Talks

I distinguish two types of reduction within the context of quantum-classical relations, which I designate “formal” and “empirical”. Formal reduction holds or fails to hold solely by virtue of the mathematical relationship between two theories; it is therefore a two-place, a priori relation between theories. Empirical reduction requires one theory to encompass the range of physical behaviors that are well-modeled in another theory; in a certain sense, it is a three-place, a posteriori relation connecting the theories and the domain of physical reality that both serve to describe. Focusing on the relationship between classical and quantum mechanics, I argue that while certain formal results concerning singular ℏ→0 limits have been taken to preclude the possibility of reduction between these theories, such results at most provide support for the claim that singular limits block reduction in the formal sense; little if any reason has been given for thinking that they block reduction in the empirical sense. I then briefly outline a strategy for empirical reduction that is suggested by work on decoherence theory, arguing that this sort of account remains a fully viable route to the empirical reduction of classical to quantum mechanics and is unaffected by such singular limits.

The structure of entanglement can yield new physical insights into strongly interacting quantum critical states. I’ll describe key properties of the entanglement entropy of conformal field theories (CFTs) in 2+1d. In particular, we’ll see that sharp corners in the entangling surface contribute a regulator-independent function that depends non-trivially on the corner angle. I’ll argue that in the smooth limit this function yields the 2-point function of the stress tensor. This sheds light on recent cutting edge simulations of the quantum critical Ising, XY and Heisenberg models. I’ll also present a new lower bound for this function. I will then generalize to Rényi entropies, which yields a simple procedure to extract the thermal entropy using corner entanglement of the groundstate alone. Connections will be made to CFTs in 1+1d and 3+1d, as well as to Lifshitz theories.

In effective field theory, causality fixes the signs of certain interactions.  I will describe how these Lorentzian constraints are encoded in the Euclidean theory, and use the conformal bootstrap to derive analogous causality constraints in CFT. Applied to spinning fields, these constraints include (some of) the Hofman-Maldacena bounds derived from conformal collider physics. I will also discuss applications to holographic theories.

We propose the discovery of the electroweak monopole as the final test of the standard model. Unlike the Dirac's monopole in electrodynamics which is optional, the electroweak monopole must exist within the framework of the standard model because the $U(1)_{em}$ becomes non-trivial. We estimate the mass of the monopole to be around 4 to 7 TeV, and expect the production rate to be relatively large, $(1/\alpha_{em})^2$ times bigger than the WW production rate. This implies that the MoEDAL detector at LHC could have a real chance to detect it.  

The global redshifted 21-cm radiation background is expected to be a powerful probe of the re-heating and re-ionization of the intergalactic medium. However, its measurement is technically challenging: one must extract the small, frequency-dependent signal from under much brighter and spectrally smooth foregrounds. Traditional approaches to study the global signal have used single-antenna systems, where one must calibrate out frequency-dependent structure in the overall system gain, as well as remove the noise bias from auto-correlating a single amplifier output. I will review these approaches, and critically examine several recent proposals to measure the global background using interferometric setups. In particular, using very general principles, I will show that the latters' sensitivity is directly related to two characteristics: the cross-talk between the readout channels (i.e. the signal picked up at one antenna when the other one is driven) and the correlated noise due to thermal fluctuations of lossy elements (e.g. absorbers or the ground) radiating into both channels. I will also briefly discuss the implications and future prospects for interferometric methods.