Scientific Series

On small scales the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is perturbed by large scale structure in the universe, primarily through Compton scattering and gravitational lensing. The current generation of CMB experiments is measuring these signals, allowing new measurements of the build-up of cosmic structure. I will discuss two such measurements being made with the South Pole Telescope: 1) through Compton scattering (the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect) we have compiled a large catalog of very massive galaxy clusters extending to z>1, allowing a measure of the growth of structure from z=1 to today; 2) we are currently measuring the gravitational lensing of the CMB, providing an accurate measure of the integrated structure between z=0 and z=1100. Both of these are powerful new tests of our cosmological understanding.

Many fundamental results in quantum foundations and quantum information theory can be framed in terms of information-theoretic tasks that are provably (im)possible in quantum mechanics but not in classical mechanics. For example, Bell's theorem, the no-cloning and no-broadcasting theorems, quantum key distribution and quantum teleportation can all naturally be described in this way. More generally, quantum cryptography, quantum communication and quantum computing all rely on intrinsically quantum information-theoretic advantages. Much less attention has been paid to the information-theoretic power of relativistic quantum theory, although it appears to describe nature better than quantum mechanics. This talk describes some simple information-theoretic tasks that distinguish relativistic quantum theory from quantum mechanics and relativistic classical physics, and a general framework for defining tasks that includes all previously known (im)possibility theorems and raises many open questions. This suggests a new way of thinking about relativistic quantum theory, and a possible new approach to defining non-trivial relativistic quantum theories rigorously. I also describe some simple and surprisingly powerful applications of these ideas to cryptography, including a new secure scheme for simultaneously committing to and encrypting a prediction and ways of securely "tagging" an inaccessible object so as to guarantee its position.

The local and global properties of the retarded and Feynman Green functions to the wave equation in curved spacetime are crucial for radiation reaction in the classical theory and for renormalisation in the quantum quantum theory. Building on an insight due to Avramidi, we provide a system of transport equations for determining key fundamental geometrical bitensors determining the local Hadamard singularity structure of these Green’s functions. We illustrate their use in a semi-recursive approach showing how to determine covariant expansions to high order, for example, calculating the tail term reflecting backscattering by the curvature of spacetime to 20th order in the geodesic separation in a matter of minutes, and as the basis of numerical calculations. We also present an efficient method to construct covariant expansions of the tail term, without using the formal Hadamard light-cone expansion. Finally we discuss the relationship between the geodesic structure, quasi-normal modes with associated excitation factors and the global behaviour of Green functions in black hole space-times.

We propose a mechanism where high entanglement between very distant boundary spins is generated by suddenly connecting two long Kondo spin chains. We show that this procedure provides an efficient way to route entanglement between multiple distant sites useful for quantum computation and multi-party quantum communication. We observe that the key features of the entanglement dynamics of the composite spin chain are remarkably well described using a simple model of two singlets, each formed by two spins. The proposed entanglement routing mechanism is a footprint of the emergence of a Kondo cloud in a Kondo system and can be engineered and observed in varied physical settings.

In the last many years a number of metallic solids have been studied that defy understanding within the principles of conventional textbook solid state physics. The most famous are the cuprate high temperature superconductors though many other examples have been found. In this talk I will argue that the mysterious properties of many such materials arises from an imminent `death' of their Fermi surfaces. I will discuss some theoretical ideas on how to kill a Fermi surface, and their implications for experiments.

Usually, quantum theory (QT) is introduced by giving a list of abstract mathematical postulates, including the Hilbert space formalism and the Born rule. Even though the result is mathematically sound and in perfect agreement with experiment, there remains the question of why this formalism is a natural choice, and how QT could possibly be modified in a consistent way. My talk is on recent work with Lluis Masanes, where we show that five simple operational axioms actually determine the formalism of QT uniquely. This is based to a large extent on Lucien Hardy's seminal work. We start with the framework of "general probabilistic theories", a simple, minimal mathematical description for outcome probabilities of measurements. Then, we use group theory and convex geometry to show that the state space of a bit must be a 3D (Bloch) ball, finally recovering the Hilbert space formalism. There will also be some speculation on how to find natural post-quantum theories by dropping one of the axioms.

I propose late-time moduli decay as the common origin of baryons and dark matter. The baryon asymmetry is produced from the decay of new TeV scale particles, while dark matter is created from the chain decay of R-parity odd particles. The baryon and dark matter abundances are mainly controlled by the dilution factor from moduli decay, which is typically in the range 10^{-9}-10^{-7}. The exact number densities are determined by simple branching fractions from modulus decay, which are expected to be of similar order in the absence of symmetries. This scenario can naturally lead to the observed baryon asymmetry and, for moderate suppression of the two-body decays of the modulus to R-parity odd particles, can also yield the correct dark matter abundance in the 5-500 GeV mass range. I will present an explicit model for late-time baryogenesis along this line and discuss some of its cosmological and phenomenological consequences.

We review situations under which a standard quantum adiabatic condition fails. We reformulate the problem of adiabatic evolution as the problem of Hamiltonian eigenpath traversal, and give convergence conditions in terms of the length of the eigenpath and the minimum energy gap of the Hamiltonians. We introduce a randomized evolution method that can be used to traverse the eigenpath and prove its convergence and cost. We then describe more efficient methods for the same task and show that their implementation complexity is close to optimal.

The DEAP-3600 single-phase liquid-argon dark matter detector is under construction at SNOLAB. The fundamental goal of the design is to increase the volume of the detector while having the liquid argon contact the smallest possible surface comprising only clean acrylic and wavelength shifter. Specifically DEAP-3600 is a spherical detector with a 1000 kg fiducial mass and a design background rate less than 0.1 events in the WIMP region of interest in three years of data taking. Design sensitivity to WIMP dark matter at 100 GeV is 10-46 cm2. In order to achieve this ambitious goal an extensive program of background reduction and control is underway for all detector components including the acrylic vessel, process system, photomultiplier tubes and TPB wavelength shifter. Efforts to obtain acrylic with bulk Uranium and Thorium contamination below 0.3 and 1.3 ppt respectively and Pb-210 contamination below 1.1x10-8 ppt will be described. A resurfacer is under development to ensure that the surface contamination of acrylic is removed. Even with these stringent controls fiducialization will be required to reduce surface backgrounds by a factor of 1000. Preliminary studies are promising. We have operated the DEAP-1 prototype detector underground at SNOLAB; results from the DEAP-1 runs will be discussed and the impact of those runs on DEAP-3600 will be discussed. SNOLAB has recently made the “phase 2” expansion (including the cryopit and two drifts) part of the clean space. A photo essay showing recent progress in the facility and the experimental program will be presented.

The standard method to study nonperturbative properties of quantum field theories is to Wick rotate the theory to Euclidean space and regulate it on a Euclidean Lattice. An alternative is "fuzzy field theory". This involves replacing the lattice field theory by a matrix model that approximates the field theory of interest, with the approximation becoming better as the matrix size is increased. The regulated field theory is one on a background noncommutative space. I will describe how this method works and present recent progress and surprises.

If the universe is a quantum mechanical system it has a quantum state. This state supplies a probabilistic measure for alternative histories of the universe. During eternal inflation these histories typically develop large inhomogeneities that lead to a mosaic structure on superhorizon scales consisting of homogeneous patches separated by inflating regions. As observers we do not see this structure directly. Rather our observations are confined to a small, nearly homogeneous region within our past light cone. This talk will describe how the probabilities for these observations can be calculated from the probabilities supplied by the quantum state without introducing a further ad hoc measure. The talk will emphasize the principles behind this result --- a quantum state, quantum spacetime leading to an ensemble of classical histories, quantum observers, a focus in local observations, and the use of coarse-grainings adapted to these observations. The principles will be illustrated in simple models in particular using the no-boundary wave function as a model of the quantum state. Applied to a model landscape we obtain specific predictions for features of the CMB spectrum and improvements in the `anthropic' bounds on the cosmological constant.