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The Deligne-Mumford moduli space of genus 0 curves plays many roles in representation theory.  For example, the fundamental group of its real locus is the cactus group which acts on tensor products of crystals.

I will discuss a variant on this space which parametrizes "cactus flower curves".  The fundamental group of the real locus of this space is the virtual cactus group.  This moduli space of cactus flower curves is also the parameter space for inhomogeneous Gaudin algebras.

Zoom link:  https://pitp.zoom.us/j/96658223425?pwd=NUxRN2FsdWJ1SWtHMlRDcTdHMGNPQT09

In this talk, I will describe how to implement the conformal bootstrap program in the context of the embedding space OPE formalism introduced by Fortin and Skiba (DOI:10.1007/JHEP06(2020)028). To begin with, I will give some background on the formalism. In particular, I will map out how to build two-, three-, and four-point functions within this framework. I will then lay out how to construct tensorial generalizations of the well-known scalar four-point blocks for symmetric traceless exchange. As I will discuss, these generalized objects satisfy a number of contiguous relations. Together, these empower us to fully contract the four-point tensorial blocks, ultimately yielding finite spin-independent linear combinations of four-point scalar blocks potentially acted upon by first-order differential operators. I will next proceed to describe how to set up the conformal bootstrap equations directly in the embedding space. I will begin by mapping out a general strategy for counting the number of independent tensor structures, which leads to a simple path to generating the bootstrap equations. I will then examine how to implement this method to construct the two-point, three-point, and ultimately four-point conformal bootstrap equations. Lastly, I will illustrate this method in the context of a simple example.

Zoom link:  https://pitp.zoom.us/j/98920533892?pwd=cDQvOExJWnBsUWNpZml5S1cxb0FJQT09

Many topological phases of lattice systems display quantized responses to lattice defects. Notably, 2D insulators with C_n lattice rotation symmetry hosts a response where disclination defects bind fractional charge. In this talk, I will show that the underlying physics of the disclination-charge response can be understood via a theory of continuum fermions with an enlarged SO(2) rotation symmetry. This interpretation maps the response of lattice fermions to disclinations onto the response of continuum fermions to spatial curvature. Additionally, in 3D, the response of continuum fermions to spatial curvature predicts a new type of lattice response where disclination lines host a quantized polarization. This disclination-polarization response defines a new class of topological crystalline insulator that can be realized in lattice models. In total, these results show that continuum theories with spatial curvature provide novel insights into the universal features of topological lattice systems. In total, these results show that theories with spatial curvature provide novel insights into the universal features of topological lattice systems.

Zoom link:  https://pitp.zoom.us/j/97325013281?pwd=MU5tdFYzTFljMGdaelZtNjJqbmRPZz09

As was realized by Bondi, Metzner, van der Burg, and Sachs (BMS), the symmetry group of asymptotic infinity is not the Poincaré group, but an infinite-dimensional group called the BMS group. Because of this, understanding the BMS frame of the gravitational waves produced by numerical relativity is crucial for ensuring that analyses on such waveforms and comparisons with other waveform models are performed properly. Up until now, however, the BMS frame of numerical waveforms has not been thoroughly examined, largely because the necessary tools have not existed. In this talk, I will highlight new methods that have led to improved numerical waveforms; specifically, I will explain what the gravitational memory effect is and how it has recently been resolved in numerical relativity. Following this, I will then illustrate how we fix the BMS frame of numerical waveforms to perform much more accurate comparisons with either quasi-normal mode or post-Newtonian models. Last, I will briefly highlight  some exciting results that this work has enabled, such as building memory-containing surrogate models and finding nonlinearities in black hole ringdowns.

Zoom Link:  https://pitp.zoom.us/j/96739417230?pwd=Tm00eHhxNzRaOEQvaGNzTE85Z1ZJdz09

The usual quantum mechanical description of measurements, unitary kicks, and other local operations has the potential to produce pathological causality violations in the relativistic setting of quantum field theory (QFT). While there are some operations that do not violate causality, those that do cannot be physically realisable. For local observables in QFT it is an open question whether the projection postulate, or more specifically the associated ideal measurement operation, is consistent with causality, and hence whether it is physically realisable in principle.

In this talk I will recap a criteria that distinguishes causal and acausal operations in real scalar QFT. I will then focus on operations constructed from smeared field operators - the basic local observables of the theory. For this simple class of operations we can write down a more practical causality criteria. With this we find that, under certain assumptions - such as there being a continuum spacetime - ideal measurements of smeared fields are acausal, despite prior heuristic arguments to the contrary. For a discrete spacetime (e.g. a causal set), however, one can evade this result in a ‘natural’ way, and thus uphold causality while retaining the projection postulate.

Zoom link:  https://pitp.zoom.us/j/94464896161?pwd=UkhPQnJONmlxYy9pQXJINThpY3l4QT09

Just seven years after their first detection, gravitational waves (GWs) have revealed the first glimpses of a previously hidden dark Universe. Using the GW signature of distant compact-object collisions, we have discovered a new population of stellar remnants and unlocked new tests of general relativity, cosmology, and ultra-dense matter. Materials with low mechanical loss (and strong constraints on other properties, e.g. reflectivity) are integral to the design and success of the GW detectors making these groundbreaking measurements. I'll summarize recent results from LIGO-Virgo and their wide-reaching implications, and discuss quantum materials advances required to enable future ground-based gravitational wave detectors, including Cosmic Explorer, to sense black hole collisions all the way back to the dawn of cosmic time.

"Magnetic materials with 4d or 5d transition metals have drawn much attention for their unique magnetic properties arising from J_eff=1/2 magnetic states. Among them, a honeycomb lattice material with unusual bond-dependent interactions called Kitaev interactions is of particular interest due to the potential for realizing the Kitaev quantum spin liquid state. Although much progress has been made in understanding magnetic and spin-orbit excitations in Kitaev materials, such as Na2IrO3 and alpha-RuCl3, using resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS), there are still many unanswered questions regarding the nature of electronic excitations in these materials. Of particular interest is the sharp peak observed around 0.4 eV in the RIXS spectrum of Na2IrO3, the exact nature of which remains controversial. In this context, it is interesting to note that a similar lower energy “excitonic” peak was observed in our recent RIXS investigation of alpha-RuCl3. Given that the electronic parameters in alpha-RuCl3 are probably very different from those in Na2IrO3 (alpha-RuCl3 has a large bandgap of ~1eV, well above any SO excitation energy scale), the observed similarity is surprising. The RIXS spectra from these two compounds as well as other Kitaev materials will be compared and the origin of common spectral features will be discussed. "

We give a new definition of self-testing for correlations in terms of states on C*-algebras. We show that this definition is equivalent to the standard definition for any class of finite-dimensional quantum models which is closed under submodels and direct sums, provided that the correlation is extremal and has a full-rank model in the class. This last condition automatically holds for the class of POVM quantum models, but does not necessarily hold for the class of projective models by a result of Mancinska and Kaniewski. For extremal binary correlations and for extremal synchronous correlations, we show that any self-test for projective models is a self-test for POVM models. The question of whether there is a self-test for projective models which is not a self-test for POVM models remains open. An advantage of our new definition is that it extends naturally to commuting operator models. We show that an extremal correlation is a self-test for finite-dimensional quantum models if and only if it is a self-test for finite-dimensional commuting operator models, and also observe that many known finite-dimensional self-tests are in fact self-tests for infinite-dimensional commuting operator models.

Zoom link: https://pitp.zoom.us/j/95783943431?pwd=SDFyQVVZR1d4WlVNSDZ4OENzSmJQUT09

While sharply-quantized topological features are conventionally associated with gapped phases of matter, there are a growing number of examples of gapless systems with topologically protected edge states. A particularly striking set of examples are "intrinsically gapless" symmetry-protected topological states (igSPTs), which host topological surface states that could not arise in a gapped system with the same symmetries. Examples include familiar non-interacting Weyl semimetals with Fermi arc surface states, as well as more exotic examples like deconfined quantum critical points with topological edge states. In this talk, I will discuss recent progress in formally understanding the bulk-boundary correspondence of strongly-interacting igSPTs using tools from group cohomology. In these examples, the gapless-ness of the bulk and presence of topological surface states can be understood in a unified way due to the presence of an emergent anomaly. Our formalism allows construction of lattice-models with such emergent anomalies whose topological properties can be deduced exactly.