Clifford Johnson

The 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics: Who, What, and Why YouTube video by UC Santa Barbara

"The Nobel Prize in Physics: Who/What/Why". This year featuring newly-minted Nobel Prize winners from the department! (Michel Devoret and John Martinis.) Here is a recording of the event, which I was delighted to host. There’s a celebration afterwards too. www.youtube.com/live/f1AMV6b...

@UCSBPhysics 2025 Nobel Prize winners John Martinis and Michel Devoret, speaking at the annual Nobel Prize Who/What/Why colloquium Tuesday 10/14. See next post for link to recording of it.

Maybe over-egging the pudding a bit for my SUSY2025 talk tomorrow… #theoreticalphysicslife

Elsewhere in the garden, the spheres pack themselves. #Gardening #FoodAndDrink

Morning sphere packing. #Gardening #FoodAndDrink.

There’s a lot of joyful knife-work in my future. #bolognese #summersalad

New work with postdoc Krishan Saraswat and grad student Wasif Ahmed. In early 2024 I discovered a very fun way of computing Weil-Petersson volumes from an ODE (well, a subset). It works stunningly well. We show here that it works for extended JT supergravity giving a whole new class of volumes!

A kind of green zebra.

… today’s quick pickings. #gardening #foodanddrink

Fantastic Collaboration! | Asymptotia Well, I can now officially mention that I've been part of the filmmaking team (in a way) working hard to bring you an enjoyable and interesting Fantastic Four movie! I think it has been about two and a half years (?) since this all began. This was a nearly perfect model of how science consulting can work in film. I worked with everyone, wherever I was needed, with the director, writers, producers, director of photography, VFX teams, set design, and so on. They made me feel welcome and part of whatever creative team I was talking to, which was great. They were open to lots of ideas right from when they were starting out thinking about tone, story ideas, and so forth, right through to final (key) tweaks right at the end of the process as recently as mere weeks ago. It began early on with with having great conversations Matt Shakman and his writing team about the fact that Reed Richards is first and foremost a curiosity-driven physicist (and so quite different from the engineer we have in Tony Stark that we see RdJ bring out so well), and how things like his dedication to his work (and his outlook on things that comes from such work) might play out in terms of family dynamic, personal relationships, etc., - Without it turning into the tedious cliches about scientists somehow not being able to navigate the world of human relationships. Obviously, I could speak to this as a physicist who works on precisely the things Reed works on, as well as a family man, and as well as someone who remembers that it's still all about telling a story. And there are so many stories to tell at that intersection... Anyway, I think these early conversations (as well as suggestions I made in many sets of notes along the way) helped inform (even if only a little bit? who knows?) what Pedro Pascal brought to the character. This aspect of the film is one of the things I'm most pleased about seeing up on screen. Beyond that, you'll see lots of things I gave them that I'm also delighted to see made it to the film, in many scenes. This includes (but not limited to!): [...] Click to continue reading this post →

Since I think I can now reveal that I worked on the #FantasticFourFirstSteps movie, I wrote a (spoiler-free) blog post about my collaboration, as science consultant, with the filmmakers. Enjoy! (It's maybe of wider interest, so please share.)

And go see the movie!

asymptotia.com/2025/07/25/f...

A recent paper co-authored with UCSB postdoc Maciej Kolanowski. The results are very exciting (at least to me!) and so I'm happy to get this one out for colleagues to read. I wrote a little post on the blog about it too, for those who want more: asymptotia.com/2025/07/13/t.... Enjoy!

Wednesday’s “get back into the routine” run. 80 minutes well spent. Head cleared.

To appear today on the ArXiv. (For there’s a blog post here: asymptotia.com/2025/06/24/s...)

A New Equation? | Asymptotia Some years ago I speculated that it would nice if a certain mathematical object existed, and even nicer if it satisfy an ordinary differential equation of a special sort. I was motivated by a particular physical question, and it seemed very natural to me to imagine such an object... So natural that I was sure that it must already have been studied, the equation for it known. As a result, every so often I'd go down a rabbit hole of a literature dig, but not with much success because it isn't entirely clear where best to look. Then I'd get involved with other projects and forget all about the matter. Last year I began to think about it again because it might be useful in a method I was developing for a paper, went through the cycle of wondering, and looking for a while, then forgot all about it in thinking about other things. Then, a little over a month ago at the end of March, while starting on a long flight across the continent, I started thinking about it again, and given that I did not have a connection to the internet to hand, took another approach: I got out a pencil and began mess around in my notebook and just derive what I thought the equation for this object should be, given certain properties it should have. One property is that it should in some circumstances reduce to a known powerful equation (often associated with the legendary 1975 work of Gel'fand and Dikii*) satisfied by the diagonal resolvent $latex {widehat R}(E,x) {=}langle x|({cal H}-E)^{-1}|xrangle$ of a Schrodinger Hamiltonian $latex {cal H}=-hbar^2partial^2_x+u(x)$. It is: $latex 4(u(x)-E){widehat R}^2-2hbar^2 {widehat R}{widehat R}^{primeprime}+hbar^2({widehat R}^prime)^2 = 1 .$ Here, $latex E$ is an energy of the Hamiltonian, in potential $latex u(x)$, and $latex x$ is a coordinate on the real line. The object itself would be a generalisation of the diagonal resolvent $latex {widehat R}(E,x)$, although non-diagonal in the energy, not the [...] Click to continue reading this post →

I found a really nice new equation for a new object. Or at least I *think* it's new. I'll find out soon enough. Here's the story: asymptotia.com/2025/05/18/a...

Fish, very many filling the frame, all swimming in same direction…

Sometimes I like to imagine that I’m the odd one, just out of frame, swimming in the other direction.

Photo of pie making at several stages, and finished pie, sliced.

Bit late for pi day, but no less tasty for it. A chicken and mushroom pie to share with a guest coming over (earlier this week). #baking #foodanddrink

Transformation and renewal is happening all around, and I’m trying to find the positive wherever I can.

Pictur elf imperial mug with BBC inside science logo in background

When you’re drinking from the Imperial College mug that Jess Wade gave you a while back…and then Jess Wade comes on the radio! @imperialcollegeldn.bsky.social

Thanks!

OTOH, I love an excuse to wear these cufflinks make of repurposed watch works…

Oh boy…

No there is not. As for books….I amusing many sources. See this post for some of them: bsky.app/profile/asym...

Embarrassed to say that it is coming up on 18 months and I’ve not ordered mine yet. Still surrounded by boxes and temp furniture….

Of course… that assumes that you know what the symmetries are. So if you did not assume CPT at the outset, you’d write the theta term…. Etc etc…

Photo of some of my lecture notes on instantons.

This week’s lectures on instantons in my gauge theory class were a lot of fun to do, and mark the culmination of a month-long theme on topological objects and non-perturbative effects in this subject. I always enjoy teaching this stuff, including the history! #theoreticalphysicslife

PST ART Open House: A Day-to-Night Exploration of Art & Science As PST ART winds down, join us for Open House, a free, day-to-night exploration of art and science presented by Getty. Highlights include the taping of a...

In the LA area on Saturday 1st March? Consider Getty’s @PST_ART open house featuring science and art playing together. I’ll be chatting with physicists Janna Levin and Maria Spiropulu onstage at 5:30pm, but there’s a lot more going on from 1:00pm - 11:00pm! Come along! pst.art/en/events/ps...

Still from trailer for new Fantastic Four movie showing chalkboard with equations….

I’m *very* pleased with how great this board looks. Because, you know…reasons. (Fairly certain that most of my theoretical physicist colleagues will want a pop-up chalkboard like this!) #FantasticFourFirstSteps

@andrewjn.bsky.social Welcome! Glad to see you here!

Looks fascinating. Will you, Lance, or another collaborator be talking about it at the KITP workshop?

Making a swift batch of scones as part of a welcome gathering for fire-displaced friends and their families…