News

  • May 2026: The list of invited speakers is steadily expanding (see below)
  • Apr 2026: The workshop’s website is officially up and running!

Embedding Theory: Bridging Math, Physics, and Chemistry

Quantum embedding theory provides a principled framework for the reduction of high-dimensional many-body problems to effective descriptions defined on correlated subspaces. By partitioning the Hilbert space into an active region and its complement, embedding methods seek to construct effective Hamiltonians, density matrices, or Green’s functions that reproduce selected observables of the full system while remaining computationally tractable.

From a mathematical perspective, embedding can be viewed as a projection or downfolding problem, closely related to ideas from operator theory, variational principles, and quantum information (e.g., entanglement-based partitioning). Different formulations—such as density matrix embedding theory (DMET), dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT), Green’s function embeddings (e.g., GW+DMFT), and wavefunction-in-DFT approaches—correspond to distinct choices of reduced variables and matching conditions, including density matrices, self-energies, or frequency-dependent correlation functions. These choices are not merely technical: they define the structure of the effective problem and the nature of the associated self-consistency loop.

Despite their success, embedding methods raise a number of fundamental questions. The non-uniqueness of the embedding map, the role of frequency dependence, the treatment of long-range correlations, and the consistency between different levels of theory (e.g., avoidance of double counting) remain active areas of research. More generally, the precise conditions under which an embedded problem faithfully represents the parent system are still not fully understood, particularly beyond mean-field or weak-coupling regimes.

Embedding techniques are now central to the study of strongly correlated systems across quantum chemistry, condensed matter physics, and materials science, including multi-reference molecular systems, local excitations, and correlated states in extended solids. Ongoing developments increasingly connect embedding with tensor network methods, stochastic approaches, machine learning, and quantum computing, suggesting new pathways toward systematically improvable and scalable many-body methods.

In this context, embedding theory serves not only as a computational tool, but also as a unifying mathematical framework for formulating reduced descriptions of quantum systems, bridging rigorous structure and practical approximation across disciplines.

Registration

Registration has not yet opened.

Confirmed invited speakers

  • Gabriele Bellomia (TU Wien, Austria)
  • George Booth (King’s College, UK)
  • Eric Cances (Ecole des Ponts ParisTech, France)
  • Sarai Dery Folkestad (NTNU, Norway)
  • Arno Förster (Vrije U, Netherlands)
  • Emmanuel Fromager (Strasbourg, France)
  • Fabian Faulstich (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, US)
  • Anna Galler (TU Graz, Austria)
  • Philipp Hansmann (Friedrich-Alexander U, Germany)
  • Anna Kauch (TU Wien, Austria)
  • Mathieu Lewin (U Paris-Dauphine, France)
  • Luca de Medici (ESPCI Paris, France)
  • Francesca Paoletti (U Würzburg, Germany)
  • Ina Park (Flatiron Institute, US)
  • Thomas Schäfer (U Trieste, Italy)
  • Tobias Schäfer (TU Wien, Austria)
  • Christoper Stein (TU Munich, Germany)
  • Chong Sun (Rutgers, US)
  • Libor Veis (Heyrovský Institute, Czech Republic)
  • Tim Wehling (U Hamburg, Germany)
  • Tianyu Zhu (Yale, US)

Location

The conference will be held in the FERMI seminar room (Building 3R1b4) on the campus of the Université Paul Sabatier. Exact location here.

Sponsorship

This workshop has received funding from various awesome organisations.