Friday, February 6th 2026, 14:00

Abstract
The spin–boson model is the simplest non-exactly solvable model describing the interaction of matter with radiation. I will review the historical development of this model, beginning with Einstein’s 1917 derivation of Planck’s law from detailed balance between emission and absorption of radiation, and Dirac’s 1927 paper “The Quantum Theory of the Emission and Absorption of Radiation.” The Araki–Woods representation of the canonical commutation relations, introduced in 1963, has its roots in these early works and lies at the heart of modern developments in the study of the spin–boson model. I will explain its role in these developments and discuss some open problems.

Tuesday, July 1st 2025, 14.00

Abstract
In this talk I describe a novel Law of Dynamics for non-relativistic Quantum Mechanics (QM). The time evolution of individual physical systems consisting of charged matter interacting with the quantized electromagnetic field, e.g.,
electrons in the shell of an atom coupled to the radiation field, is non-linear, dissipative and stochastic, featuring isolated random events, called “quantum jumps." – We must search for the equations describing it! Explicit equations describing the evolution of such systems can be found in the limit where the velocity of light tends to infinity. They involve a new type of stochastic process, which I call “quantum Poisson jump process”. In this talk, I introduce this process, present some of its mathematical
properties and sketch some applications to the quantum theory of fluorescence of atoms.