During the summer, A-level student Tom took part in a Nuffield research placement in our topological soliton group, with Will as the main supervisor. Tom studied the solutions of differential equations and learned about boundary value problems, and how to use LaTeX and Maple. He produced analytical and numerical solutions, with the aim of studying Sturm-Liouville problems and their applications in Quantum mechanics.

Tom's placement was supported by the Nuffield foundation, and he is hoping to be awarded a British Science Association Gold CREST award for his work.

The topological soliton group will take part in this year's Postgraduate Research festival on 20/05/2016. Jenny, Will and Steffen will present research posters on Baby Skyrmions and Skyrmions. We will also show off our vortex gun, tornado tubes and 3D printed Skyrmions. Our presentation will take place during the "Research showcase" in Woolf seminar room 4 at 11.00-11.45.

For further details see the event website.

We had an amazing weekend at the immersive LMS festival at the science museum. We designed interactive activities to engage the public with our research in solitons as they went undercover at Coral Beach Surf School. Solitons are a unique type of wave and a specialism of many mathematics lecturers at Kent. These waves can travel for great distances without slowing down or changing their shape.

The Nuffield Research Placements Celebration took place on 15 October 2015. Our Nuffield project students Frazer Hope and Milgy Mathews and all their peers presented their work to project providers, families and friends. Both Frazer and Milgy received their Nuffield and CREST awards and were joined in their celebration by Jenny, Mareike and Steffen.

On the weekend of 4-6 September, the University hosted its 50th anniversary festival . As part of these celebrations, the School of Mathematics, Statistics and Actuarial Science (SMSAS) ran a special event on the 50th anniversary of the soliton. Solitons are a unique type of wave and a specialism of many mathematics lecturers at Kent. These waves have a rich and fascinating history with many applications, including tsunamis, fibre optics, superconductors, photosynthesis and protein folding. The event kicked off with a talk by Professor Peter Clarkson on the history of the soliton, featuring stunning photographs of these waves occurring in the sea and skies. This was followed by a practical demonstration by Lucy Barnes and Argyro Mainou, who created fluorescent soliton waves in our specially designed water tank and streamed live data from a water level sensor to compare their real waves with the mathematical predictions. During the coffee break, visitors were treated to hands on experience with our 3D printer and had the opportunity to take away their very own 3D printed soliton. There was also an exciting display of posters by four local school students who had undertaken research projects with various members of SMSAS in the previous month. After the break, Dr Constanze Roitzheim introduced us to the fascinating world of topology, and explained why a topologist cannot tell a doughnut from their coffee cup. In the final talk, Jenny Ashcroft discussed the relationship between solitons and particles, and created vortex rings using a smoke gun. To end the day, there was a trip to a local pub and the opportunity for a Q&A session with the speakers. The event was well attended, with lots of alumni, SMSAS staff members and students showing up to support the School and enjoy the festivities.

There will be another workshop at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow on solitons and their applications to baryon physics, nuclear matter and neutron stars. The workshop is divided into two parts: Part 1 will take place from 24-26th June and part 2 will take place 7th-9th July.

The conference poster can be downloaded from here . Please email Dr Andrzej Wereszczynski andrzej.wereszczynski@uj.edu.pl in case you are interested in attending the conference.

Congratulations to Jenny who won the Best Sciences Poster prize at the University's Postgraduate Research Festival held on 22 June 2015! In her poster Jenny presented her recently published work on baby Skyrmion solutions without potential terms.

The winning poster can be downloaded from here . Reports and Pics of the day can be found at Kent University's webpages and at the School of Mathematics webpages .

Together with Joe Watkins (Outreach Officer at Kent) we have been awarded a Public Engagement with Research grant for our application “Visualizing Solitons at LMS Science Festival 2015”. The grant allowed us to buy a 3D printer, projector and screen which will be used at upcoming soliton Outreach events (eg. Kent's 50th anniversary celebrations, LMS 150th Anniversary Mathematics Festival).

A video showing the new 3D printer in action can be found on youtube .

On Saturday 21st March, the Maths Open Day took place in the Centre for Mathematical Sciences as part of the Cambridge Science Festival 2015. As usual the Open Day attracted large numbers of visitors, perhaps more than ever before, with many staying at CMS for several hours.

Our topological soliton group took part with an interactive stand on solitary waves. Kids and parents loved creating mini-tsunamis in our water tank and sinking little pirate ships. Jenny took a video of two solitary waves passing through each other created in our water tank. It can be found on youtube .

A poster introducing the concept of solitary waves can be found here.

The above figure (taken from our article Phys. Rev. D 90, 125035 (2014)) was selected to be displayed on the Physical Review D journal web site as part of the Kaleidoscope. The figure shows a charge-8 Skyrmion solution with approximate dihedral symmetry. Such type of Skyrmion solutions might be important when calculating properties of Beryllium in the Skyrme model.

The Annual Theory Christmas Meeting (ATM) was held in Durham 15-17 December, hosted by the Centre for Particle Theory and organized by the IPPP. This year's talks focussed on the results of LHC Run 1, their interpretation and what to look for in LHC Run 2. Slides can be found online .

The ATM was followed by the seventh annual Young Theorists' Forum (YTF) . YTF brought together 92 postgraduate students working in theoretical physics. Topics covered included: BSM Physics, String Phenomenology, Holography, Cosmology, Amplitude, Solitons, SM Phenomenology, String Theory, QCD, Gravity.

From our group, Jenny Ashcroft gave a talk on "Baby Skyrme models without a potential term".

The Geometric Models of Nuclear Matter Conference (GMNMC) was held from Monday, 18/08/2014 to Wednesday, 20/08/2014 at the University of Kent. The meeting brought together 30 mathematicians and physicists working on various aspects of the Skyrme model and related models and its applications to nuclear and astrophysics. Topics included:

• (near) BPS Skyrme models
• Skyrmions and Nuclear Physics
• Holographic Skyrmions
• New results in related models (e.g. Hopf solitons, monopoles, solitons coupled to gravity)
• Geometric models of matter

For more details

The third meeting of the Solitons, (non)Integrability, Geometry (SIG) lecture series took place 14-18 July 2014 at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. Talks included: BPS Skyrmions as neutron stars, near BPS Skyrmions, interpretation of the nuclear spin-orbit force in terms of classically spinning Skyrmions, supersymmetric extensions of the Skyrme model, vector meson effects, Skyrme and chiral perturbation theory predictions for compact star matter, thermodynamics of BPS Skyrme models, solitons in the Sakai-Sugimoto model, Ricci magnetic geodesic motion of lumps and vortices.

From our group in Kent, Dave gave a talk about his work with Derek Harland on gauged Skyrmion solutions, Steffen talked about Skyrmion Scattering and Mareike about isospinning Skyrmion solutions in Skyrme and baby Skyrme models.

A special highlight was a guided tour through the 3D printing facility, where we printed the dihedral B=8 Skyrmion solution shown in the above figure in white. The cubic B=4 Skyrmion (shown in blue) was printed at SIG2.

The second meeting of the Solitons, (non)Integrability, Geometry (SIG) lecture series took place 26-30 May 2014 at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. The talks were devoted to skyrmions, their mathematical properties and applications to baryon physics and atomic nuclei. Topics included BPS and near BPS Skyrme theories, Skyrmions and domain walls, soliton solutions in Lifshitz field theories, nuclear phenomenology and the signum-Gordon model. From our group, Dave Foster gave a talk entitled "A smooth composite rational map ansatz for the Skyrme model" and Mareike Haberichter presented the latest results on "Isorotating Skyrmions".

The second South East Mathematical Physics Seminar took place on 15th May 2014 at King's College London. The South East Mathematical Physics Seminar Serie aims to bring together mathematical physicists based in and around the South East of England and is supported by a London Mathematical Society Joint Research Groups grant. Abera Muhamed gave a talk on “Moduli spaces of lumps on the projective plane RP^3”.

The Women in Mathematics Day is an annual event organised by the London Mathematical Society. This year it was held at De Morgan House, London on Friday 25 April 2014. Mareike Haberichter gave a talk on “Atomic Nuclei as Skyrme Solitons” and Jennifer Ashcroft presented a poster entitled “Minimal Energy Configurations for Ginzburg-Landau Vortices”.

Report and photos of the Women in Mathematics Day can be found in the July edition of the LMS newsletter.