporal shaping, THz sources, ultra-high-intensity lasers, attosecond science, AI in photonics, secondary sources of light and particles, frequency combs, and nonlinear microscopy.

This self-contained school introduces positive geometry as a new language for describing physical phenomena at all scales, bridging particle physics, cosmology, and mathematics. Aimed at students at the MSc or early PhD level in physics or mathematics, it features lectures, tutorials, and discussions led by Nima Arkani-Hamed, Daniel Baumann, Johannes Henn, and Bernd Sturmfels. The first week of the program offers an entry-level introduction, followed by specialized lectures in the second week.

The non-perturbative functional renormalization group is a modern implementation of Wilson’s renormalization. It is based on an exact functional flow equation of a coarse-grained effective action (or Gibbs free energy). Its applications range from statistical physics and condensed matter to high-energy physics and quantum gravity, and include fields as diverse as turbulence, active matter, biological systems and neural networks. The school's courses will introduce the fundamentals of the non-perturbative renormalization group theory and present several applications.

Modelling the transport by fluids of dissolved matter, solid particles, pollutants, natural sediments or gaz bubbles, remains nowadays a scientific challenging and technically complex research field, particularly in hydrodynamically turbulent geophysical or industrial flows subject to unsolved two-phase or multi-phase flow interaction processes. Doppler ultrasound methods offer process-oriented measurements in both transparent and opaque multi-phase flows over a wide range of flow scales extending from turbulent microscales to large bulk-flow scales. They have benefited over the past decade from the miniaturization of hardware tools, electronics, sensor technology, data storage units and from the constantly growing performance of embedded digital systems, digital signal processing methods, batterie autonomy as well as recent machine learning methods.

There has been a recent explosion of interest for smectics, as a paradigmatic example of a layered fluid. A liquid crystal is also an ideal testbed to verify experimentally theoretical predictions concerning topological defects. The general topic of this workshop thus concerns soft matter structures with a focus on smectics and on liquid crystal topological defects.We will bring together computational physicists, applied mathematicians, theorists, and experimentalists to combine their respective expertise with the goal of understanding in depth layered structures but also topological defects of those materials.

This school will cover the physics of solar cells, from basic principles to advanced concepts, with a focus on interface science. It will open on a series of lectures devoted to the basic physics for solar cells (thermodynamics, opto-electronic properties of semiconductors…) setting a frame shared by all materials and technologies. It will then turn to the increasing role of interfaces in emerging technologies (tandem, perovskites, ultrathin solar cells…), and we will investigate the functions, materials, processes, and characterization of interfaces in photovoltaics.

Earthquake swarms are clusters of earthquakes occurring closely in time and space, that lack a dominant mainshock at the beginning. Swarms are observed in tectonically active regions worldwide, and are frequently associated with industrial operations involving fluid injection or extraction. In a broader context, foreshock sequences and complex seismic episodes with multiple large events are also part of the swarm-like seismicity spectrum. This workshop will feature oral and poster presentations to share the latest insights and developments in the study of swarm-like seismicity.

This school shall introduce PhD students and junior postdoctoral fellows to advanced numerical techniques, aimed at tackling the physics of open quantum many-body systems. The focus will be on the application of state-of-the-art approaches to problems emerging in condensed matter physics and quantum information, from quantum optics to atomic and solid state systems.

This doctoral school will explore current and emerging topics in quantum optics, ultra-cold atoms & molecules, quantum simulation, and photonics, offering a program of lectures, seminars, hands-on sessions, poster sessions, and societal evening discussions. The program will promote interdisciplinary exchange, with contributions from experts across theory and experiment and special care will be taken to include several lectures from a young generation alongside more senior and established scientists.

Stars are the building blocks of our Universe. They synthetise all heavy elements, heat and energize their surrounding medium and host planets, the cradle of life. Understanding star formation is therefore of fundamental interest in astrophysics. Yet it is an extremely rich multi-scale and multi-physics process which entails several fields of knowledge. The purpose of the school is to provide the newer generation of scientists working in this field with the basic knowledge necessary to carry out research in this field. Students and early postdocs are particularly welcome to register.

The school aims to highlight recent significant progress on the mathematical analysis of complex quantum systems, and to indicate interesting open questions for the future. The lectures will emphasize interacting and correlated systems as well as random systems, with methods drawn from analysis and probability to algebra and topology.

"Frontiers of Condensed Matter" is a series of doctoral training sessions in the general area of condensed matter physics organized since 2010 by a number of European partners. Topics of the 2026 edition include Quantum transport & spintronics, Topological phases of matter, Superconducting circuits, Quantum materials & unconventional superconductivity, 2D van der Waals heterostructures, and Spin & orbital magnetism. We give priority to the most junior candidates (final year Master / junior PhD students) to help them enter the research field and create networks early on in their careers.

This doctoral school trains PhD and Master students by covering most aspects of Solid Earth sciences, including seismology, mineralogy, geodynamics, geophysics and geochemistry. A field excursion is proposed to link theoretical aspects to observations. This doctoral training welcomes students trained in geology, physics, chemistry, mathematics or computer science who are interested in the surface and lithosphere of the Earth.

This school will gather early graduate students to provide training on ultracold atomic and molecular gases. After a series of lecture on general aspects of the field (laser cooling, quantum degenerate gases…), the school will provide a special emphasis on dissipation and the effect of measurement on quantum systems, We will highlight limits caused by dissipation, mitigation techniques, and methods to harness dissipation as a useful resource.

The yearly retreat of the fellows and staff members of CERN's TH department