XXI AVOGADRO MEETING on Strings, Supergravity and Gauge Theories

17 Dec 2025, 08:45 → 19 Dec 2025, 23:00 Europe/Rome

Aula A1 (Università di Catania)

Bernardo Zan (Università di Genova), Carlo Heissenberg (Uppsala University and Nordita), Marco Scalisi (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare), Matteo Sacchi (Simons Center for Geometry and Physics), Michelangelo Preti (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare), Nicole Righi

Born in 2005 as an occasion for young theoretical physicists to share their ideas and results in an informal atmosphere, the Avogadro Meeting has become an international reference point for the theoretical physics community working on gauge, supergravity and string theories, especially early-career researchers. In recent years, it has taken on a more transversal character, including also topics such as scattering amplitudes and machine learning.

It takes place every year in December for three days, with a series of lectures on current topics, a poster session and a gong-show. Speakers come from prestigious international institutions (including Cambridge, Saclay, ETH Zurich, King’s College London, Harvard, Oxford, Perimeter Institute, Princeton, Stony Brook, Utrecht University). In order to stress the pedagogical aim of the meeting, preference is given to extended blackboard presentations on general themes rather than to conventional seminars on specific works, possibly organised and illustrated by more than one speaker and followed by a long discussion session.

The Avogadro Meeting is named after the University of Piemonte Orientale that hosted its first three editions. It is now recognized as an important opportunity for exchange for both the international and Italian theoretical physics communities.

The XXI edition will take place in Catania, from Wednesday 17/12/2025 to Friday 19/12/2025, with a social dinner planned for Friday evening.

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Organizing committee:

• Carlo Heissenberg (IPhT, CEA Saclay)
• Michelangelo Preti (SCGP, Stony Brook University, Università di Torino, INFN Torino)
• Nicole Righi (Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa)
• Matteo Sacchi (SCGP, Stony Brook University)
• Marco Scalisi (Università di Catania, INFN Catania) [chair]
• Bernardo Zan (Università di Genova, INFN Genova)
  
  

Local organising committee: Alessandro Borys (Università di Catania, INFN), Giuseppe Puglisi (Università di Catania, INAF, INFN), Marco Scalisi (Università di Catania, INFN).

 

Poster XXI Avogadro.pdf

Wednesday 17 December

Registration

Scale separation in String Theory: Lecture 1

10:30 Coffee break

Scale separation in String Theory: Lecture 2

Scale separation in String Theory: Outlook and discussion

13:00 Lunch break

Gong show

1 Sebastiano Bocchia - Primal Bootstrap for Pion Scattering at large-N

2 Dario Panfalone - Effective String Theory description of confinement in 2+1 D

3 Lorenzo de Lillo - N=2 Universality at strong coupling

4 Davide Bonomi - Analytic bootstrap for conformal defects

5 Enrico Marchetto - Finite temperature, analytic bootstrap, and holography

6 Michele Savi - The Wilson Line Defect CFT in N=4 SYM

7 Andrea Mattiello - Bootstrapping Multipoint Defect Correlators

8 Paolo Rossi - Entanglement Entropy through topological defects in 2d CFT

9 Salvatore Raucci - The Distance Conjecture in warped (de)compactifications

10 Alessandro Borys - Swampland Constraints for Fibre Inflation

11 Arda Hasar - Scale Separation in Two Dimensions

16:00 Coffee Break

Gong show

12 Lorenzo Grimaldi - Mass shifts of NS-NS states in Type II string theories

13 Andrea Conti - Super-(conformal) monodromy defects

14 Stefano Lanza - Symmetry extension by condensation defects in five-dimensional gauge theories

15 Alison Warman - Phases with Generalized Symmetries

16 Daniele Migliorati - 4 minutes of TQFT + 1 minute of questions

17 Tommaso Morone - Graded integrable QFTs

18 Elia de Sabbata - TT̄ deformed correlators from BRST symmetry

19 Moritz Kade - Box boundary conditions for the integrable six-vertex model

20 Andrea de Marco - Superconformal index for D(2,1,\alpha) symmetry

21 Paolo Pichini - Magnus expansion in QFT

22 Federico Ambrosino - Non topological symmetries in perturbed 2d CFTs

23 Daniele Mauri - More on non-linear quasi-normal modes

24 Valerio Descontus - The Double Copy at the Lagrangian Level

25 Giuseppe Casale - Lagrangian Double Copy for Supergravity: An Algebraic Approach

26 Nicolo’ Primi - the AdS₃ × S³ × S³ × S¹ Quantum Spectral Curve

27 João Vilas Boas - Why Stop at Four? New Checks of AdS/CFT from Higher-Point Correlators

18:00 Reception and poster session

Thursday 18 December

SYK-like models and holography in lower dimensions: Lecture 1

10:30 Coffee break

SYK-like models and holography in lower dimensions: Lecture 2

SYK-like models and holography in lower dimensions: Outlook and discussion

13:00 Lunch break

Regge trajectories and light-ray operators: Lecture 1

16:00 Coffee break

Regge trajectories and light-ray operators: Lecture 2

Regge trajectories and light-ray operators: Outlook and Discussion

Friday 19 December

Supersymmetric Gauge Theory methods for gravitational waves: Lecture 1

10:30 Coffee break

Supersymmetric Gauge Theory methods for gravitational waves: Lecture 2

Supersymmetric Gauge Theory methods for gravitational waves: Outlook and Discussion

13:00 Lunch break

Recent progress in 2d Gauge Theories: Lecture 1

16:00 Coffee break

Recent progress in 2d Gauge Theories: Lecture 2

Recent progress in 2d Gauge Theories: Outlook and Discussion

20:00 Social dinner