This year, the annual spring meeting of the DPG section “Matter and Cosmos” took place at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg in Erlangen during the third week of March . Organized by the Erlangen Centre of Astroparticle Physics (ECAP) and the DPG, it featured over 1,500 contributions spanning the various divisions within the section, including “Hadronic and Nuclear Physics,” “Theoretical and Mathematical Physics,” and “Gravitation, Relativistic Astrophysics, and Cosmology.” Several ISLQG members presented talks, including an invited overview talk from Wolfgang Wieland on the light cone structure of quantum spacetime geometry. Other ISLQG associate talks ranged from effective LQG and spin-foam models to the use of neural networks in LQG and gravitational decoherence models.
Due to the large number of contributions and over 1,800 participants, more than twenty parallel sessions were held, and the conference spanned the entire downtown area of Erlangen. Thanks to the excellent organization and large number of helpers, everything worked flawlessly. Before the official start of the conference on Monday, the young DPG working group organized several tutorials on Sunday, including an introduction to LQG by Kristina Giesel. On the evening of the first day, a welcome reception was held at the Heinrich-Lades-Halle, Erlangen, featuring live music and catering for all participants. Combined with the coffee breaks at various stations throughout the city, this allowed participants to interact also in informal atmospheres and engage in lively discussions. Further highlights included public evening talks, which provided an overview of some of the conference’s different research areas. Among the speakers was Nobel laureate David Gross, who shared insights into his journey in nuclear physics, from the development of quantum chromodynamics to his efforts to raise awareness to the threat of nuclear annihilation.
