So one month ago there was this wonderful workshop on “Optimising, Renormalising, Evolving and Quantising Tensor Networks” – or EVONET18 – organized by the Max Planck Institute for Complex Systems (MPIPKS) in Dresden, Germany. I was fortunate enough to be selected for a poster presentation and had the great privilege of mingling and discussing physics with some great minds such as Javier Molina-Vilaplana, Shinsei Ryu, Thorsten Wahl, Andrew Green, Zohar Ringel, Andrej Gendiar and some very talented graduate students including Matthew O’ Rourke, Erika Ye, Timo Fensler and Christopher Zanoci . Of course, there were many other brilliant people present such as Tobias Osborne, Roger Melko, Ehud Altman, Frank Verstraete in attendance, whose names I had only seen in tensor network papers uptil now.

I presented a poster – a compilation of my ideas regarding tensor networks, loop quantum gravity and the arrow of time. In the spirit of #openscience, the source for the poster is also available on Github.

The institute had arranged a tour of the fabulous Mathematisch-Physikalischer Salon located in the Zwinger in Dresden, which used to be a part of the fortress of Dresden in olden times. The name, “Zwinger”, has a somewhat macabre origin. It refers to moat-like region between the outer wall of the castle and the fields beyond where attackers can be safely slaughtered by the castle’s defenders. As per Wikipedia it refers to “an enclosed killing ground in front of a castle or city gate“.