Scientific Series

We will discuss two topics. First we will revisit the asymptotic structure of classical de Sitter space. In particular we will construct charges at future infinity (I^+) and obtain the asymptotic symmetry group drawing parallels with the BMS group of flat space. Secondly, move away from the region I^+ and study the space living near the cosmological horizon by considering large rotating Nariai black holes whose size tends to that of the cosmological horizon. We will examine the resulting near (cosmological) horizon geometry and find an interesting asymptotic structure containing the Virasoro algebra, suggestive of a holographic interpretation.

A picture can be used to represent an experiment. In this talk we will consider such pictures and show how to turn them into pictures representing calculations (in the style of Penrose's diagrammatic tensor notation). In particular, we will consider circuits described probabilistically. A circuit represents an experiment where we act on various systems with boxes, these boxes being connected by the passage of systems between them. We will make two assumptions concerning such circuits. These two assumptions allow us to set up the duotensor framework (a duotensor is like a tensor except that each position is associated with two possible bases). We will see that quantum theory can be formulated in this framework. Each of the usual objects of quantum theory (states, measurements, transformations) are special cases of duotensors. The framework is motivated by the objective of providing a formulation of quantum theory which is local in the sense that, in doing a calculation pertaining to a particular region of spacetime, we need only use mathematical objects that pertain to this same region. This is, I argue, a prerequisite in a theory of quantum gravity. Reference for this talk: http://arxiv.org/abs/1005.5164

The Z2 orbifold of N=4 SYM can be connected to N=2 superconformal QCD by a marginal deformation. The spin chains in this marginal family of theories have sufficient symmetry that allows for an all-loop determination of dispersion relation of BMN magnons. The exact two body S matrix is also fixed up to an overall phase. The exact dispersion relation of the magnon can be obtained from the matrix model of lowest modes on S^3, as well. I'll also talk briefly about some progress made towards the string dual of N=2 superconformal QCD, the endpoint of the deformation.

There has been a growing interest in electromagnetic counterparts to gravitational wave signals. Of particular interest here, are counterparts to gravitational wave signals from super-massive black hole mergers. We consider a circumbinary disk, hollowed out by torques from the binary, and provide an analytic solution to its response following merger. There are two changes to the potential which occur during the merger process: an axisymmetric mass-energy loss and asymmetric recoil kick given to the resulting super-massive black hole. With a brief literature search we argue that, for fiducial disk values and for black hole spins aligned and anti-aligned with the orbital angular momentum, throughout the majority of parameter space the mass loss well dominates the effects of the recoil kicks on the circumbinary disk. This, along with assuming vertical hydrodynamic equilibrium, reduces the problem to one dimension. Using a 1D hydrodynamical code we explore the majority of parameter space and describe the different possible flows. In the 1D case, we give analytic approximations for the locations of the first shocks, their strengths, and the final density after the disk has again reached a steady state. This allows one to determine the temperature jump across the shock front and determine the observability, modulo the yet unknown disk mass.

The functional Renormalization Group is a continuum method to study quantum field theories in the non-perturbative regime. In Yang-Mills theory, it can be used to relate fully nonperturbative low-order correlation functions in particular gauges to observables such as confinement order parameters. As a special application, we determine the order of the phase transition and the critical temperature for various gauge groups (SU(N), N=3,.,12, Sp(2) and E(7)). This also allows to investigate what determines the order of the deconfinement phase transition. Furthermore we study the non-perturbative effective potential for the field strength, where we observe the formation of a gluon condensate in the vacuum.

Quantum error correcting codes and topological quantum order (TQO) are inter-connected fields that study non-local correlations in highly entangled many-body quantum states. In this talk I will argue that each of these fields offers valuable techniques for solving problems posed in the other one. First, we will discuss the zero-temperature stability of TQO and derive simple conditions that guarantee stability of the spectral gap and the ground state degeneracy under generic local perturbations. These conditions thus can be regarded as a rigorous definition of TQO. Our results apply to any quantum spin Hamiltonian that can be written as a sum of geometrically local commuting projectors on a D-dimensional lattice. This large class of Hamiltonians includes Levin-Wen string-net models and Kitaev's quantum double models. Secondly, we derive upper bounds on the parameters of quantum codes with local check operators and discuss the implications for feasibility of a quantum self-correcting memory.

I will review some recent advances on the line of deriving quantum field theory from pure quantum information processing. The general idea is that there is only Quantum Theory (without quantization rules), and the whole Physics---including space-time and relativity---is emergent from the processing. And, since Quantum Theory itself is made with purely informational principles, the whole Physics must be reformulated in information-theoretical terms. Here's the TOC of the talk: a) Very short review of the informational axiomatization of Quantum Theory; b) How space-time and relativistic covariance emerge from the quantum computation; c) Special relativity without space: other ideas; d) Dirac equation derived as information flow (without the need of Lorentz covariance); e) Information-theoretical meaning of inertial mass and Planck constant; f) Observable consequences (at the Planck scale?); h) What about Gravity? Three alternatives as a start for a brainstorming.

Five decades ago, Aharonov and Bohm illustrated the indispensable role of the vector potential in quantum dynamics by showing (theoretically) that scattering electrons around a solenoid, no matter how thin, would give rise to a non-trivial cross section that had a periodic dependence on the product of charge and total magnetic flux. (This periodic dependence is due to the topological nature of the interaction.) We extend the Aharonov-Bohm analysis to the field theoretic domain: starting with the quantum vacuum (with zero particles) we compute explicitly the rate of production of electrically charged particle-antiparticle pairs induced by shaking a solenoid at some fixed frequency. (This body of work can be found in arXiv: 0911.0682 and 1003.0674.) Part II: The N-Body Problem in General Relativity from Perturbative QFT In the second portion of the talk, I will describe how one may use methods usually associated with perturbative quantum field theory to develop what is commonly known as the post-Newtonian program in General Relativity -- the weak field, non-relativistic, gravitational dynamics of compact astrophysical objects. The 2 body aspect of the problem is a large industry by now, driven by the need to model the gravitational waves expected from compact astrophysical binaries. I will discuss my efforts to generalize these calculations to the N-body case. (This work can be found in arXiv: 0812.0012.)

In this talk I will discuss the applications of the gauge/gravity duality to the strongly coupled quark gluon plasma, focusing in particular on the role of the shear viscosity to entropy ratio. It has been argued that the lower bound on the shear viscosity to entropy density in strongly coupled plasmas can be understood in terms of microcausality violation in the dual gravitational description. However, since the transport properties of the system characterize its infrared dynamics, while the causality of the theory is determined by its ultraviolet behavior, the link between the viscosity bound and microcausality should not be applicable in theories that undergo low temperature phase transitions. I will discuss an explicit holographic model confirming this fact, in which there is a ``decoupling'' of UV from IR physics.

AdS/CFT has proven itself a powerful tool in extending our understanding of strongly coupled quantum theories. While studies of AdS/CFT have predominantly focused on tree level calculations, there has been growing interest in the loop effect recently. We studied the 1-loop correction to the gauge boundary-to-boundary correlator due to its coupling to a complex scalar field. In this talk, I would outline our main results, explain the Cutkosky rule in AdS space, and discuss an extra divergence we found in both real and imaginary part of the loop integral. I would then combine our analysis with the replica trick to demonstrate a possible application where one attempts to calculate the DC conductivity in a condensed matter system with random disorder and discuss the limitation and difficulties of our method in its current form.

I'll describe a connection between uncertainty relations, information locking and low-distortion embeddings of L2 into L1. Exploiting this connection leads to the first explicit construction of entropic uncertainty relations for a number of measurements that is polylogarithmic in the dimension d while achieving an average measurement entropy of (1-e) log d for arbitrarily small e. From there, it is straightforward to obtain the first strong information locking scheme that is efficiently computable using a quantum computer. This locking scheme can be interpreted as a method for encrypting classical messages using a key of size much smaller than the message length. Other applications include efficient encodings for amortized quantum identification over classical channels and new string commitment protocols.

The average quantum physicist on the street believes that a quantum-mechanical Hamiltonian must be Dirac Hermitian (invariant under combined matrix transposition and complex conjugation) in order to guarantee that the energy eigenvalues are real and that time evolution is unitary. However, the Hamiltonian $H=p^2+ix^3$, which is obviously not Dirac Hermitian, has a real positive discrete spectrum and generates unitary time evolution, and thus it defines a fully consistent and physical quantum theory. Evidently, the axiom of Dirac Hermiticity is too restrictive. While $H=p^2+ix^3$ is not Dirac Hermitian, it is PT symmetric; that is, invariant under combined space reflection P and time reversal T. The quantum mechanics defined by a PT-symmetric Hamiltonian is a complex generalization of ordinary quantum mechanics. When quantum mechanics is extended into the complex domain, new kinds of theories having strange and remarkable properties emerge. Some of these properties have recently been verified in laboratory experiments. If one generalizes classical mechanics into the complex domain, the resulting theories have equally remarkable properties.