Talks

A planar map is a canonical model for a discrete surface which is studied in probability theory, combinatorics, theoretical physics, and geometry. Liouville quantum gravity provides a natural model for a continuum random surface with roots in string theory and conformal field theory. After introducing these objects, I will present a joint work with Xin Sun where we prove convergence of random planar maps to a Liouville quantum gravity surface under a discrete conformal embedding which we call the Cardy embedding.

In this talk I will discuss the universal properties of thermal transport in conformal field theories that are perturbed by a TTbar operator. TTbar-deformation is known to be an exactly solvable deformation in that the spectrum of the undeformed theory alone suffices to predict that of the deformed theory. Unique properties of TTbar deformation allow us to study the TTbar-deformed CFTs using two disparate methods: integrability and holography. I will apply these two approaches to study the non-equilibrium steady states and Drude weights, finding perfect agreement. I will also explain how the integrability-based approach yields the exact momentum diffusion constant, which, to our surprise, also happens to satisfy a universal formula. Finally I will briefly touch upon a curious connection between TTbar-deformed CFTs and an integrable cellular automaton model called the Rule 54 chain.

The discovery of astrophysical gravitational waves has opened a new avenue to explore the cosmos using transients. I will discuss a few new frontiers in the field of physical cosmology and fundamental physics that can be explored using gravitational waves from the current generation gravitational wave detectors such as LIGO/Virgo, and in the future from gravitational wave detectors such as LISA, Einstein Telescope, and Cosmic Explorer. I will elucidate the existence of synergies between electromagnetic probes and gravitational wave probes and their importance in understanding the standard model of cosmology and unveiling new physics.

Metals are ubiquitous in nature. One would like to determine the effective field theory that describe the low-energy physics of a metal. Many materials are successfully described by the so-called "Fermi liquid theory", but there is also much interest in "non-Fermi liquid metals" that evade such a description.

In this talk, I will present a very general perspective on metals that strongly constrains the possible effective field theories. The discussion is based on powerful theoretical concepts such as emergent symmetries and anomalies. From this perspective, combined with experimental observations, one can derive strong and unexpected conclusions about the nature of a particular kind of non-Fermi liquid metal, the "strange metal" observed in doped cuprates.

In this talk, I argue that the question of whether a physical system can be simulated on a computer is important not just from a practical perspective but also a fundamental one. We consider the complexity of simulating Hamiltonians with respect to both dynamics and equilibrium properties. This gives us a classification and a phase diagram of the complexity.  I will cover recent results in this topic, such as a dynamical complexity phase diagram for a long-range bosonic Hamiltonian and a complexity classification of the local Hamiltonian problem in the presence of a spectral gap. I will talk about the physical implications of these results and cover some of the basic proof ideas if time permits.

While spacetime and quantum theory are crucial parts of modern theoretical physics, the problem of quantum gravity demonstrates that their full relationship is not yet completely understood. In my talk, I report on two recent results that aim to shed light on this relationship via ideas and tools from quantum foundations.

We start with the setting of (semi-) device-independent quantum information protocols. In this scenario one considers abstract black boxes that are characterised by their input-output statistics. Typically, these inputs and outputs are assumed to be abstract labels from a finite set of integers. We replace the abstract inputs with physical inputs that correspond to continuous spatio-temporal degrees of freedom, e.g. angles of polarisers and time-durations of laser pulses. This framework gives new insights about the relation between space, time, and quantum correlations, and it gives rise to new kinds of Bell non-locality witnesses.

We then turn to the topic of quantum reference frames. Specifically, we consider a composite quantum system and an outside experimenter who does not have access to an external reference frame to specify all of the system's properties. We show that for such an observer the possible descriptions of states and observables are related by quantum reference frame transformations that have been independently proposed in recent works. We give an explicit description of the observables that are measurable by agents constrained by such quantum symmetries, and we introduce a relational generalisation of the partial trace that applies to such situations.

We consider monochromatic and isotropic photon emission from circular equatorial Kerr orbiters. We calculate the critical curve delineating the region of photon escape from that of photon capture in each emitter’s sky, allowing us to derive analytic expressions for the photon escape probability and the redshift-dependent total flux collected on the celestial sphere as a function of emission radius and black hole parameters. This critical curve generalizes to finite orbital radius the usual Kerr critical curve and displays interesting features in the limit of high spin. These results confirm that the near-horizon geometry of a high-spin black hole is in principle observable.

Relativistic quantum tasks are quantum computations which have inputs and outputs that occur at designated spacetime locations.

Understanding which tasks are possible to complete, and what resources are required to complete them, captures spacetime-specific aspects of quantum information. In this talk we explore the connections between such tasks and quantum gravity, specifically in the context of the AdS/CFT correspondence. We find that tasks reveal a novel connection between causal features of bulk geometry and boundary entanglement.

Further, we find that AdS/CFT suggests quantum non-local computations, a specific task with relevance to position-based cryptography, can be performed with linear entanglement. This would be an exponential improvement on existing protocols.

In this seminar, I will consider a deformed kinematics that goes beyond special relativity as a way to account for possible low-energy effects of a quantum gravity theory that could lead to some experimental evidences. This can be done while keeping a relativity principle, an approach which is usually known as doubly (or deformed) special relativity. In this context, I will give a simple geometric interpretation of the deformed kinematics and explain how it can be related to a metric in maximally symmetric curved momentum space. Moreover, this metric can be extended to the whole phase space, leading to a notion of spacetime. Also, this geometrical formalism can be generalized in order to take into account a space-time curvature, leading to a momentum deformation of general relativity. I will explain theoretical aspects and possible phenomenological consequences of such deformation.

In this talk I will introduce the Fully Constrained Formulation (FCF) of General Relativity. In this formulation one has a hyperbolic sector and an elliptic one. The constraint equations are solved in each time step and are encoded in the elliptic sector; this set of equations have to be solved to compute initial data even if a free evolution scheme is used for a posterior dynamical evolution. Other formulations (like the XCTS formulation) share a similar elliptic sector. I will comment about the local uniqueness issue of the elliptic sector in the FCF. I will also described briefly the hyperbolic sector. I will finish with some recent reformulation of the equations which keeps the good properties of the local uniqueness, improves the numerical accuracy of the system and gives some additional information.

This talk will be split into two distinct halves: The first half will be based on the paper arxiv:2007.03662 and suggest that an interplay between microscopic and macroscopic physics can lead to an undulation on time scales not related to celestial dynamics. By searching for such undulations, the discovery potential of light DM search experiments can be enhanced.
The second half will look at some currently unpublished work into finding all the semi-simple subalgebras of u(48) which contain the SM. Such algebras (in a loose sense of the term) form GUTs and studying them has relevance to family unification, proton decay etc. Although there has been previous work into the classification of GUTs, we believe this is the first this broad question has been answered.