Talks

Significant effort has been devoted to searching for new fundamental forces of nature. At short length scales (below approximately 10 nm), many of the strongest experimental constraints come from neutron scattering from individual nuclei in gases. The leading experiments at longer length scales instead measure forces between macroscopic test masses. I will present a proposal that combines these two approaches: scattering neutrons off of a target that has spatial structure at nanoscopic length scales. Such structures will give a coherent enhancement to small-angle scattering, where the new force is most significant. This can considerably improve the sensitivity of neutron scattering experiments for new forces in the 0.1 - 100 nm range. I will discuss the backgrounds due to Standard Model interactions and a variety of potential target structures that could be used, estimating the resulting sensitivities. I will show that, using only one day of beam time at a modern neutron scattering facility, our proposal has the potential to detect new forces as much as four orders of magnitude beyond current laboratory constraints at the appropriate length scales.

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Zoom link https://pitp.zoom.us/j/98201041537?pwd=MS9weFpNcHVFTVIwMTVoYmpxeTd6Zz09

The deep learning architecture associated with ChatGPT and related generative AI products is known as transformers. Initially applied to Natural Language Processing, transformers and the self-attention mechanism they exploit have gained widespread interest across the natural sciences. We will present the mathematics underlying the attention mechanism and describe the basic transformer architecture. We will then describe applications to time series and imaging data in astronomy and discuss possible foundation models.

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Zoom link https://pitp.zoom.us/j/91226066758?pwd=TWZ5RVliMjVKYXdLcHdya09lNWZhQT09

Quantum state tomography (QST) is the art of reconstructing an unknown quantum state through measurements. It is a key primitive for developing quantum technologies. Neural network quantum state tomography (NNQST), which aims to reconstruct the quantum state via a neural network ansatz, is often implemented via a basis-dependent cross-entropy loss function. State-of-the-art implementations of NNQST are often restricted to characterizing a particular subclass of states, to avoid an exponential growth in the number of required measurement settings. In this talk, I will discuss an alternative neural-network-based QST protocol that uses shadow-estimated infidelity as the loss function, named “neural-shadow quantum state tomography” (NSQST). After introducing NNQST and the classical shadow formalism, I will present numerical results on the advantage of NSQST over NNQST at learning the relative phases, NSQST’s noise robustness, and NSQST’s advantage over direct shadow estimation. I will also briefly discuss the future prospects of the protocol with different variational ansatz and randomized measurements, as well as its experimental feasibility.

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Zoom link https://pitp.zoom.us/j/94167105773?pwd=TXR3TUtwNjV4VFB4SEpvTkhqd29SUT09

To develop a quantum gravity theory, it is fundamental to move away from the gauge-fixing approach and instead employ a gauge-free analysis. There is an increasing body of evidence suggesting that the symmetries employed for gauge-fixing might carry charge. Consequently, setting the associated fields to zero is a physical constraint on the system, which should be avoided. In this talk, we will examine a partial fixing of the Fefferman-Graham (FG) gauge, referred to as the Weyl-Fefferman-Graham (WFG) gauge, which restores boundary Weyl covariance. We will show that the diffeomorphism mapping WFG to FG can be charged and discuss how this relates to holography.

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Zoom link https://pitp.zoom.us/j/93359035909?pwd=aHo0TUFXekZaeCtrT2FzNDZKUW15Zz09

We investigate perturbations of the Schwarzschild geometry using a linearization of the Einstein vacuum equations within a Bondi-Sachs, or null cone, formalism. We develop a numerical method to calculate the quasinormal modes, and present results for the case ℓ= 2. The values obtained are different than those of a Schwarzschild black hole, and we interpret them as quasinormal modes of a Schwarzschild white hole.

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Zoom link https://pitp.zoom.us/j/93648313308?pwd=akZMZXFKejIwdFphOVU0ZjFpeW13dz09

We will present a teleportation protocol which uses the properties of superoscillatory wavefunctions. Then we will briefly introduce a different protocol, the port based teleportation. We will use it to study teleportation over infinitesimally small distances, where the vacuum of a quantum field serves as the source of entanglement. We find that the resulting motion is equivalent to a quantum teleportation-induced Brownian motion. Purifying the interactions, from measurements to unitary operations, leads to motion described by Schrodinger’s equation. Therefore, we find that the notions of teleportation and continuous quantum and classical motion are unified in this sense.

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Zoom link https://pitp.zoom.us/j/93504138534?pwd=VUFPSXpRd2g0TVNxVTNlY3Rxa1ZjUT09

Black hole thermodynamics plays a central role in the theoretical landscape, acting as both synthesizer and sieve for concepts in field theory, quantum gravity, information theory, and more. While its formulation and applications are well understood in asymptotically flat and anti-de Sitter spaces, significant difficulties arise when generalizing to cosmological settings. In this talk, I will discuss how the thermodynamic properties of black holes can be understood in such scenarios through the Euclidean path integral. I will also discuss black holes in a more generalized, semi-classical setting, and suggest a consistent framework for describing a wide variety of dynamical black hole models and ultracompact objects, with consequences for horizon formation, back-reaction, and the growth of astrophysical black holes.

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Zoom link https://pitp.zoom.us/j/97647270696?pwd=bXhFYWYyYUlrTEUyVXhtOUNDakhhQT09