Search Talks

One of the most enduring mysteries in particle physics is the nature of the non-baryonic dark matter that makes up 85% of the matter in the universe. For several decades, most searches for this mysterious substance have focused on Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs). Recently, there has been a surge in theoretical interest in ultra-light-field dark matter candidates, including QCD axions (spin 0 bosons) and hidden photons (spin 1 bosons), which can be probed through their coupling to electromagnetism or nuclear spin. I will discuss general principles of efficiently searching for the direct detection of the electromagnetic coupling of these candidates, how the sensitivity of these experiments can be improved by the exploitation of quantum correlations in the electromagnetic signals that they produce, and describe the Dark Matter Radio, and experiment searching for axions and hidden photons in the frequency range of 1 kHz through 100 MHz.

In this talk I will discuss recently-identified classes of quantum correlations that go beyond nonlocal classical hidden-variable models equipped with communication. First, in the bipartite scenario, I will focus on so-called instrumental causal networks, which are a primal tool in causal inference. There, I will show that it is possible to “fake” classical causal influences with quantum common causes, in a formal sense quantified by the average causal effect (ACE). Furthermore, I will show that it is possible to violate instrumental inequalities with quantum resources, both in the device-independent and in the 1-sided device-independent settings. Second, in the multipartite setting, I will present a causal hierarchy of multipartite nonlocality. I will make special emphasis on quantum correlations in the upper classes of the hierarchy that define stronger forms of genuinely multipartite quantum non-locality than those previously known. The seminar will touch upon concepts like Bell nonlocality and quantum steering as well as Bayesian nets and causal inference.

We derive constraints on the operator product expansion of two stress tensors in conformal field theories (CFTs). In large N CFTs with a large gap to single-trace higher spin operators, we show that the coupling of two stress tensors to other single-trace operators ("TTO") is suppressed by powers of the higher spin gap, dual to the mass scale of higher spin particles in AdS. The absence of light higher spin particles is thus a necessary condition for the existence of a consistent truncation to general relativity in AdS. We are led to propose that, in general, the inverse gap scale is the CFT "dual" of an AdS derivative in a classical action. These results are derived by imposing unitarity on mixed systems of spinning four-point functions in the Regge limit. Using the same method, but without imposing a large gap, we derive new inequalities on TTO-type couplings valid in any CFT.

If a black hole horizon has its microscopic structure as is conjectured by the candidates of quantum gravity, the dispersion relation of gravitational waves (GWs) near the horizon may be drastically modified since its wavelength can be comparable to the size of the microscopic structure because of its infinite gravitational blue-shift near the horizon.  We investigate ringdown-GWs from a perturbed black hole with such a modified dispersion relation and found that the change of modified dispersion relation near the horizon would lead to the partial reflection of infalling GWs at the horizon and echo-signals may appear in the late-time of ringdown-GWs. This implies that the echoes can be a supporting evidence of the existence of microscopic degrees of freedom on black hole horizons.