Talks

The characteristics of black holes smaller than the Planck scale are addressed.  These result from a modified metric that reproduces desirable aspects of a variety of disparate models in the sub-Planckian limit, while remaining Schwarzschild in the large mass limit. The self-dual nature of this solution has two interesting features: first, it naturally implies the Generalized Uncertainty Principle. Secondly, this metric exhibits an effective dimensional reduction feature, indicating that the gravitational physics of the sub-Planckian regime is effectively (1+1)-D.

Current constraints on spatial curvature demonstrate it to be dynamically negligible at late times. However, neglecting it as a cosmological parameter would be premature, as it offers a valuable test of eternal inflation models and probes novel large-scale structure phenomena. I will discuss a recent project in which a broad and conservative approach was employed to systematically forecast spatial curvature constraints from a suite of upcoming cosmology surveys, while also examining important degeneracies with cosmological parameters and potential sources of systematic error.

As we get closer to build a quantum computer, the main remaining challenge is handling the noise that aflicts quantum systems.

Topological methods, in their various forms, have become the main contestants in the quest for succesfully overcoming noise. A good deal of their strength and versatility is due to their rather unique physical flavour, which keeps giving rise to surprising developments.

I will discuss the main driving forces behind my research on topological quantum error correction, as well as exciting recent directions, including unexpected connections with high energy physics.

In 2015 the LIGO detectors observed gravitational waves from two distinct stellar-mass binary black hole mergers. This long awaited feat now opens avenues to explore astrophysical questions which cannot, or are difficult to, be answered purely by electromagnetic means. Massive stars which end their lives in a pair-instability supernova are not thought to leave a remnant behind, meaning there should exist a gap in the black hole mass spectrum. In this talk I will discuss whether LIGO observations can tell us something about this apparent mass gap. 

LIGO is currently operating in its second science run, and like its first, alerts are sent to electromagnetic partners whenever a candidate event is identified. I will also discuss the efforts being made to capture the signature of an electromagnetic counterpart, some of the facilities involved and the hurdles which need to be overcome to make a confident association between a gravitational-wave signal and an electromagnetic transient.

When utilized appropriately, the path-integral offers an alternative to the ordinary quantum formalism of state-vectors, selfadjoint operators, and external observers -- an alternative that seems closer to the underlying reality and more in tune with quantum gravity. The basic dynamical relationships are then expressed, not by a propagator, but by the quantum measure, a set-function $\mu$ that assigns to every (suitably regular) set $E$ of histories its generalized measure $\mu(E)$. (The idea is that $\mu$ is to quantum mechanics what Wiener-measure is to Brownian motion.) Except in special cases, $\mu(E)$ cannot be interpreted as a probability, as it is neither additive nor bounded above by unity. Nor, in general, can it be interpreted as the expectation value of a projection operator (or POVM). Nevertheless, I will describe how one can ascertain $\mu(E)$ experimentally for any specified $E$, by means of an arrangement which, in a well-defined sense, acts as an $E$-pass filter. This raises the question whether in certain circumstances we can claim to know that the event $E$ actually did occur.

REFERENCE:

Alvaro Mozota Frauca and Rafael Dolnick Sorkin, How to Measure the Quantum Measure, Int J Theor Phys 56: 232-258 (2017), arxiv:1610.02087