Raphael Hoult: Physics Connects UWin Series

Fri. Sep. 11 12:30 PM - Fri. Sep. 11 01:20 PM
Location: 3M69

Guest: Raphael Hoult, Theoretical Physics Postdoctural Fellow

University of Victoria and former UW Graduate

Beyond Water: The Search for Stability and Causality in Relativistic Fluids

When anything gets hot enough, it melts: even atomic nuclei. The cores of neutron stars, melted atoms (the Quark-Gluon Plasma), even certain types of black holes; these can all be described (in some regimes) by relativistic fluids dynamics. Yet, textbook theories of relativistic hydrodynamics have a fundamental flaw: they do not obey the notion of causality (perturbations can travel faster than the speed of light), and they are unstable (any small perturbation gets bigger and bigger with time, destroying the fluid). If you would like to make a computer simulate a relativistic fluid, this is quite bad! In this talk, I will discuss some of the work I've done to fix this problem, and along the way I'll re-tread my academic path leading from UWinnipeg undergrad to a postdoctoral position in Europe.

Bio: Dr. Raphael Hoult began his research career as a summer RA student working with Prof. Andrew Frey at the University of Winnipeg. He then was accepted as a graduate student at the University of Victoria, where he obtained both his Masters' degree and PhD. After graduating in 2025, he spent one year as a postdoctoral fellow at UVic before moving to a new postdoctoral position at Wrocław (VROH-tswaf) Tech in Poland in Autumn 2026.

Zoom available, please email for invitation: an.wiebe@uwinnipeg.ca.