Scientific Series

The next frontiers in cosmic microwave background (CMB) science include a detailed mapping of the CMB polarization anisotropy, with goals of detecting the inflationary B-mode signal and reconstructing high-fidelity maps of the matter distribution via CMB lensing, as well as a first detection of CMB spectral distortions.  At this level of precision (~nK), Galactic and extragalactic foregrounds may be the ultimate limiting factor in deriving cosmological constraints.  I will discuss biases due to foregrounds in CMB lensing measurements, including the first calculation of the lensing bias due to the kinematic Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effect, as well as recent progress in developing novel foreground-free CMB lensing estimators.  I will then present methods to extend CMB foreground parameterizations in a systematic, flexible way, with applications to both polarization and spectral distortion measurements.  Using this framework, I will discuss spectral distortion forecasts for CMB spectrometer mission concepts, showing that high-significance measurements of the Compton-y and relativistic thermal Sunyaev-Zel’dovich signals can be expected, as well as a potential detection of the primordial mu-type distortion due to Silk damping of small-scale acoustic modes.

Over the last decade, there have been enormous gains in machine learning technology primarily driven by neural networks. A major reason neural networks have outperformed older techniques is that the cost of optimizing them scales well with the size of the training dataset. But neural networks have the drawback that they are not very well understood theoretically.

Recent work by several groups has explored an alternative approach to creating machine learning model functions based on tensor networks, which are a technique for parameterizing many-body quantum wavefunctions. The cost of training tensor network models scales similarly to the cost of training neural networks. In addition, their relatively simple, linear structure has provided good theoretical understanding of their properties, and underpins many powerful techniques to optimize and manipulate them. 

After introducing tensor network machine learning models, I will discuss some of the techniques to optimize them and results for supervised and generative machine learning tasks. These techniques can automatically adapt the number of parameters and suggest interesting interpretations and extensions for 'deep' tensor network variants. I will conclude by discussing a recent tensor network based proposal to formulate hybrid quantum-classical algorithms for machine learning with quantum computers.

In this talk we will discuss three (intimately related) examples of 4-manifold invariants based on higher structures:
   - VOA[M4] from transgression of EFTs;
   - SW and Donaldson invariants as chiral algebra correlators;
   - Massey triple products from trisections.
These topics are based, respectively, on work with A.Gadde, P.Putrov (and work to appear with B.Feigin); recent paper with M.Dedushenko and P.Putrov; and a solo paper of the speaker.

Skew Howe duality is based on a very simple observation: the set of n by m matrices has commuting action of SL_n and SL_m.  We can use this observation to study morphisms of GL_m representations using GL_n.  This perspective has proven very useful in recent years for studying quantum knot invariants and their categorifications.  I will survey work in this direction from the last 10 years, including more recent developments concerning annular skew Howe duality and annular knot invariants.

In this talk, intended for a broader audience, I promise to use techniques only at the level of university calculus. While staying at this level, our goal will be to learn conceptual lessons for categorification of quantum group invariants of knots and 3-manifolds, also known as the Witten-Reshetikhin-Turaev (or WRT) invariants. In particular, we will introduce new q-series invariants of 3-manifolds that have integer powers and integer coefficients and, if time permits, discuss their various constructions and properties. The talk is based on several papers with D. Pei and/or P. Putrov, C. Vafa, as well as ongoing work with C. Manolescu.

When a system interacts with an environment with which it is initially uncorrelated, its evolution is described by a completely positive map.  The common wisdom in the field of quantum information theory, however, is that when the system is initially correlated with the environment, the map describing its evolution may fail to be completely positive. This has motivated many researchers to try and characterize this putatively more general sort of dynamics, and even the textbook of Nielsen and Chuang suggests that "It is an interesting problem for further research to study quantum information processing beyond the quantum operations formalism."  This talk will demonstrate that this common wisdom is mistaken.  The error can be traced to the standard argument for how the evolution map ought to be defined in such circumstances.  One can show that anomolous dynamics would arise even in completely classical examples if one were to follow the prescription of the standard argument.  The framework of classical causal models specifies how dynamics ought to be defined in such circumstances, and

the quantum analogue of this framework provides the correct definition of the quantum evolution map, which is found to be always completely positive.

Joint work with David Schmid

Polyakov’s bootstrap programme aims at solving conformal field theories using 
unitarity and conformal symmetry. Its implementation in two dimensions has been 
highly successful and numerical studies, in particular of the 3-dimensional Ising 
model, have clearly demonstrated the potential for higher dimensional theories. 
Analytical results in higher dimensions, however, require significant insight 
into the conformal group and its representations. Surprisingly little is actually 
known about this important group theory challenge. I  will explain a remarkable 
and unexpected connection with a class of Schroedinger equations that was uncovered 
in recent joint work with M. Isachenkov. The study of the relevant quantum mechanics 
systems has created an entire branch of modern mathematics whose results can now be 
put to use in the conformal bootstrap program. 

Canonical quantization schemes often suggest modifications to classical dynamics, such as in an effective Friedmann equation. However, although often ignored, they also necessarily imply new effects for quantum space-time leading to new (quantum) symmetries. The invariant line-element, corresponding to  new geometrical structures emerging in the presence of holonomy modifications in loop quantum gravity, shall be consistently derived in this talk. We shall use black-hole models to illustrate new features of this quantum space-time, going beyond standard Riemannian manifolds.

The general purpose computer can run any program we can express in
symbolic logic; that makes it the go-to tool for accomplishing any task
that can be reduced to a computable function, and that's why software is
eating the world and cars and colliders and airplanes and pacemakers and
toasters are all just turning into computers in fancy cases.

That also means that every policy problem we can imagine will eventually
involve a computer -- and thus involve a lawmaker insisting that it must
be possible to make a computer that can run every program except for
some program that creates a problem in the world.

We don't know how to make that computer, but we can approximate it by
creating a computer with some spyware-like program running on it that
checks to see whether you're running a "naughty" program and shuts it down.

That's a spider we swallow to catch a fly. Here's the bird we swallow to
catch the spider: laws like Canada's C-11 make it a crime to
investigate, circumvent, or point out defects in systems that have these
spyware-like processes.

Companies have noticed that this offers some real upsides for them: they
can use these spyware-like processes to prevent users their customers
from using their own consumables (e.g. printer ink), parts, service
depots, apps -- anything that the company can command a high margin on,
provided that it's illegal for a customer to choose someone else's products.

What a deadly combination: companies are rapidly expanding the
constellation of devices that are locked in this way, and once a device
is locked in this way, it can't be investigated, its defects can't be
disclosed, and it can't be modified to improve it, mitigate its flaws,
and protects its owner from cybersecurity risk.

Peer review exists out of recognition that there is no way to know if
you're right until you let your enemies try to prove you wrong; in
creating a monopolistic right to control the use of products after they
were sold, Parliament also created the right for companies to enjoin the
most fundamental task of scientific knowledge creation: finding mistakes
and pointing them out.

This is urgent: our world is made of computers, those computers are
designed to treat their owners as their enemies, and security
researchers can't audit those computers without risking civil and
criminal reprisals. That's a catastrophe in the making.

In order to think about the foundations of physics it is important to understand the logical relationships among the physical principles that sustain the building. As part of these axioms of physics there is the core hypothesis that, how the Universe is partitioned into systems and subsystems is a subjective choice of the observer that should not affect the predictions of physics. Other foundational principles are the Postulates of Quantum Mechanics. However, we prove that these are not independent from the “independence of subsystem partitioning” hypothesis described above. In particular, we prove that the mathematical structure of quantum measurements and the formula for assigning outcome probabilities are implied by the mentioned hypothesis and the rest of quantum postulates.