CASUS Institute Seminar
Information field theory: concepts and astrophysical applications
CASUS Institute Seminar, Dr. Torsten Enßlin, research group leader, MPI for Astrophysics (Garching) & German Center for Astrophysics (Görlitz)
Abstract of the talk// Fields play a central role in all areas of astrophysics, like the density, velocity, magnetic, or gravitational field. Inferring an astrophysical field from data is an ill-posed problem, as the finite, noisy, and incomplete data can not alone constrain the infinite number of degrees of freedom of a function over continuous space. Domain knowledge has to regularize the set of possible solutions, however, usually significant uncertainties remain and need to be quantified. This can be done via information field theory (IFT), which is a mathematical formulation of probabilistic field inference. Here, the basic concepts of IFT and its numerical implementation are introduced. Its application to astrophysical datasets is shown.
CV// Torsten is an astrophysicist and data scientist, currently Head of Data Science at the German Centre for Astrophysics and leader of the Information Field Theory Group at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics. He is also an Associate Professor (Privatdozent) at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. In 2024, he received an ERC Synergy Grant for the Milky Way Atlas Project. His research connects cosmology, information theory, and data-driven modeling to better understand the structure of the universe.
Torsten Enßlin will be talking live in Görlitz. However, as the event is organized in a hybrid format that includes a videoconferencing tool by Zoom Inc., people not present in Görlitz and interested in the topic have the chance to also join the talk. Please ask for the login details via contact@casus.science.
CASUS – Center for Advanced Systems Understanding, Conrad-Schiedt-Str. 20, D-02826 Görlitz, Deutschland
12 November 2025, 2 pm