Organizational structure of the Oskar Klein Centre.

The daily running of OKC is overseen by the OKC director, in close collaboration with the Steering Group. The directors and steering group are appointed for 3-year terms. The steering group is composed of:

• The OKC Director
• 3 representatives from Cosmology, Particle Astrophysics, and Strings (CoPS) at SU Fysikum
• 3 representatives from Elementary Particle Physics (ELPA) at SU Fysikum
• 3 representatives from SU Astronomy
• 1 representative from Particle and Astroparticle Physics at KTH Physics

The long-term strategy for the Oskar Klein Centre is overseen by the Scientific Advisory Board.

The Scientific Advisory Board

Steering Group Minutes (authorized access only)

Some of the regular activities are listed here—our full calendar is available on our Indico page.

• Working Group meetings: The OKC has six Working Groups, centered around a particular research topic. They are: Beyond the Standard Model, Cosmology and Gravity, Extreme Objects, Machine Learning, Theoretical Cosmology and Theory.
• Journal Club meetings: Aside from the official Working Groups, OKC researchers organize a number of journal clubs on topics of common interest. These include galaxy formation and evolution, machine learning, axions, or kilonovae. Any OKC-researcher is free to start their own journal club.
• OKC Colloquia and fika: Every tuesday afternoon, everyone at the OKC is invited to the OKC Colloquium. The colloquia cover topics that are of broad interest to all researchers at OKC. They are followed by a fika.
• Scientific fikas: On friday afternoon, students, PhD students and Postdocs get together for informal “scientific fikas”. These are informal talks on a topic of the speaker’s choice. The fikas provide an opportunity for early-career researchers to practice public speaking in a low-stakes environment and to network with their peers.
• OKC day: The OKC day is a regular, once-per-year day-long workshop for all researchers at OKC. The day is filled with scientific discussions and professional development workshops. It’s a unique chance for everyone at OKC to get together and delve deeper into where the OKC should go next.

The Oskar Klein Centre organizes and participates in many events open to the general public. At the OKC, we love to talk to people about what we are interested in, the problems we are trying to solve, and the sciencific questions we search to understand.

Past outreach activities

OKC in the media

Logo and templates

Research at the OKC is primarily organized in Working Groups. The Working Groups are defined by common research topic—not by disciplinary boundaries. Scientists can decide independently to contribute to one or more working groups according to their field of research or simply because they want to learn more about a specific subject. Each Working Group receives its own research budget. Members of the Working Groups decide how to organize the meetings and what projects to pursue. There are regular joint meetings between different working groups, to foster further collaboration.

All Working Group meetings are listed on the Oskar Klein Centre's Indico Server.

Beyond the Standard Model Working Group

Cosmology and Gravity Working Group

Extreme Objects Working Group

Machine Learning Working Group

Theoretical Cosmology Working Group

Theory Working Group

Since 1988, the Oskar Klein Centre organizes the yearly Oskar Klein Memorial Lecture. The Oskar Klein Memorial Lectures are sponsored by The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences through its Nobel Committee for Physics and by Stockholm University.

List of previous memorial lectures

The 2024 Oskar Klein Memorial Lecture will be given by Renata E. Kallosh on Thursday 31 October at 15:30 in the Oskar Klein Auditorium, AlbaNova.

The lecture is sponsored by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences through its Nobel Institute for Physics, and by Stockholm University.

Title: Attractors in Black Holes and Cosmology

Abstract: The concept of attractors, well-known in classical mechanics, proved very productive in the theory of black holes and inflationary cosmology. I will start with attractors in supersymmetric black holes and discuss how the discovery of Kaluza-Klein black hole attractors helped recently to explain the mysterious cancellation of ultraviolet divergences in 82 Feynman diagrams in 4-loop superamplitude in N=5 supergravity.

I will also describe inflationary alpha-attractors. This large class of inflationary models gives predictions that are stable with respect to even very significant modifications of inflationary potentials. These predictions match all presently available CMB-related cosmological data. Some of these models have a Kaluza-Klein origin and provide targets for the future satellite mission LiteBIRD, which will attempt to detect primordial gravitational waves. I will show that potentials in some of the recent advanced versions of cosmological attractors have a beautiful fractal landscape structure.

The following institutions participate:

The Oskar Klein Centre (Stockholm University & KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden)

Cosmoparticle Initiative (University College London, United Kingdom)

Center for Cosmology and AstroParticle Physics (Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA)

Center for Computational Astrophysics, Flatiron Institute (New York City, New York, USA)

Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (Stanford, California, USA)

Institute for Computational Cosmology (Durham University, Durham, United Kingdom)

The primary aim of this scheme is to promote collaboration and to provide scientific and professional development opportunities for students and postdocs. Scientific themes of CASPEN include precision cosmology from large scale structure and the cosmic microwave background, the particle physics and astrophysics of dark matter and neutrinos, high energy cosmic ray and gamma ray physics, and theoretical and observational studies of galaxy formation.

All students and postdocs working in a relevant field are encouraged to apply.

Overview of past visits

There are no set deadlines as this is a rolling program. You can apply as soon as you know your travel dates. Allocation of funds will be made by the relevant budget holder at the host institution, and is expected to be straight-forward and rapid in well-justified cases. The work can be based on an existing program or a new idea.

To apply, first identify a potential collaborator from a host institution and agree on a work plan and dates for the visit. Applicants are expected to identify a concrete proposal for a period between 3 days and approximately 2 weeks.

Apply

Alumni of the Oskar Klein Centre tend to be very successful at securing research grants or other prestigious postdoc positions. Many of our alumni also pursue non-academic careers, with great success.