Geometric morphisms, principal bundles & bimodules / Nonabelian Hodge structures

52:30 It's strictly by invitation only, and the idea is to have the maximum amount of discussion and exchange between the speakers in the middle of 15 minutes from Ascosta.

55:00 Anyway, we'd be very honoured indeed if you could attend, and you'll be willing, more than happy, I know George would be happy if you wanted to bring your... Yes, absolutely. Well, she would, of course, be included in the invitation, but I just wanted to let you know that. And indeed, if you wanted to invite one of your colleagues as well, I think there's room for at least one other place on the program this year. Yeah, at least 50-50 chance that I would. You might want to speak to Roger and see what he felt about the meeting, but I think he was pretty pleasantly... Yeah, we once met as... Well the meetings are usually only four days and I mean if it was a push if you were only able to come for three days we'd still be extremely more than welcome but they normally last for four days and we encourage a fairly freewheeling broad foundational talk and then usually another more technical talk. I mean something on motivic cohomology perhaps and then something much more general on the foundational aspect. Our keynote speaker always gets two, usually. Right now I can say 50-50. I'll send you an email and please let me know. Well, the details of the program, of course, will be built around when we know when we have the speakers available, but I can send you a video of last year's talks with Roger and the others, so you may get some idea of the atmosphere. Anyway, we'd be honored to have you if you are able to come. Thanks, okay. I'm glad I was able to talk to you. Thanks. Oh, and thanks for a marvelous talk about motivico-homology yesterday.

57:30 Well, it was for me, I'm afraid, but I wasn't expecting anything else. I expected it to be... It's extremely clear, and I certainly had the illusion of understanding, at least for the first third of the talk, which is... I knew an hour later that it was an illusion, but still it was a very pleasant illusion, even though... I certainly had the illusion, at least until perhaps a third of the way in, that I realised I was quite out of my depth. Flat category theory I couldn't cope with, and topos theory, but I'm afraid motifs are still a close book to me. I hope one day, it's a wonderful idea though, it's obviously one of Grotendieck's greatest contributions. Perhaps if anybody ever manages to write the motifs pour les nuls... I shall be the first to read it. Anyway, nice to talk to you. One of those types is the university, and the other one is what we call convict code. And I also have a third type of places where I don't have students at all, which are just pure research places. So we are in a third type. That means we don't have students. But we actually do have some students who from the neighborhood schools come to our place. So, let's see, CA is like, have you heard of St. Ias? You probably have, yeah? So St. Ias is a huge conglomerate of research institutes in all disciplines and all kinds of science, what have you, from human sciences to... You know, things like anthropology, data, chemistry, biology, all sorts of physics. So it's huge. CNRS is an immense thing.

1:00:00 Now there is a different, so it's a pure research system again. But CNRS is not the only pure research place in Congress. It's a pure research sort of conglomerate of institutes in France. CEAA is another one. So CEAA originally was founded As a nuclear research sort of set of institutes including theoretical you know experimental all kinds of stuff. This was back in the 40s and then over time it has evolved and now it has all kinds of science from theoretical physics to biology, computer science, well some computer science, not a lot of computer science... All sorts of physics of course, a lot of chemistry, so a lot of applied science in all domains and it's a conglomerate too, so we have seven national campuses all around France and this is one of the, this is the biggest campus. The whole of the C.A. Saclay. Well, yeah, but the C.A. Saclay is only a part of what they call Plateau de Saclay, which is an area where we're going now, as you'll see, which has a lot of scientific institutions on it, so it has the C.A. It has Ecole Polytechnique, which is one of these quons they call. So there they have students who actually come for internships and, you know, for writing their papers, they come lots. And also it has Université d'Orsay, which is a huge research university. And also they have a lot of different other places, like Superlac. which is a sort of a technical school for people who specialize in electricity and things like this, and also they have private research like IHES. So, the Viergefeuille, which is the French analogue of the Institute for Advanced Studies in France. But that's actually on a separate campus, a little further away. All of these are not far. Not far, yes. It's like two stops on the metro. They're all close. So, you won't be able to walk and do it from one to another, but if you drive, it takes you two minutes or five minutes to go there. So, and the state now is investing billions of euros into further developing the thing, so more schools will be moving there, and the whole thing will be sort of gradually developing according to their current plan in the next whatever years.

1:02:30 Right. So CA is just a part of a huge plateau which has a lot of other things. And CA itself in Saclay, only this part in Saclay is about 4,000 people. But CA in total is 50,000 researchers and 80,000 people in technical personnel. So you see it's a huge, huge thing. Several universities, sorry. Right, and CA is sort of, you know, the reputation of CA is that CNRS has everything, but CA has only sort of, you know, excellent research in several areas, so we don't have everything, everything. But we, you know, we're sort of known for having really good things. What are the ones that you're known for being really good at? Right, so, well, LARSEM, as you will see, LARSEM is a small lab created two years ago in philosophy and physics. So I'll talk about philosophy later, but we are in the middle, we are in the building, which is between two big labs. And then next to other buildings which have other labs. So in our buildings there is a theoretical physics lab. So all, you know, like 150 theoretical physicists of all kinds. This is a huge concentration. Doing a lot of... Far more than you have at Imperial, for instance. Doing a lot of different... Are there any quantum information? Yeah, and... On the other side of the same building, the other big lab, which is 120 people, I think, which is condensed matter physics lab, and this lab includes, so it's called, well, here we, you know, we say it has all this sort of special language, as usual, we call it a service, a jargon, yeah, we call it a service, a condensed matter service, because it has different labs within it, which... Administratively have the same secretariats, but actually are different labs, you know, they do different things. So altogether it's about 120 researchers, but one of those labs is the lab of Daniel Esteve, who is doing, you know, right, so he sits, you know, downstairs basically.

1:05:00 So, with all his people. So he's not doing anything radical quantum information, as you know, but he's doing a lot of nice stuff. And we talk to him regularly, and to his people. So, yeah, he's in our building just downstairs. So, the Radical Physics Lab does not have quantum information, but Knesset does have. So that's one thing. And then we're close to the building, so... Astrophysicists and other people. And we're also close to Orsay, which has Philippe Ranciere, and we're also close to Institut d'Optique, which is on the same plateau, which has Alain Aspert. So all around you have, you know, you have almost everything that France has in quantum information is basically there. They're on the Plateau de Sacré. So even if only Esteve and his team work in our building, there are all these people around. And I know there's more in central Paris, so I was looking around the corner to make sure. Serge Haroche. And Romain Allum in École Nationale Supérieure de Télécommunication. Oh, this I don't know, yeah, this I'm not sure. I know people at École Normale Supérieure, at Collège de France, Serge Haroche was, you know, one of the leading French quantum information physicists. Yeah, so, well, basically, you know the landscape of quantum information in France, it's that most people are doing experimental quantum information, there's very little theoretical one, and there is some, it's mostly quantum computation, there's a lab doing, there's a small group of people in Orsay, actually, working in theoretical quantum computation, but otherwise, you don't find, yeah, it's not like in France, you don't find a lot of people do. I did hear that there are plans to get together a theoretical point of view. And there are actually, there are different, you know, there are different sorts of research instruments, projects, finance, by the state or otherwise, that help to do so. Institutionally, they do not belong to the same place, but they do get together regularly.

1:07:30 They talk about it. They talk to each other. So that's what it is. Now what... I more or less understand it now. Yeah, I see. And once you will actually see it in your eyes, yeah. Right, so what is Larsen? Right, Larsen was created as a sort of first lab of philosophers at the CNBC and never, never, ever had anybody doing anything close to philosophy because it was created as a... This is a sort of practical place, and only two years ago did Vic read, finally, the first sort of institutional place, the first actual lab doing philosophy of physics. It's a wonderful idea doing philosophy of physics in a laboratory, isn't it? The fulfillment of Michael Redhead's dream of experimental metaphysics. Yes, I say, where would you do experimental metaphysics but in a laboratory? So, okay, so two things. First, last time I was sort of... We are the only philosophers available at the CAA. Actually, they call us every time they have some question which is not a purely scientific question. So, we've been doing, these first two years, we've been doing all kinds of strange things. We wrote a report about societal implications of nanotechnology. But now we are sort of settling on an actual division of labor markets and we are sort of the only person who Who has been writing papers in any professional philosophy of physics journal like Leipzig has made. But then there is a great philosopher of physics who is the director of the Leopold Etienne Flan, who is not very well known internationally, but in France he is very well known. He works on time, right? Well, okay, yeah. So he's the director. You'll meet him right now. Then we have two postdocs. And we currently do not have any permanent PhD students with us. We have PhD students who are officially elsewhere, but they come to us and work with us from time to time.

1:10:00 But we have two full-time postdocs at Loss in Marl. And this person, this participant in this position, is the first of me. And finally we are out of the time when we had to do other things and we are recruiting somebody who will be doing just foundations of philosophy and physics and no other ethics or other things. So we are not looking for a person who can do many things at once. We are looking for somebody who is just doing philosophy and physics. Even though Etienne and myself had to do many different things in the last few years because, so... So that's one thing. Now, an advantage of LOSIM, well, an advantage of this position in LOSIM is that we're very, you know, because we're small and there are no established rules, we're very flexible. That means, basically, you have all these other labs around LOSIM, so the person doing this LOSIM talk is free to actually engage in joint work or whatever conversations with anybody. The CA works as... There's one big team, basically. That means if you call anybody at the CEO of 15,000 researchers, and you tell them, you know, I'd like to talk with you about such and such, you'll get an appointment very quickly. What about people in other places? Other places are fine, yeah. I mean, if they're interested in the topic of what you're doing, yeah, sure. That's not a project for us, do you think? So you'll tell them all about this or tell us all about this. So that's not going to be a problem working with someone outside the school? Absolutely no. The only thing is actually do some work. That's clear. But most of all you're supposed to engage in all kinds of collaborations everywhere. Not looking for, you know, something concrete thing, you know, this topic or this is really sort of enlarge the spectrum of our activities and interests. This postdoc is for this.

1:12:30 Right, so let's see what else. We'll have lunch. So you'll see how that works. So, we're actually, well, when we'll be heading toward the plateau, I'll show you, we're actually taking a slide, we're dividing it into sort of two, one open CA campus and a CA campus.