High Energy Physics

Recent experimental results seem to require a dramatic change in our view of the dark matter sector. In this talk I will describe the reasons for this change and the ingredients required to describe the new data. I will present possible field theories that give rise to such phenomena and delineate the resulting collider signatures.

In this talk I discuss methods to determine hydrodynamical dispersion relations from an extra-dimensional gravity dual wherein the metric is supported by scalar fields. Such a setup may eventually be used as a model of the strongly coupled plasma created in heavy ion collisions. I examine examples of both the shear and sound modes. The shear mode is analyzed using the black hole membrane paradigm; a calculation of the shear viscosity is reviewed, and then the calculation is extended to the next hydrodynamical order. All results agree with those found using the AdS/CFT prescription. The sound mode is analyzed by examining the quasi-normal modes of the dual black hole. The relevant gauge invariant equations are derived, and a special case solution of these equations is discussed.

Understanding dynamics of strongly coupled quantum field theories is an important problem in both condensed matter physics and high energy physics. In condensed matter systems, interacting quantum field theories can arise either at a critical point, or in a finite region of a parameter space. In the former case, massless modes arise as a result of fine tuning of external parameters, while, in the latter case, massless modes are protected by topology and/or symmetry. In this talk, I will discuss two examples in 2+1 dimensions (one for each case) where one can understand strong coupling physics nonperturbatively. In the first example, a lattice model which describes a superconducting phase transition will be discussed. In this model, a superconformal symmetry dynamically emerges at the quantum critical point and one can predict non-trivial critical exponents using the enlarged symmetry, even though there is no underlying supersymmetry in the microscopic model. In the second example, I will discuss about a 2+1 dimensional non-relativistic quantum field theory which is dual to a gravitational theory in the AdS4 background with a charged black hole. The spectral function of a fermion field exhibits an interesting non-Fermi liquid behavior, that is, all momentum points inside the Fermi surface are critical and the gapless modes are defined in a critical Fermi ball in the momentum space.

Recent PAMELA and ATIC results may represent a breakthrough in dark matter searches beyond its gravitational imprint. After briefly reviewing the possible (classes of) explanations for the observed excesses in positron and electron cosmic ray fluxes I will focus on a two component dark matter model that may provide an explanation for large boost factors needed in the dark matter annihilation interpretation of the signals.

We discuss various properties of holographic mesons in a deconfined strongly coupled plasma. We show that such mesons obtain a width from a non-perturbative effect. On the string theory side this is due to open string modes on a D-brane tunneling into a black hole through worldsheet instantons. On the field theory side these instantons have the simple interpretation as heavy thermal quarks. We also comment on how this non-perturbative effect has important consequences for the phase structure of the Yang-Mills theory obtained in the classical gravity limit.

We discuss holography for geometries that are asymptotic to non-conformal brane backgrounds. The near-horizon limit of all non-conformal branes, including D-branes and the fundamental string but excluding five-branes, is conformal to $AdS_{p+2} imes S^{8-p}$ with a linear dilaton. They exhibit a generalized conformal structure, both on the QFT and on the gravitational side. We develop holographic renormalization for all these cases and discuss a number of applications. We compute the holographic 2-point functions of the stress energy tensor and gluon operator and show they satisfy the expected Ward identities and the constraints of generalized conformal structure. The holographic results are also manifestly compatible with the M-theory uplift, with the asymptotic solutions, counterterms, one and two point functions etc. of the IIA F1 and D4 appropriately descending from those of M2 and M5 branes, respectively.

The interpretation of virtual gluons as ghosts in the non-linear gluonic structure of QCD permits the formulation and realization of a manifestly gauge-invariant and Lorentz covariant theory of interacting quarks/antiquarks, for all values of coupling. The simplest example of quark/antiquark scattering in a high-energy, quenched, eikonal model at large coupling is shown to be expressable as a set of finite, local integrals which may be evaluated numerically; and before evaluation, it is clear that the result will be dependent only on, and damped by increasing momentum transfer, while displaying physically-reasonable color dependence in a manner underlying the MIT Bag Model and an effective, asymptotic freedom. These results are compatible with an earlier, instanton, field-strength analysis of Reinhardt, et.al.

The discovery of integrability in the large N limit of the prototypical realization of the AdS/CFT correspondence has raised the hope that the spectrum of scale dimensions in N=4 SYM (and strings in AdS_5 x S^5) might be known exactly, i.e. to all orders in the coupling constant. So far, most of the efforts focused on closed strings and periodic boundary conditions. In this talk I will discuss how these ideas are extended to open string and open boundary conditions. In particular how to obtain exact expressions for the boundary scattering matrices, discuss the integrability of the boundary conditions and how finite size effects may be taken into account.