I will discuss a powerful way to examine the nature of dark energy using a measurement of the growth of galaxy clusters over cosmic time. A novel technique that uses the Cosmic Microwave Background as a backlight allows the detection of galaxy clusters out to the time of their first formation. Using this technique, I will present the first constraints on cosmological parameters obtained with the Atacama Cosmology Telescope, as well as exciting prospects for the future.
I discuss a new scenario called Hylogenesis (hylo=matter) that
explains the baryon and dark matter densities of Universe in a unified
way. Early universe dynamics generate the baryon asymmetry and an equal
antibaryon asymmetry in a GeV-scale hidden sector. The hidden antibaryons
are dark matter. Our model has a striking signature that dark matter can
annihilate baryons, mimicking nucleon decay. I discuss the effective
nucleon decay rates and implications for existing nucleon decay searches.
We describe a classification of 4d N=2 superconformal theories
obtained from the compactification of 6d N=(2,0) A_N theories on
punctured Riemann surfaces. We show the basic building blocks to
construct any such theory and its various S-dual frames. A host of new
S-dualities and interacting (non-Lagrangian) superconformal theories are
unconvered. We also compute various properties of these interacting
superconformal theories.
Black holes are associated with a variety of the most extreme and counter-intuitive phenomena in astronomy and physics. However, despite the passage of nearly 40 years since the discovery of the first strong black hole candidate, we have scant evidence that general relativity provides an accurate description of gravity in the immediate vicinity of astrophysical black holes. Over the next few years this will change dramatically.
The simulation of systems of anyons offers a significant challenge to
the condensed matter physicist. These systems are presently of
substantial theoretical and experimental interest due to their potential
for universal quantum computation, but due to their non-trivial exchange
statistics, the tools available for their study have been limited. In
this talk, I will present a formalism whereby any existing tensor
network algorithm may be adapted for use with both Abelian and
non-Abelian anyons, culminating in our recent simulations of infinite
1-D chains of interacting anyons using the Multi-scale Entanglement
Renormalisation Ansatz, or MERA, demonstrating that tensor network
algorithms may be effectively employed in the study of anyonic systems.