Talks

Global symmetries and gauge symmetries have played a crucial role in physics.  The idea of duality demonstrates that gauge symmetries can be emergent and might not be fundamental.  During the past decades it became clear that the circle of ideas about emergent gauge symmetries and duality is central in different branches of physics including Condensed Matter Physics, Quantum Field Theory, and Quantum Gravity.   We will review these developments, which highlight the unity of physics.

Thanks to the Lanczos algorithm, the Hamiltonian dynamics of any operator can be written as a hopping problem on a semi-infinite one-dimensional chain. Our hypothesis states that the hopping strength grows linearly down the chain, with a universal growth rate $\alpha$ that is an intrinsic property of the system. This leads to an exponential motion of the operator down the chain, capturing the irreversible process of simple operators inevitably evolving into complex ones. This exponential growth exists for generic quantum systems, even away from large-$N$ or semiclassical limits. In fact, $\alpha$ gives an upper bound for the exponential growth rate of a large class of operator complexity measures, including out-of-time-order correlations. As a result, we conjecture a new bound on Lyapunov exponents $\lambda_L \leq 2 \alpha$, which generalizes the known universal low-temperature bound $\lambda_L \leq 2 \pi T$. We illustrate the hypothesis in paradigmatic examples such as non-integrable spin chains, the $q$-SYK model, and chaotic coupled top models, and show that some of them saturate the conjectured bound.

There is a fundamental tension between what string theory computes (S-matrix elements) and what you can compute in QFT on a time-dependent backgrounds (real time operator expectation values). The prescription for computing time dependent expectation values in QFT involves a path integral defined on a closed time path, known as the Keldysh contour. In this talk, we'll discuss how a worldsheet formulation of string theory must perceive the Keldysh contour and how this modifies critical string theory at tree level in the string coupling.

One of the best known open-source tools for studying numerical relativity is the Einstein Toolkit.  With it, you can simulate collisions of black holes and neutron stars, and study their horizons and gravitational waves. In this talk we learn more about what the Einstein Toolkit can do, how it works. An introductory, hands-on tutorial will follow.

Detecting light dark matter that interacts weakly with electromagnetism has recently become one of the benchmark goals of near-term and futuristic direct detection experiments. In this talk, I will discuss an alternative technique to directly detecting such particles below the GeV-scale. The approach involves distorting the local flow of dark matter with time-varying fields and measuring these distortions with shielded resonant detectors, such as LC circuits.

The relative entropy is a measure of the distinguishability of two quantum states. A great deal of progress has been made in the study of the relative entropy between an excited state and the vacuum state of a conformal field theory (CFT) reduced to a spherical region. For example, when the excited state is a small perturbation of the vacuum state, the relative entropy is known to have a universal expression for all CFT’s. Specifically, the perturbative relative entropy can be written as the symplectic flux of a certain scalar field in an auxiliary AdS-Rindler spacetime. Moreover, if the CFT has a semi-classical holographic dual, the relative entropy is known to be related to conserved charges in the bulk dual spacetime. In this talk, I will introduce a one-parameter generalization of the relative entropy which I will call 'refined' Renyi relative entropy. I will use this quantity to present a one-parameter generalization of the aforementioned known results about the relative entropy. I will also discuss a new family of positive energy theorems in asymptotically locally AdS spacetimes that arises from the holographic dual of the refined Rényi relative entropy.