Talks

In holographic duality a gravitational spacetime emerges as an equivalent description of a lower-dimensional conformal field theory (CFT) living on the asymptotic boundary. Traditionally, the dimension not present in the CFT is interpreted in terms of its Renormalisation Group flow. In this talk I exploit the relation between boundary entanglement entropies and bulk minimal surfaces to define a quantitative framework for the holographic Renormalisation Group, in which quantum information theory plays a fundamental role. I will provide operational, quantitative, information-theoretic characterizations of several geometric concepts in asymptotically AdS3 spacetimes, including the radial direction and lengths of bulk curves.

Perhaps the biggest conceptual benefit of the information-theoretic framework for holographic Renormalisation Group is a quantitative correspondence between holography and the Multi-Scale Entanglement Renormalisation Ansatz (MERA). I also discuss prospects for understanding the near-horizon structure of black holes.

The last decade has seen a wave of characterizations of quantum theory using the formalism of generalized probability theory.

In this talk, I will introduce a novel operational approach to characterizing and reconstructing quantum theory which puts an observer’s information acquisition -- rather than the probability structure – centre stage. In particular, we consider an observer interrogating a system with binary questions and explain how an elementary set of rules governing the observer’s acquisition of information about the system leads to qubit quantum theory. The derivation is constructive, elucidating, among other things, the origin of entanglement, monogamy and more generally the correlation structure. This approach also yields a new characterization of pure states in terms of ‘conserved informational charges’ which, in turn, define the unitary group.

In this talk I will propose a general correspondence which associates a non-perturbative quantum mechanical operator to a toric Calabi-Yau manifold, and I will propose a conjectural expression for its spectral determinant. As a consequence of these results, I will derive an exact quantization condition for the operator spectrum. I will give a concrete illustration of this conjecture by focusing on the example of local P2. This approach also provides a non-perturbative Fermi gas picture of topological strings on toric background and suggests the existence of an underlying theory of M2 branes behind this formulation.

With the increase of the center-of-mass energy from 8 TeV
to 13 TeV for LHC Run 2, the probability for boosted topologies will
become even higher than in Run 1. This also comes with a large
increase in pileup from the increased luminosity. This talk
investigates the state of the art of boosted algorithms and grooming
techniques, addresses shortcomings and possible improvements, and
discusses hot-topic items that will be interesting early on in Run 2.

A renormalization group transformation implements a scale transformation while resetting the UV cut-off, so that the theories before and after the RG transformation contain the same degrees of freedom, but with a modified action. In Wilson's original proposal, the cut-off is reset by integrating out the degrees of freedom between the old and new cut-off. In recent years we have learned that, alternatively, one can decouple these degrees of freedom by means of local unitary transformations (disentanglers). The result is a reversible renormalization group flow, and an efficient description of many-body ground states. In this talk, I will show you pretty drawings and will use fancy names, such as "multi-scale entanglement renormalization ansatz" (MERA). MERA is currently studied as a possible lattice realization of the AdS/CFT correspondence. I will keep it simple.

After 50 years of dreaming about it, space-based microlensing observations are now underway.  A 2014 100-hr Spitzer Pilot Program generated "microlens parallaxes" for dozens of lenses, opening the prospect of measuring the Galactic distribution of planets.  This program will be expanded 8-fold in 2015.  Analogous observations by Kepler will measure the mass function of free-floating planets.

WFIRST microlensing observations will, as advertised, "complete the planetary census" but they will do an immense amount of astrophysics as well.  I discuss how microlensing's take off builds on rapid, ongoing, ground-based developments.