Conference

The definition of correlation functions relies on measuring distances on some late surface of equal energy density. If invariant distances are used, the curvature correlation functions of single-field inflation are free of any IR sensitivity. By contrast, conventional correlation functions, defined using the coordinate distance between pairs of points, receive large IR corrections if measured in a "large box" and if inflation lastet for a sufficiently long period. The underlying large logarithms are associated with long-wavelength fluctuations of both the scalar and the graviton background. This effect is partially captured by the familiar delta-N-formalism. Conventional, IR-sensitive correlation functions are related to their IR-safe counterparts by simple and very general formulae. In particular, the coefficient of the leading logarithmic correction to any n-point function is controlled by the first and second logarithmic derivatives of this function with respect to the overall momentum scale. This allows for a simple evaluation of corrections to leading and higher-order non-Gaussianity parameters.

We discuss the definition of the Feynman propagator in de Sitter space. We show that the ambiguities in the propagator zero-mode can be used to make sense of the behavior of low-momentum modes in an inflating space-time. We use this tool to calculate loop corrections to non-Gaussian correlation functions, and show that there are limits where the loop terms dominate. These models can be probed with the Planck satellite.

Much work on quantum gravity has focussed on short-distance problems such as non-renormalizability and singularities. However, quantization of gravity raises important long-distance issues, which may be more important guides to the conceptual advances required. These include the problems of black hole information and gauge invariant observables, and those of inflationary cosmology. An overview of aspects of these problems, and apparent connections, will be given.

I will argue that the dynamical renormalization group can be used to resum late time divergences appearing in loop computations in de Sitter. In the case of a scalar field with quartic interactions, the resummed propagator is the massive one. Standard mean field theory techniques can then be used to estimate the mass. This is analogous to the thermal field theory story but with some notable differences. We discuss whether a critical point can exist in dS where mean field methods fail.

We clarify the origin of IR divergence in single-field models of inflation and provide the correct way to calculate the observable fluctuations. First, we show the presence of gauge degrees of freedom in the frequently used gauges such as the comoving gauge and the flat gauge. These gauge degrees of freedom are responsible for the IR divergences that appear in loop corrections of primordial perturbations. We propose, in this talk, one simple but explicit example of gauge-invariant quantities. Then, we explicitly calculate such a quantity to find that the IR divergence is absent in the slow-roll approximation. In this formalism, we revisit the consistency relation that connects the three-point function in the squeezed limit with the spectral index.

General Relativity receives quantum corrections relevant at macroscopic distance scales and near event horizons. These arise from the conformal scalar degrees of freedom in the extended effective field theory of gravity generated by the trace anomaly of massless quantum fields in curved space. Linearized perturbations of the Bunch-Davies state in de Sitter space show that these new scalar degrees of freedom are associated with macroscopic changes of state on the cosmological horizon scale, with potentially large stress tensors that can lead to substantial backreaction effects in cosmology. In the extended effective theory the cosmological ``constant" is a state dependent condensate whose value is scale dependent and which possesses an infrared stable conformal fixed point at zero. These considerations suggest that the observed dark energy of our universe may be a macroscopic finite size effect whose value depends not upon Planck scale physics but upon extreme infrared physics on the cosmological horizon scale.

The headline result of this talk is that, based on plausible complexity-theoretic assumptions, many properties of quantum channels are computationally hard to approximate. These hard-to-compute properties include the minimum output entropy, the 1->p norms of channels, and their "regularized" versions, such as the classical capacity. The proof of this claim has two main ingredients. First, I show how many channel problems can be fruitfully recast in the language of two-prover quantum Merlin-Arther games (which I'll define during the talk). Second, the main technical contribution is a procedure that takes two copies of a multipartite quantum state and estimates whether or not it is close to a product state. This is based on arXiv:1001.0017, which is joint work with Ashley Montanaro.

In this talk I will describe how random matrix theory and free probability theory (and in particular, results of Haagerup and Thorbjornsen) can give insight into the problem of understanding all possible eigenvalues of the output of important classes of random quantum channels. I will also describe applications to the minimum output entropy additivity problems.

In this talk we will explain how the main step technical steps in the proofs by Hastings and Hayden-Winter of the non-additivity of the minimal output von Neumann and $p$-Renyi entropy (for any $p>1$) can be reduced to a sharp version of Dvoretzky's theorem on almost spherical sections of convex bodies. This substantially simplifies their analysis, at least on the conceptual level, and provides an alternative point of view on these and related questions. Joint work with G. Aubrun and E. Werner

In 2008 Hastings reported a randomized construction of channels violating the minimum output entropy additivity conjecture. In this talk we revisit his argument, presenting a simplified proof. In particular, we do not resort to the exact probability distribution of the Schmidt coefficients of a random bipartite pure state, as in the original proof, but rather derive the necessary large deviation bounds by a concentration of measure argument. We prove non-additivity for the overwhelming majority of channels consisting of a Haar random isometry followed by partial trace over the environment, for an environment dimension much bigger than the output dimension.

Within the framework of quantum repeated interactions we investigate the large time behaviour of random quantum channel. We focus on generic quantum channels generated by unitary operators which are randomly distributed along the Haar measure. After studying the spectrum of these channels, we state a convergence result for the iterations of generic channels. This allows to define a set of random quantum states called ''asymptotic induced ensemble''.