Talks

It has long been recognized that there are two distinct laws that go by the name of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The original says that there can be no process resulting in a net decrease in the total entropy of all bodies involved. A consequence of the kinetic theory of heat is that this law will not be strictly true; statistical fluctuations will result in small spontaneous transfers of heat from a cooler to a warmer body. The currently accepted version of the Second Law is probabilistic: tiny spontaneous transfers of heat from a cooler to a warmer body will be occurring all the time, while a larger transfer is not impossible, merely improbable. There can be no process whose expected result is a net decrease in total entropy. According to Maxwell, the Second Law has only statistical validity, and this statement is easily read as an endorsement of the probabilistic version. I argue that a close reading of Maxwell, with attention to his use of "statistical," shows that the version of the second law endorsed by Maxwell is strictly weaker than our probabilistic version. According to Maxwell, even the probable truth of the second law is limited to situations in which we deal with matter only in bulk and are unable to observe or manipulate individual molecules. Maxwell's version does not rule out a device that could, predictably and reliably, transfer heat from a cooler to a warmer body without a compensating increase in entropy. I will discuss the evidence we have for these two laws, Maxwell's and ours.

Constraints on the formation of primordial black holes - especially the ones which are small enough to evaporate - provide a unique probe of the early universe, high energy physics and extra dimensions. For evaporating black holes, the dominant constraints are associated with big bang nucleosynthesis and the extragalactic photon background, but there are also other limits associated with the cosmic microwave background, cosmic rays and various types of relic particles. For larger non-evaporating black holes, important constraints come from their gravitational and astrophysical effects. Small non-primordial evaporating black holes may be produced in the LHC if there are large extra dimensions and this would also have important implications for the early universe.

We study time dependent couplings in conformal field theories using rotating probe branes in AdS X S spacetimes. We find that induced metrics on the brane worldvolumes develop horizons with characteristic Hawking temperatures even when there is no black hole in the bulk. This framework is used to obtain toy models for quantum quench.

The Bell Curve is an extremely beautiful and elegant mathematical object that turns up – often in surprising ways – in all spheres of human life. The Curve was first used by astronomers to correct errors in their observations, but it soon found important applications in the social and medical sciences in the eighteen hundreds. Some philosophers believe that a new kind of human being was created around this time largely due to the growth of statistical reasoning in the arts and sciences. Dr. Mighton will speak about the consequences of this new way of thinking about people, and further insights from his play called “Risk”, in which he is dramatizing these ideas. The Bell Curve also figures prominently in education as our school system is based on the implicit belief that there are natural, wide bell curves in achievement in students. In this lecture, Dr. Mighton will share evidence that this belief is false and he will describe how the arts and sciences, and society in general, might benefit if we rejected this belief.

Combining the principles of general relativity and quantum theory still remains as elusive as ever. Recent work, that concentrated on one of the points of contact (and conflict) between quantum theory and general relativity, suggests a new perspective on gravity. It appears that the gravitational dynamics in a wide class of theories - including, but not limited to, standard Einstein's theory - can be given a purely thermodynamic interpretation. In this approach gravity appears as an emergent phenomenon, like e.g., gas or fluid dynamics. I will describe the necessary background, key results and their implications as suggested by my recent work in this area.

This talk will discuss some surprising links which have emerged in the last few years between two at first sight distinct areas of mathematical physics: the spectral properties of certain simple schroedinger-like equations, and the Bethe ansatz techniques which are used to compute the energies of states in integrable quantum field theories. No knowledge of either area will be assumed.

Quantization of string theory on the AdS(3) backgrounds with the RR flux, such as AdS(3)xS(3)xT(4) or AdS(3)xS(3)xS(3)xS(1), is an unsolved problem. Since the sigma model on these backgrounds is classically integrable, one can try to implement powerful methods of integrability similar to those used to solve AdS(5)/CFT(4) and AdS(4)/CFT(3). I will describe the integrability approach to the AdS(3) backgrounds, emphasizing the differences to the better understood cases of AdS(5) and AdS(4).

I describe a novel abelian gauge theory in 2+1 dimensions which has surprising theoretical and phenomenological features. The theory has a vanishing coefficient for the square of the electric field $e_i^2$, characteristic of a quantum critical point with dynamical critical exponent $z=2$, and a level-$k$ Chern-Simons coupling, which is marginal at this critical point. For $k=0$, this theory is dual to a free $z=2$ scalar field theory describing a quantum Lifshitz transition, but $k \neq 0$ renders the scalar description non-local. The $k \neq 0$ theory exhibits properties intermediate between the (topological) pure Chern-Simons theory and the scalar theory. For instance, the Chern-Simons term does not make the gauge field massive. Nevertheless, there are chiral edge modes when the theory is placed on a space with boundary, and a non-trivial ground state degeneracy $k^g$ when it is placed on a finite-size Riemann surface of genus $g$. The coefficient of $e_i^2$ is the only relevant coupling; it tunes the system through a quantum phase transition between an isotropic fractional quantum Hall state and an anisotropic fractional quantum Hall state. I describe zero-temperature transport coefficients in both phases and at the critical point, and comment briefly on the relevance of the results to recent experiments.