Scientific Series

The next era of collider physics will be limited less by what we can measure than by what we can reliably predict. The cascades of QCD radiation that fill every collision are typically simulated at the lowest orders in perturbation theory, with correspondingly large uncertainties. Hadronization is…

Despite its extraordinary success, the Standard Model leaves unanswered some of the deepest questions in fundamental physics. In this talk I will discuss how advances in astrophysical observations and precision flavor experiments are creating new opportunities to test proposed solutions to two of…

Gravitational-wave lensing has the potential to open a new observational window onto compact objects, dark matter, and the large-scale structure of the Universe. As gravitational waves propagate across cosmological distances, lensing effects can imprint subtle distortions onto the observed signals…

The asymptotic symmetries of null infinity in asymptotically flat spacetimes can be enhanced to a w1+∞ algebra, when restricting to a single graviton helicity sector. These symmetries were first extracted from the operator product expansion (OPE) of conformal gravitons in celestial holography. They…

Over the last half decade, the capabilities of large language models (LLMs) have leapt from preschooler to graduate student and beyond. This talk reviews recent progress in teaching LLMs to do science and reasoning, and speculates as to what it will mean for the future of theoretical physics if…

For decades, we have known that most of the matter in the Universe is invisible. This unseen component—dark matter—accounts for roughly 85% of all matter and plays a central role in shaping cosmic structure. Yet, despite decades of experimental effort and remarkable ingenuity, its fundamental nature…

To every 4d N=2 quiver theory compactified on a circle, one can associate its moduli space of Coulomb vacua, also called the K-theoretic Coulomb branch of the quiver, which carries the structure of a Poisson variety. In this talk, we explain that the (abelianized) K-theoretic Coulomb branch of the…

I discuss the latest developments on the Princeton Axion Search (PXS), a search for QCD axion dark matter in the 0.8-2.1 ueV mass range (200-500 MHz frequencies). PXS addresses the transitional range between cavity haloscopes and the DMRadio program, which operates below any cavity modes and…

Current and upcoming cosmological surveys will map the observable Universe with increasingly greater precision. To extract the maximum information about cosmology from these surveys, especially from smaller scales, it is imperative to move beyond traditional 2-point analyses. In this talk, I will…

In this talk, I will survey joint work with Dmitri Pavlov on the construction and classification of extended geometric functorial field theories. After briefly reviewing some background and classical definitions, I will discuss the construction of the extended geometric bordism category and present…

When a compact object collapses to form a black hole, quantum field theory predicts the emission of an energy outflux to future null infinity, which later relaxes to Hawking radiation. Within the semiclassical framework, we derive a simple, closed form, analytical expression for the energy outflux…

This colloquium is presented in collaboration with the Physics of Quantum Information II conference.