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"A well constructed theory is in some respects undoubtedly an artistic production." - Sir Ernest Rutherford

"Design is the synthesis of form and content."-Paul Rand

On the surface, the scientific method (primarily analytic) and design methodologies (primarily synthetic) seem to be quite different processes but there is considerable overlap and communicating science involves a blend of both. Scientists tend to use a scientific approach when
communicating science but there are benefits to using a designer's approach. Communicating science always requires finding solutions to difficult, ill-defined problems but employing design frameworks can help. 

One such framework is "design thinking", a powerful approach to problem solving that is rarely explicitly used in science or science communication. Design thinking consists of a set of analytic and
synthetic steps, although not a purely linear sequence, involving various modes of thought and processes. Design thinking is user-centered, collaborative, experimental, and has a bias toward action. This colloquium will present a design-thinking framework that can be useful in communicating science and examine how it differs from a typical scientific approach to problem solving.

Although the colloquium will focus primarily on outreach-type communication, we shall also consider applying the framework to writing scientific papers. In the end we'll find that scientists are designers
too, but that reframing the intellectual toolkits on hand can be useful for scientists when  communicating science.

We introduce two relative entropy quantities called the min- and max-relative 
entropies and discuss their properties and operational meanings.

These relative entropies act as parent quantities for tasks such as data compression, information
transmission and entanglement manipulation in one-shot information theory. Moreover, they lead us to define entanglement monotones which have interesting operational interpretations.

In the past few years, optical cooling and manipulating of macroscopic objects, such as micro-mirrors and cantilevers has developed into an active field of research. In mechanical systems, the oscillator is attached to its suspension, a thermal contact that limits the motion isolation. On the other hand, when these small objects are levitated using the radiation pressure force of lasers, the excellent thermal isolation even at room temperatures helps produce very sensitive force detectors, and eventually quantum transducers for quantum computation purposes. These new techniques may have a variety of applications for fundamental physics such as short distance tests of gravity and gravitational wave detection at high frequencies. In addition, there are several proposals suggesting that optically levitated dielectrics can be cooled to the ground state of the center of mass motion,
opening the exciting possibility of creating macroscopic matter-wave interferometers.

Recently powerful techniques have emerged for performing multi-loop computations of scattering amplitudes in quantum gravity and  supergravity.  These techniques include generalized unitarity and the double-copy property, related to color-kinematics duality in gauge theory.  Using these  techniques, the ultraviolet divergence structure of N=8 supergravity, and more recently pure N=4 supergravity, have been assessed, not only in four space-time dimensions but also in higher dimensions.  The results can be compared to expectations based on potential counterterms that can be constructed using (conjectured) superspace formalisms or nonlinear symmetry constraints.  Interestingly, the critical ultraviolet dimension in which N=8 supergravity first diverges is equal to that for N=4 super-Yang-Mills theory through four loops.  If this statement were to hold to all loop orders, then N=8 supergravity would represent a perturbatively finite, point-like theory of quantum gravity in four dimensions.  In this talk, I will review all of this recent progress.

I describe recent work with with Stefan Hollands that establishes a new criterion for the dynamical stability of black holes in $D \geq 4$ spacetime dimensions in general relativity with respect to axisymmetric perturbations: Dynamic stability is equivalent to the positivity of the canonical energy, $\mathcal E$, on a subspace of linearized solutions that have vanishing linearized ADM mass, momentum, and angular momentum at infinity and satisfy certain gauge conditions at the horizon.  We further show that $\mathcal E$ is related to the second order variations of mass, angular momentum, and horizon area by $\mathcal E = \delta^2 M - \sum_i \Omega_i \delta^2 J_i - (\kappa/8\pi) \delta^2 A$, thereby establishing a close connection between dynamic stability and thermodynamic stability.

Thermodynamic instability of a family of black holes need not imply dynamic instability because the perturbations towards other members of the family will not, in general, have vanishing linearized ADM mass and/or angular momentum. However, we prove that all black branes corresponding to
thermodynmically unstable black holes are dynamically unstable, as conjectured by Gubser and Mitra. We also prove that positivity of $\mathcal E$ is equivalent to the satisfaction of a ``local Penrose inequality,'' thus showing that satisfaction of this local Penrose inequality is necessary and sufficient for dynamical stability.

When a large number of quantum mechanical particles are put together and allowed to interact, various condensed matter phases emerge with macroscopic quantum properties. While conventional quantum phases like superfluids or quantum magnets can be understood as a simple collection of
single particle quantum states, recent discoveries of fractional quantum Hall or spin liquids states contain intrinsic entanglement among all the particles. To understand such unconventional phases requires unconventional methods. In this talk, I will discuss how the quantum information insights about many-body entanglement gives us a unique perspective and a powerful tool to study these
unconventional phases. In particular, starting from simple entanglement building blocks, we are able to construct new gapped quantum phases, classify all possible gapped phases in certain cases and obtain a better understanding of the structure of the phase diagram. With these progress, we expect the many-body entanglement point of view to play an important role in our effort to map the full quantum phase diagram, leading to breakthroughs in our understanding of gapless phases and phase transitions and in the development of numerical tools to simulate such systems.

Shor's algorithm can be a meaningful test for experimental quantum processing systems, when suitably realized.  I present results from a  recent implemenation of quantum factoring using trapped ion qubits, demonstrating feed-forward control, use of quantum memory during computation, and cascaded three-qubit gates.  Such capabilities are necessary ingredients for a future large-scale,
fault-tolerant quantum computing system.

Hexagon functions are a class of iterated integrals, depending on three variables (dual conformal cross ratios) which have the correct branch cut structure and other properties to describe the scattering of six gluons in planar N=4 super-Yang-Mills theory. We classify all hexagon
functions through transcendental weight five, using the coproduct for their Hopf algebra iteratively, which amounts to a set of first-order differential equations.  As an example, the three-loop remainder function is a particular weight-six hexagon function, whose symbol was determined
previously.

The differential equations can be integrated numerically for generic values of the cross ratios, or analytically in certain kinematics limits, including the near-collinear and multi-Regge
limits.  These limits allow us to impose constraints from the operator product expansion and multi-Regge factorization directly at the function level, and thereby to fix uniquely a set of Riemann-Zeta-valued constants that could not be fixed at the level of the symbol. The near-collinear limits agree precisely with recent predictions by Basso, Sever and Vieira based on integrability.  The multi-Regge limits agree with a factorization formula of Fadin and Lipatov, and determine three constants entering the impact factor at this order. We plot the three-loop remainder function for various slices of the Euclidean region of positive cross ratios, and compare it to the two-loop one.  For large ranges of the cross ratios, the ratio of the three-loop to the two-loop remainder function is relatively constant, and close to -7.

I will describe recent results obtained for N=4 superconformal field
theories in four dimensions by means of the conformal bootstrap.

This talk will be related to the content of arXiv:1304.1803, as well as
some additional work in progress.

The direct detection of gravitational waves promises to open up a new spectrum that is otherwise mostly closed to electromagnetically based astronomical observations. Detecting gravitational waves from binary black holes and neutron stars, as well as estimating their parameters, requires a sufficiently accurate prediction for the expected waveform signal. Unfortunately, the state of the art for the pillars of gravitational wave theory -- numerical relativity, the post-Newtonian approximation, and linear black hole perturbation theory -- have yet to cover accurately the entire parameter space even when taken together. In this talk, I present a new direction for systematically describing compact binaries that is valid over a potentially very large portion of the parameter space.

The approach uses high-order black hole perturbation theory in the mass ratio together with ideas and techniques borrowed from effective field theory for incorporating the physics of extended masses like spin and tidal effects. I discuss recent advances, future prospects, and potential impacts in this direction.

We show explicitly how the exact renormalization group
equation of interacting vector models in the large N limit can be
mapped into certain higher-spin equations of motion. The equations of
motion are generalized to incorporate a multiparticle extension of the
higher-spin algebra, which reflects the "multitrace" nature of the
interactions in the dual field theory from the holographic point of view.

Spins play a major role in the strong-field dynamics of
black-hole binaries and their gravitational-wave emission. By detecting spin
effects in the waveforms, existing and future gravitational-wave detectors
therefore provide a natural way to test gravity in strong-field, highly
dynamical regimes.

In the first part of my talk, I will show that the
inclusion of the spins in the gravitational templates for future space-based
detectors will permit testing scenarios for the formation and cosmological
evolution of supermassive black holes, and possibly shed light on models of
galaxy formation. In the second part, I will show that the effective-one-body
(EOB) model provides an efficient way to account for spin effects in both the
dynamics and waveforms, by combining information from post-Newtonian theory,
the self-force formalism, and numerical-relativity simulations.