Short Bio

Thomas Ranner is a PhD student in the group of Andreas Ipp at the Institute of Theoretical Physics at TU Wien. His research focuses on applying generative diffusion models to lattice gauge theories and the connection of these models with renormalization group theory.

Thomas earned both his bachelor’s degree (2021) and his master’s degree (2024) in Technical Physics at TU Wien. During his master’s studies, he began his work on diffusion models, which he now continues in his doctoral research. Outside of academia, he is part of the TU Wien Space Team contributing to a CubeSat mission, and works as a professional photographer.

PhD Project - Diffusion models for SU(N) lattice gauge theories

Supervised by Andreas Ipp and David Müller

Thomas works on applying diffusion models to lattice gauge theories. These models are a class of generative machine learning methods initially developed for image generation, but they also produce promising results when generating lattice field configurations. Therefore, they could help to improve expensive calculations using lattice gauge theories in the context of quantum chromodynamics (QCD). QCD describes the strong interaction, which is the fundamental force responsible for binding quarks into protons, neutrons, and other hadrons. Further, he studies the theoretical connection between diffusion models and renormalization group theory, an important concept in statistical physics.