Talks

Axions and axion-like particles are well motivated candidates for dark matter (DM) and have a signature two photon vertex. The most sensitive axion DM search is at the gigahertz (GHz) regime. It relies on microwave cavities with high quality factors resonantly converting axion DM to cavity photons in the background of a static magnetic field. However, axion DM mass could span a vast range above or below GHz. We describe a new proposal using integrated/on-chip photonic systems to search for axion DM at the optical frequency. This enables the use of waveguides to collect signal photons, which improves the detection efficiency, as well as the use of single photon, micron-sized detector, such as a skipper charge-coupled device, which has a dark count rate as low as 1e-9 per second per pixel. Furthermore, by coupling a series of resonators of different frequencies to a single receiver bus, the detection can be broadband in terms of the axion masses and has sensitivities to the axion-photon couplings expected for the QCD axion at the axion masses of around 0.2 eV.

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Zoom link https://pitp.zoom.us/j/94515300239?pwd=VVBkaGM5K24yN2F4SFV0MGZ5Vk9LZz09

We use a result of Hawking and Gilkey to define a Euclidean path integral of gravity and matter which has the special property of being independent of the choice of basis in the space of fields. This property allows the path integral to describe also physical regimes that do not admit position bases. These physical regimes are pre-geometric in the sense that they do not admit a mathematical representation of the physical degrees of freedom in terms of fields that live on a spacetime. In regimes in which a spacetime representation does emerge, the geometric properties of the emergent spacetime, such as its dimension and volume, depend on the balance of fermionic pressure and bosonic and gravitational pull. That balance depends, at any given energy scale, on the number of bosonic and fermionic species that contribute, which in turn depends on their masses. This yields an explicit mechanism by which the effective spacetime dimension can depend on the energy scale.

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Zoom link https://pitp.zoom.us/j/91471624951?pwd=RDBYTXc2MGs5bkFKUytYR0huOHYwdz09

If axion Dark Matter exists, then they can collapse to form self-gravitating exotic compact objects known as axion stars. As mergers of such compact objects can potentially yield detectable gravititational waves which are correlated with a burst of electromagnetic radiation, much effort have been expended to compute these signals. I will discuss both the technical and theoretical challenges of this endeavour, and demonstrate such decays. I will show that axion stars may not be stable to electromagnetic decay, raising the question on whether we should expect to see these objects in the first place.

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Zoom link https://pitp.zoom.us/j/98298572209?pwd=WVFZUFJqQzZQdU8vcjhQRVpzVHZDdz09

We will begin by reviewing the work of Kazhdan and Lusztig, who established an equivalence between certain affine Lie algebra representations and quantum group representations. It can be thought of as a logarithmic version of the CS-WZW correspondence. In a joint work with Lin Chen, we used factorization algebras to establish an extended version of this equivalence. We will explain the main structure of the proof, and draw some connections with Kazhdan and Lusztig's original proof. The key idea is that of Kac-Moody localization, a parametrized version of factorization homology. Time permitting, we will also explain how this idea plays a role in the recently announced proof (by Gaitsgory et al.) of the de Rham geometric Langlands conjecture.

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Zoom link https://pitp.zoom.us/j/98932564942?pwd=WWdMLzI5WktkZnMrQmplU0J3Mk43dz09

Obtaining a description of cosmology is a central open problem in holography. Studying simple models can help us gain insight on the generic properties of holographic cosmologies. In this talk I will describe the construction of entangled microstates of a pair of holographic CFTs whose dual semiclassical description includes big bang-big crunch AdS cosmologies in spaces without boundaries. The cosmology is supported by inhomogeneous heavy matter and it partially purifies the bulk entanglement of two auxiliary AdS spacetimes. In generic settings, the cosmology is an entanglement island contained in the entanglement wedge of one of the two CFTs. I will then describe the properties of the non-isometric bulk-to-boundary encoding map and comment on an explicit, state-dependent boundary representation of operators acting on the cosmology. Finally, if time allows, I will argue for a non-isometric to approximately-isometric transition of the encoding of "simple" cosmological states as a function of the bulk entanglement, with tensor network toy models of the setup as a guide.

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Zoom link https://pitp.zoom.us/j/93483219872?pwd=TGpJVVlaNDVGWTN5ZHpkTHp6a2hTZz09

If dark energy evolves in time its dynamical component could be dominated by a bath of dark radiation. Since dark energy was subdominant in the early universe, the dark energy radiation evades the usual stringent constraints on extra relativistic species from the cosmic microwave background, allowing for an O(1) fraction of the energy density today to be dark radiation. In this talk, I will discuss how dark energy radiation can emerge from a fundamental theory, its predictions for cosmological observables, as well as discovery potential and constraints with existing and future precision cosmological datasets including measurements of the cosmic microwave background, baryon acoustic oscillations, and supernova data. I’ll conclude with the prospects of measuring the particle content of the dark energy radiation in direct-detection experiments in the presence of interactions between the Standard Model and the dark radiation sector, focusing on neutrinos, axions and dark photons.

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Zoom link https://pitp.zoom.us/j/97180285756?pwd=aEtlYmFSRzFSZVBvY3lnMmtPYWc3Zz09

In this talk, we identify anomalies of 1+1d lattice Hamiltonian systems as ’t Hooft anomalies. We consider anomalies in internal symmetries as well as Lieb-Schultz-Mattis (LSM) type anomalies involving lattice translations. Using topological defects, we derive a simple formula for the ‘anomaly cocycle’ and show it is the obstruction to gauging even on the lattice. We reach this by introducing a systematic procedure to gauge arbitrary internal symmetries on the lattice that may not act on-site. As a by-product of our gauging procedure, we construct non-invertible lattice translation symmetries from LSM anomalies.

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Zoom link https://pitp.zoom.us/j/98084408560?pwd=cllSVnpWcEhPK21aVDZubU4yYWNyQT09

I will present work on probing the large scale structure of the universe using CMB lensing from the upcoming Data Release 6 of the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) and cross-correlations with galaxies from the unWISE galaxy catalog. My talk will focus on how our highly competitive constraints from CMB lensing and CMB lensing cross-correlations can provide insight into the widely discussed “S8/sigma8 tension”. For this purpose I will briefly introduce the high fidelity CMB lensing reconstruction obtained by the ACT Collaboration and results from the analysis of the lensing auto-correlation. I will discuss new results from the cross-correlation between ACT CMB lensing and unWISE galaxies, highlighting improvements to the analysis pipeline compared to previous work on the cross-correlation between Planck CMB lensing and unWISE by some of my collaborators (Krolewski et al. 2021). I will also show a reanalysis of Planck CMB lensing x unWISE and a joined analysis of the ACT and Planck CMB lensing cross-correlations with unWISE.

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Zoom link https://pitp.zoom.us/j/99192611116?pwd=TU9iMjhrejVESjNRdi92M0ZXN2ZEQT09