Talks

One of the cool, frustrating things about quantum theory is how the once-innocuous concept of "measurement" gets really complicated. I'd like to understand how we find out about the universe around us, and how to reconcile (a) everyday experience, (b) experiments on quantum systems, and (c) our theory of quantum measurements. In this talk, I'll try to braid three [apparently] separate research projects into the beginnings of an answer. I'll begin from the premise that you make a measurement to find something out, then attack some specific questions: "How do we find out about quantum systems?", "What can we find out about quantum systems?", and finally "What do we actually know, afterward?" I'll give precise statements of these questions, then present [partial] answers.

f(R) theories are an alternative approach at the phenomenon of cosmic acceleration, in which the Einstein-Hilbert action for gravity is modified by adding a function of the Ricci scalar, f(R). While at the background level viable f(R) models must closely mimic LCDM, the difference in their prediction for the growth of large scale structures can be sufficiently large to leave detectable signatures in future surveys. In this talk, after reviewing the conditions for the background viability of f(R) theories, I will focus on scalar perturbations. I will present in some details the dynamics of linear perturbations, showing what are the characteristic imprints of f(R) models in the growth of structures and consider possible observational tests

Some recent investigations into the structure of the AdS/CFT correspondence rely on input from increasingly complicated technical calculations. Two related examples in planar N=4 super Yang-Mills theory include testing consequences of integrability and exploring iteration relations amongst multiloop gluon scattering amplitudes. I will review the latest developments in these areas and the methods used to carry out relevant calculations through four loops.

I'll discuss a reformulation of twistor-string theory as a heterotic string. This clarifies why conformal supergravity arises and provides a link between the Berkovits and Witten pictures. The talk is based on arXiv:0708:2276 with Lionel Mason.

101 years ago William James wrote this about the Hegelian movement in philosophy: \'The absolute mind which they offer us, the mind that makes our universe by thinking it, might, for aught they show us to the contrary, have made any one of a million other universes just as well as this. You can deduce no single actual particular from the notion of it. It is compatible with any state of things whatever being true here below.\' With some minor changes of phrase---for instance \'mathematical structure\' in place of \'absolute mind\'---one might well imagine morphing this into a remark about Everettian quantum mechanics. This point, coupled with the observation that the Everett interpretation has been declared complete and consistent for the selfsame number of years that its supporters have been trying to complete it, indicate to me that perhaps the Everett approach is more a quantum-independent mindset than a scientific necessity. So be it, but then it should be recognized as such. In this talk, I will try to expand on these suspicions.

This talk follows on from Wayne Myrvold\'s (and is based on joint work with Myrvold). I aim (and claim) to provide a unified account of theory confirmation that can deal with the (actual) situation in which we are uncertain whether the true theory is a probabilistic one or a branching-universe one, that does not presuppose the correctness of any particular physical theory, and that illuminates the connection between the decision-theoretic and the confirmation-theoretic roles of probabilities and their Everettian analogs. (The technique is to piggy-back on the existing body of physics-independent decision theory due to Savage, De Finetti and others, and to exploit the pervasive structural analogy between probabilistic theories and branching-universe theories in arguing for a particular application of that same mathematics to the branching case.) One corollary of this account is that ordinary empirical evidence (such as observed outcomes of relative-frequency trials) confirms Everettian QM in precisely the same way that it confirms a probabilistic QM; I claim that this result solves the Evidential Problem discussed by Myrvold. I will also briefly discuss the relationship between this approach and the Everettian \'derivation of the Born rule\' due to Deutsch and Wallace.

Much of the evidence for quantum mechanics is statistical in nature. Close agreement between Born-rule probabilities and observed relative frequencies of results in a series of repeated experiments is taken as evidence that quantum mechanics is getting something --- namely, the probabilities of outcomes of experiments --- at least approximately right. On the Everettian interpretation, however, each possible outcome occurs on some branch of the multiverse, and there is no obvious way to make sense of ascribing probabilities to outcomes of experiments. Thus, the Everett interpretation threatens to undermine much of the evidence we have for quantum mechanics. In this paper, I will argue that the Everettian evidential problem is indeed one that Everettians should take seriously, and explain why, in order to deal with it successfully, it is necessary to go beyond existing approaches, including the Deutsch-Wallace decision-theoretic approach.