Search Talks

I review the uses of effective field theory (EFT) techniques, originally developed in particle physics, to study gravitational dynamics. I will focus on the EFT approach to gravitational wave (GW) radiation, aka NRGR, and show how it has succeeded in producing the most accurate description of spinning binary systems to date, opening the door to a new era of precise astrophysical & cosmological measurements and tests of General Relativity via GW interferometry. I will also briefly discuss EFT applications for black hole dissipation/absorption, inflationary dynamics and  high energy gravitational scattering.

During the last couple of years Dupuis, Freidel, Livine, Speziale and Tambornino developed a twistorial formulation for loop quantum gravity.
Constructed from Ashtekar--Barbero variables, the formalism is restricted to SU(2) gauge transformations.
In this talk, I perform the generalisation to the full Lorentzian case, that is the group SL(2,C).
The phase space of SL(2,C) (i.e. complex or selfdual) Ashtekar variables on a spinnetwork graph is decomposed in terms of twistorial variables. To every link there are two twistors---one to each boundary point---attached. The formalism provides a clean derivation of the solution space of the reality conditions of loop quantum gravity.
Key features of the EPRL spinfoam model are perfectly recovered.
If there is still time, I'll scatch my current project concerning a twistorial path integral for spinfoam gravity as well. 

I will explain some recent exact developments in N=2 SUSY gauge theories on 3-sphere and its deformations. I will begin by the analysis of Killing spinors and their generalization which are necessary to construct SUSY theories on curved spaces. Then I will sketch the exact computation of partition function using SUSY localization and present a general formula. Some applications to the physics of M5-branes will also be discussed.