Talks

I introduce a general method for constraining the shape of the inflationary potential from Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) temperature and polarization power spectra. This approach relates the CMB observables to the shape of the inflaton potential via a single source function that is responsible for the observable features in the initial curvature power spectrum. The source function is, to an excellent approximation, simply related to the slope and curvature of the inflaton potential, even in the presence of large or rapidly changing deviations from scale-free initial conditions. Oscillatory features in the WMAP temperature power spectrum have led to interest in exploring models with features in the inflationary potential, but such cases are typically studied on a case-by-case basis. This formalism generalizes previous studies by exploring the complete parameter space of inflationary models in a single analysis. I will present results from a Markov Chain Monte Carlo likelihood analysis of WMAP 7-year and other data sets that probe the inflationary potential both at large and small scales, and I will discuss constraints from upcoming high-sensitivity experiments.

Even though the security of quantum key distribution has been rigorously proven, most practical schemes can be attacked and broken. These attacks make use of imperfections of the physical devices used for their implementation. Since current security proofs assume that the physical devices' exact and complete specification is known, they do not hold for this scenario. The goal of device-independent quantum key distribution is to show security without making any assumptions about the internal working of the devices. In this talk, I will first explain the assumptions 'traditional' security proofs make and why they are problematic. Then, I will discuss how the violation of Bell inequalities can be used to show security even when a large part of the physical devices is untrusted.

We formulate a numerical procedure to calculate Hawking radiation during non-equilibrium black hole formation. The procedure is applied to a static string in thermal AdS and it is shown that for an arbitrary initial state, the final state is an equilibrated heavy quark string. The fluctuations in the quark string are transmitted from the horizon to the boundary leading to Brownian motion in the boundary theory.