Talks

The dynamics of closed quantum systems undergoing unitary processes has been well studied, leading to notions of measures for the expressive power of parameterized quantum circuits, relative to the unique, maximally expressive, average behaviour of ensembles of unitaries. Such unitary expressivity measures have further been linked to concentration phenomena known as barren plateaus. However, existing quantum hardware are not isolated from their noisy environment, and such non-unitary dynamics must therefore be described by more general trace-preserving operations. To account for hardware noise, we propose several, non-unique measures of expressivity for quantum channels and study their properties, highlighting how average non-unitary channels differ from average unitary channels. In the limit of large composite system and environments, average noisy quantum channels are shown to be maximally globally depolarizing. Furthermore, we rigorously prove that highly-expressive parameterized quantum channels will suffer from barren plateaus, thus generalizing explanations of noise-induced phenomena. We complement our analytical findings with numerical experiments that showcase that, in certain situations, noise can increase the expressivity of parametrized quantum circuits.

Strongly coupled confining theories are well-motivated in many BSM frameworks. The early universe cosmological history of these theories provides possibilities for observable signals. These theories undergo confinement deconfinement phase transition in the early universe, which can result in gravitational wave signals, observable in upcoming experiments. Using AdS/CFT, these theories have been studied in the Randall-Sundrum framework, and various quantitative aspects of the phase transition have been calculated. In the models that have been considered, the rate of transition from the deconfined phase to the confined phase is very small and leads to a period of supercooling. This enhances the gravitational wave signal, but presents a tension between a low confinement scale and fitting to the standard picture of BBN. In this talk, I will briefly review the calculations leading to these conclusions, and argue that some of the issues are specific to the simplified models that have been studied. I will present two modifications that are expected on general grounds, motivated by including strong IR effects systematically. Such effects change the results significantly. In particular, new qualitative features appear which have been missed in previous investigations. I will briefly comment on the phenomenological implications and open questions. The talk will be based on 2309.10090 and 2401.09633.

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Fueling and feedback couple supermassive black holes (SMBHs) to their host galaxies across many orders of magnitude in spatial and temporal scales, making this problem notoriously challenging to simulate. We use a multi-zone computational method based on the general relativistic magneto-hydrodynamic (GRMHD) code KHARMA that allows us to span 7 orders of magnitude in spatial scale, to simulate accretion onto a non-spinning SMBH from an external medium with Bondi radius ~ 2e5 G*M/c^2, where M is the SMBH mass. For the classic idealized Bondi problem, spherical gas accretion without magnetic fields, our simulation results agree very well with the general relativistic analytic solution. Meanwhile, when the accreting gas is magnetized, the SMBH magnetosphere becomes saturated with a strong magnetic field. The density profile varies as ~ r^(-1) rather than r^(-3/2) and the accretion rate is consequently suppressed by over 2 orders of magnitude below the Bondi rate. We find continuous energy feedback from the accretion flow to the external medium at a level of 1% of the accreted rest mass energy (~ 0.01 Mdot * c^2). Energy transport across these widely disparate scales occurs via turbulent convection triggered by magnetic field reconnection near the SMBH. Thus, strong magnetic fields that accumulate on horizon scales transform the flow dynamics far from the SMBH and naturally explain observed extremely low accretion rates compared to the Bondi rate, as well as at least part of the energy feedback.

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In this talk I will present an update on my work with Ben Gammage and Aaron Mazel-Gee on the 2-categories of boundary conditions in the A and B-twists. In particular I will explain how 2-categorical 3d mirror symmetry decategorifies to the Koszul duality of hypertoric categories O discovered by Braden-Licata-Proudfoot-Webster.

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