Physics

The detection of gravitational waves has opened up new observational windows into the physics of black holes and has the potential to shed light on how imposing unitary evolution modifies the near horizon dynamics. In this talk, I will present how recent developments in holography have provided a way of understanding the physics of black hole thermalization in terms of the spacing statistics of black hole microstates. Based on this, I will suggest that the issue of measuring the quantum aspects of black holes from their ringdown depends on the spectral statistics of their microstates. I will then suggest that certain microstate statistics lend to the possibility of deviations in the ringdown behaviour of black holes in the form of “echoes” which might be interpreted as being due to Planck-scale microstructure near the horizon.

I will discuss work-in-progress for defining a new proposal for the covariant holographic entanglement entropy. The proposal instructs us to find maximal spacelike codimension-2 surfaces on timelike hypersurfaces in the bulk, followed by a minimization among all possible hypersurfaces in the right homology class. We describe and prove various properties of such minimax surfaces, and argue for their equivalence with the more familiar HRT and maximin proposals. Finally, we give compelling reasons to be interested in yet another entanglement entropy proposal: minimax surfaces allow us to prove all higher entropy cone inequalities, showing that the RT and HRT holographic entropy cones are indeed equivalent.

Many non-trivial ideas have been proposed to resolve singularities in quantum gravity. In this talk I argue that singularity resolution can be trivial in gravitational path integrals, because geodesically incomplete singular spacetimes are usually not included in the sum. For theories where this holds, there is no need to develop non-trivial ideas on singularity resolution. Instead, efforts should better be directed to understand tunneling processes and complex-valued spacetimes.

The semi-classical limit of spin foams leads to the Area Regge action. It was long thought that this action leads to flatness and does, in particular, not allow for propagating gravitons. I will present the first systematic studies of the continuum limit of the Area Regge action, using different versions of regular hypercubic lattices. These studies have shown that the Area Regge action does in its continuum limit, lead to leading order to general relativity, and thus to propagating gravitons. The higher order corrections depend on the choice of triangulation for the hypercubic lattice. However, there seems to be a preferred choice, for which the Area Regge action is not singular. In this case the correction term approximates the square of the Weyl curvature tensor, and can be interpreted to arise from an area metric dynamics. We therefore conjecture that the continuum limit of spin foams is described by an area metric theory.

The interplay between strong electronic interaction and non-trivial topology in magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene (tBLG) yields many intriguing phenomena that range from superconductivity to a spontaneous quantum anomalous Hall state with Chern number ±1. WIth the equilibrium phase diagram under much scrutiny, a better theoretical understanding of the excitation spectrum of tBLG is crucial to reveal experimental signatures of competing phases and discern possible pathways of controlling their behavior out of equilibrium. To this end, we study an effective Wannier-orbital model from Kang and Vafek (2019) in the strong coupling limit, which captures the Chern state at three quarters filling as well as its competition with proximal stripe charge order. We compute the density and chiral excitation spectra as well as the charge gap as a function of the overlap of neighboring Wannier orbitals. Our results provide an experimental signature to detect the transition from the stripe phase to the Chern phase and offer insight into steering of the quantum anomalous Hall state via low-frequency driving.

Monitored quantum circuits, composed of local unitary operators and projective measurements, have recently emerged as a rich setting for studying non-equilibrium quantum dynamics. In such systems, sufficient densities of measurements can protect a highly-monitored steady state phase with area law entanglement. Furthermore, it has been shown that such area law phases can host a measurement-protected Ising ferromagnetic order. However, it is not yet known whether such measurement-protected order is a generic phenomenon or whether it relies on the discrete Ising symmetry. To begin answering this question, we introduce a circuit model with continuous symmetry where ferromagnetic order arises in the steady state. Notably, our model requires feedback based on measurement results in order to generate this ferromagnetic order

Black hole echoes have been considered as new probes to standard gravitational waveforms. Here, I consider reflections of scalar waves around a black hole as a model of black hole echoes arising from scalar fields. This problem is difficult due to the need for a proper understanding of the characteristic fields that propagate in numerical relativity. Using the "Einstein-Christoffel" system, I model the characteristic fields and the boundary conditions in such a way as to properly reflect scalar waves at a boundary using the full power of Einstein’s equations.

The core collapse of rapidly rotating massive 10Msun stars (“collapsars”), and resulting formation of hyper-accreting black holes, are a leading model for the central engines of long-duration gamma-ray bursts (GRB) and promising sources of r-process nucleosynthesis. In this talk, I will explore the signatures of collapsars from progenitors with extremely massive helium cores >= 130Msun above the pair-instability mass gap. While rapid collapse to a black hole likely precludes a prompt explosion in these systems, we demonstrate that disk outflows can generate a large quantity (up to >= 50Msun) of ejecta, comprised of >= 5 10Msun in r-process elements and 0.1 1M of 56Ni, expanding at velocities 0.1 c. Radioactive heating of the disk-wind ejecta powers an optical/infrared transient, with a characteristic luminosity 1042 erg s1and spectral peak in the near-infrared (due to the high optical/UV opacities of lanthanide elements) similar to kilonovae from neutron star mergers, but with longer durations >= 1 month. These “super-kilonovae” (superKNe) herald the birth of massive black holes >= 60M, which— as a result of disk wind mass-loss—can populate the pair-instability mass gap “from above” and could potentially create the binary components of GW190521. SuperKNe could be discovered via wide-field surveys such as those planned with the Roman Space Telescope or via late-time infrared follow-up observations of extremely energetic GRBs. Gravitational waves of frequency 0.1 50 Hz from non-axisymmetric instabilities in self-gravitating massive collapsar disks are potentially detectable by proposed third-generation intermediate and high-frequency observatories at distances up to hundreds of Mpc; in contrast to the “chirp” from binary mergers, the collapsar gravitational-wave signal decreases in frequency as the disk radius grows (“sad trombone”).

In this talk we will discuss the notion of thermality for quantum field theories in curved spacetimes, and how it relates to the Unruh effect and Hawking radiation. Then we will argue that particle detectors are physical systems which can act as thermometers, thermalizing to the temperature of the field. We will show that any non-relativistic quantum system undergoing appropriate trajectories can probe the field’s temperature, regardless of how they are coupled to the field.