Talks

I will discuss possible tests of the grainularity of space including modified dispersion relations in the formation of white dwarfs and neutron stars and constraints on a stochastic direction field from atomic system tests.

Renner\'s global quantum de Finetti theorem establishes that if the state of a quantum system is invariant under permutations of its systems, then almost all of its subsystems are almost in the same state and independent of each other. Motivated by this result, we show that the most straightforward classical analogue of Renner\'s theorem is false. Joint work with Matthias Christandl (Cambridge).

I will describe work aimed at understanding the dynamics of gravitational collapse in a fully quantum setting. Its emphasis is on the role played by fundamental discreteness. The approach used suggests modifications of a black hole\'s mass loss rate and thermodynamical properties. Numerical simulations of collapse with quantum gravity corrections indicate that black holes form with a mass gap.

This will be an introductory talk about Topological Quantum Computation. TQC is attractive because it is intrinsicaly decoherence free. We introduce the basic notions, such as non abelian anyons, quantum symmetries and topological order. A topologically ordered phase is a gapped phase in which the basic degrees of freedom are of a topological nature (denoted as anyons), charactetized by their fusion and braiding properties. If time permits possible implementations based on Quantum Hall systems will be discussed as well.

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If large extra dimensions exist, microscopic black holes may be created in TeV particle colliders and in Earth\'s atmosphere by the collisions of ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays with atmospheric nuclei. The decay of these black holes could soon be observed at the Large Hadron Collider or the Pierre Auger Observatory. Monte Carlo codes have been developed to simulate these events. In this talk I will introduce two of these codes (CATFISH for the LHC and GROKE for the PAO), and discuss how mini black holes can be distinguished from standard model or susy events.

This talk will review proposed tests of ideas about quantum gravity, including searches for quantum decoherence, probes of the possible energy-dependence of the velocity of light, and the nature of vacuum energy. Motivations will be drawn from a non-critical string theory framework.

I\'ll give a broad review of various ways of looking for large, small, and warped extra dimensions and will give only a brief review of the black-hole business, particularly an introduction based on the original paper we wrote and recent work on Randall-Sundrum black holes.

I will discuss a new method of inflaton potential reconstruction that combines the flow formalism, which is a stochastic method of inflationary model generation, with an exact numerical calculation of the mode equations of quantum fluctuations. This technique allows one to explore regions of the inflationary parameter space yielding spectra that are not well parameterized as power-laws. We use this method to generate an ensemble of generalized spectral shapes that provide equally good fits to current CMB and LSS as data as do simpler power-law spectra. Within this ensemble are spectra that exhibit a strong running on large angular scales (where cosmic variance is large) that turns off on small scales. Such strongly running spectra are accompanied by large tensor components that lie outside the 1 and 2 sigma limits of current WMAP3 and SDSS data. This demonstrates that the generalization of the spectral shape adversely impacts our ability to constrain key inflationary observables. The inflationary models giving rise to such spectra are characterized by an initially fast rolling inflaton, in marked contrast to the dominant paradigm of slow roll inflation.