Quantum Fields and Strings

What natural CFT quantities can “see” in the interior of the bulk AdS in a diffeomorphism invariant way? And how can we use them to learn about the emergence of local bulk physics? Inspired by the Ryu-Takayanagi relation, we construct a class of simple non-local operators on both sides of the duality and demonstrate their equivalence. Integrals of free bulk fields along geodesics/minimal surfaces are dual to what we will call “OPE blocks”: Individual conformal family contributions to the OPE of local operators. Our findings can be utilized to reconstruct local bulk operators and unify a number of previously disconnected AdS/CFT results. We extend this kinematic correspondence to incorporate gravitational interactions in AdS3 by relating geodesic operators to the Virasoro OPE blocks, hence providing a natural CFT prescription for “gravitational dressing”. We conclude with discussion of preliminary results on an interesting CFT structure that generalizes our dictionary to include arbitrary local bulk interactions. 

Painlevé equations can be obtained both from time-dependent classical Hamiltonian systems and from isomonodromic deformation problems. These realizations lead to a precise matching between Painlevé equations and Hitchin systems associated to four-dimensional N=2 SQCD as well as Argyres-Douglas theories. Long-time analysis of the Painlevé Hamiltonians dynamics allows to extract the unrefined "instanton" partition function for these theories at all strong-coupling points

We study chiral algebras associated with Argyres-Douglas theories engineered from M5 brane. For the theory engineered using 6d (2,0) type J theory on a sphere with a single irregular singularity (without mass parameter), its chiral algebra is the minimal model of W algebra of JJ type. For the theory engineered using an irregular singularity and a regular full singularity, its chiral algebra is the affine Kac-Moody algebra of JJ type. We can obtain the Schur and Hall-Littlewood index of these theories by computing the vacua character of the corresponding chiral algebra.

In my talk I will consider resurgence properties of Chern-Simons
theory on compact 3-manifolds. I will also describe what role
resurgence plays in the problem of categorification of Chern-Simons
theory, that is the problem of generalizing Khovanov homology of knots
to compact 3-manifolds.

We discuss information loss from black hole physics in AdS3, focusing on two sharp signatures infecting CFT2 correlators at large central charge c: `forbidden singularities' arising from Euclidean-time periodicity due to the effective Hawking temperature, and late-time exponential decay in the Lorentzian region. We show that these signatures can be derived from the behavior of the Virasoro conformal blocks at large central charge.  At finite c, we compute non-perturbative effects that resolve the unitarity-violation from forbidden singularities.  Finally, we elaborate on the non-perturbative behavior of Virasoro blocks by classifying all `saddles’ that can contribute for arbitrary values of external and internal operator dimensions in the semiclassical large central charge limit, and discuss their potential to resolve the problem of late-time decay in the Lorentzian regime.  

We study the properties of operators in a unitary conformal field theory whose scaling dimensions approach each other for some values of the parameters and satisfy von Neumann-Wigner non-crossing rule. We argue that the scaling dimensions of such operators and their OPE coefficients have a universal scaling behavior in the vicinity of the crossing point. We demonstrate that the obtained relations are in a good agreement with the known examples of the level-crossing phenomenon in maximally supersymmetric N=4 Yang-Mills theory, three-dimensional conformal field theories and QCD.

In previous work it has been observed that the singularity structure of multi-loop scattering amplitudes in planar N=4
super-Yang-Mills theory is evidently dictated by cluster algebras. In my talk I will discuss the interplay between this mathematical
observation and the physical principle that the singularities of Feynman integrals are encoded in the Landau equations.

I will discuss the recent progress on understanding scattering amplitudes in N=4 SYM beyond the planar limit. I will show that the singularity structure of these amplitudes is very similar to the planar amplitudes suggesting new hidden symmetries to be present in the complete N=4 SYM theory. I will also talk about the extension of this work to N=8 SUGRA by studying the on-shell diagrams in this theory as well as some of the properties of the integrands of loop amplitudes.

The mathematical notion of moonshine relates the theory of finite groups with that of modular objects. The first example, 'Monstrous Moonshine', was clarified in the context of two dimensional conformal field theory in the 90's. In 2010, interest in moonshine in the physics community was reinvigorated when Eguchi et. al. observed representations of the finite group M24 appearing in the elliptic genus of nonlinear sigma models on K3. In 2013, Cheng, Duncan, and Harvey provided a uniform construction of 23 new examples of moonshine, called 'umbral moonshine', of which M24 moonshine is a special case. 

In this talk, I will describe recent work studying the symmetries of certain Landau-Ginzburg orbifold theories that flow in the IR to c=6 N=(4, 4) superconformal field theories on the moduli space of K3 sigma models. We show that discrete symmetries of the UV theory implicate all 23 instances of umbral moonshine, not just M24 moonshine, in symmetries of K3 CFTs. I will then discuss a particular string theory compactification to three dimensions where we find a precise connection to all 23 umbral groups and type IIA string theory on K3.

Over the last few years it has become increasingly clear that there is a deep connection between quantum gravity and quantum information. The connection goes back to the discovery that black holes carry entropy with an amount given by the horizon area. I will present evidence that this is only the tip of the iceberg, and prove that a similar area law applies to more general Renyi entanglement entropies. To demonstrate the simplicity of this prescription, I will use it to calculate the mutual Renyi information between two disks of arbitrary dimension. Furthermore, I will provide quantum corrections to the area law and use it to solve the following important problem: what region of the dual spacetime is described by a subregion in a holographic theory? The answer to this question lies in a new perspective that I will advocate: holography is a quantum error correcting code.