Talks

Single-sector supersymmetry breaking models provide a unified explanation of two of the central mysteries of fundamental physics: the Planck/Weak hierarchy and the masses and mixings of the Standard Model particles. In this class of models, the flavor hierarchy is generated by quark and lepton compositeness, with the composites emerging from the same sector that dynamically breaks supersymmetry. In this seminar I will describe the first calculable, via a weakly coupled dual description, realization of this scenario. In the second part, I will explain how String Theory provides, via the gauge/gravity correspondence, another computational tool for handling the kind of strongly coupled gauge theories that arise in this context.

The consequences of the fact that electroweak scale particles are often produced beyond threshold has been appreciated only recently. Decay products of boosted objects tend to be collimated and their final state radiation (FSR) might overlap. It has been shown that it can be advantageous to collect all FSR of a decaying resonance in a so-called 'fat jet' and apply subjet techniques to it to obtain a good mass reconstruction of the resonance and an improved background rejection. In my talk I would like to cover recent developments in this field and discuss applications to Higgs searches and top reconstruction within and beyond the Standard Model.

Recent experimental evidence suggests that living organisms are using quantum mechanics in a sophisticated fashion to enhance the efficiency of photosynthesis. Bacteria are essentially performing a quantum computation to extract energy from light. I will show how plants and bacteria perform quantum information processing, and will discuss how living creatures engage in all sorts of quantum hanky-panky in their efforts to survive and reproduce.

In the context of loop quantum gravity and spin foam models, the simplicity constraints are essential in that they allow to write general relativity as a constrained topological theory. I will first recall the spin foam quantization procedure and focus more particularly on the step consisting in implementing the simplicity constraints. Then, I will present the U(N) framework initially developed for SU(2) intertwiners. Finally, I will show how we can apply this new framework to impose the simplicity constraints in the context of 4d Euclidean gravity and present new solutions defined in term of U(N) coherent states.