Colloquium

We provide the first example of a symmetry protected quantum phase that has universal computational power. Throughout this phase, which lives in spatial dimension two, the ground state is a universal resource for measurement based quantum computation. Joint work with Cihan Okay, Dong-Sheng Wang, David T. Stephen, Hendrik Poulsen Nautrup; J-ref: Phys. Rev. Lett. 122, 090501

Recently they have been generalized to other 3d homogeneous spaces, namely 3d anti de Sitter space and half-pipe space, a 3d homogeneous space with a degenerate metric.

We show that generalized ideal tetrahedra correspond to dual tetrahedra in 3d Minkowski, de Sitter and anti de Sitter space. They are those geodesic tetrahedra whose faces are all lightlike.

We investigate the geometrical properties of these dual tetrahedra in a unifi ed framework.  We then apply these results to obtain a volume formula for generalised ideal tetrahedra and their duals, in terms of their dihedral angles and their edge lengths.

This is joint work with Dr Carlos Scarinci, KIAS.

Analytic renormalisation "à la Speer" using a multivariable approach typically leads to meromorphic germs in several variables whose poles are linear.  In particular,  Feynman integrals, multizeta functions and their generalisations, namely  discrete sums on cones and discrete sums associated with trees give rise to meromorphic germs at zero with linear poles. We shall present  a multivariable renormalisation scheme which amounts to a minimal subtraction scheme in several variables. It preserves locality in so far as the  evaluation at poles is expected to factor  on functions with independent sets of variables. Inspired by Speer, we shall discuss a class of generalised evaluators that do the job. Using a theory of  Laurent expansions  on meromorphic germs with linear poles at zero, we shall relate these generalised evaluators to the geometry of cones.

This talk is based on joint work with Pierre Clavier, Li Guo and Bin Zhang.

Many complex systems have a generative, or linguistic, aspect: life is written in the language of DNA; protein structure is written in a language of amino acids, and human endeavour is often written in text. Are there universal aspects of the relationship between sequence and structure? I am trying to answer this question using models of random languages. Recently I proposed a model of random context-free languages [1] and showed using simulations that the model has a transition from an unintelligent phase to an ordered phase. In the former, produced sequences look like noise, while in the latter they have a nontrivial Shannon entropy; thus the transition corresponds to the emergence of information-carrying in the language. 

In this talk I will explain the basics of natural language syntax, without assuming any prior knowledge of linguistics. I will present the results from the model above, and explain how the model is related to complex matrix models with disorder [2].

[1] https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.122.128301

[2] https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.07516

We will talk about recent progress in NMR technologies simulating topological phases. We will describe how states are prepared, how they are evolved in time and various tricks that we can play with it, including measurements of topological properties such as modular matrices, and thus potentially applied for identifying phases of matter in future simulations.

Black Hole Entropy is a well established concept and arises naturally once one realises that black holes are characterised by a temperature. Boltzmann established that entropy can be regarded as the logarithm of the density of states function. However, black hole uniqueness theorems appeared to indicate that black holes have no hair. I will describe a loophole in the no-hair theorems and how black holes can have an infinite set of charges related to "large" gauge transformations. I will then use these ideas to show that on sections of the horizon there is a holographic conformal field theory. The temperature of this conformal theory means that it has a statistical entropy that reproduces the Hawking formula. The implications of this for the black hole information paradox will be briefly described.
 

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.

Higher spin symmetries are gauge symmetries sourced by massless particles with spin greater than two. When coupled with diffeomorphism, they give rise to higher spin gravity. After a review on higher spin gravity, I will discuss its holography and its embedding in the string theory. Finally I will talk about some applications of higher spin symmetry, both in string theory and in QFT. 

Hypermassive neutron stars (HMNS) can be briefly formed after a binary neutron star merger and are likely to be highly deformed and strongly oscillating. These oscillations may be seen as modulation of the associated short gamma-ray burst and could provide observational evidence for the HMNS phase. I will discuss the prospects for their detection and the important physical information that can be gained by their observation.

In this talk I review some of what we have learned from string theory about the criteria one needs for a quantum theory to be able to consistently couple to quantum gravity (the landscape) as opposed to one that looks consistent but cannot be consistently coupled to gravity (the swampland).  Moreover, I review some of the cosmological implications of these conditions for our universe.

Topology illuminates properties of geometric spaces which are independent of scale.  Scale-independent features of physical systems play an important role, for example when deducing the large-scale behavior from a small-scale description.  After an introduction to basic topological ideas, I will discuss two joint results with Mike Hopkins, one an application to string theory and the other an application to condensed matter theory.

The Hubble constant remains one of the most important parameters in the cosmological model, setting the size and age scales of the Universe. Present uncertainties in the cosmological model including the nature of dark energy, the properties of neutrinos and the scale of departures from flat geometry can be constrained by measurements of the Hubble constant made to higher precision than was possible with the first generations of Hubble Telescope instruments. A streamlined distance ladder constructed from infrared observations of Cepheids and type Ia supernovae with ruthless attention paid to systematics now provide <2% precision and offer the means to do much better. By steadily improving the precision and accuracy of the Hubble constant, we now see evidence for significant deviations from the standard model, referred to as LambdaCDM, and thus the exciting chance, if true, of discovering new fundamental physics such as exotic dark energy, a new relativistic particle, or a small curvature to name a few possibilities. I will review recent and expected progress.