Young Researchers Conference 2008

While analogue models for gravity have so far provided some insights on the kinematical aspects of general relativity, the emergence of gravitational dynamics is still unclear. In this talk I will present two models which aim at filling this gap. In the first one a BEC model is considered, to…

I will review the present status of the black hole entropy computation in Loop Quantum Gravity within the isolated horizon framework. Starting from the recently discovered discretization effect, I will give an overview of the subsequent developments that have been obtained motivated by it. Through…

The AdS/CFT correspondence has recently been extended to field theories satisfying the non-relativistic generalization of conformal symmetry, the Schroedinger symmetry. These holographic descriptions offer the potential to do calculations in the strong coupling regime of experimentally-realized…

I will discuss a simple two-dimensional theory, whose unparticle sector is a modification of the Schwinger model, that gives new insights into the qualitative features of unparticle physics. I will analyze the transition between the short-distance perturbative physics and large-distance unparticle…

Extension of the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM) that include a U(1)\' gauge symmetry are motivated by top-down constructions and offer an elegant solution to the MSSM mu problem. In this talk I will describe some of the opportunities that such models offer, such as a new mechanism for…

We present a method which can be used to convert certain single photon sources, such as quantum dots, into devices capable of emitting large strings of photonic cluster states in a controlled and pulsed “on demand” manner. Such sources greatly alleviate the resources required to achieve linear…

A quantum channel models a physical process which adds noise to a quantum system by interacting with the environment. Protecting quantum systems from such noise can be viewed as an extension of the classical communication problem introduced by Shannon sixty years ago. A fundamental quantity of…

Instead of adding another dark component to the energy budget of the Universe in trying to explain the accelerated expansion, one can ask whether the cause is in fact the laws of gravity itself on the largest scales. In this talk, I will consider a sub-class of so-called f(R) gravity theories which…