Talks

The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) consists of a bath of photons emitted when the universe was 380,000 years old. Carrying the imprint of primordial fluctuations that seeded the formation of structure in the universe, the CMB is one of the most valuable known tools for studying the early universe. In our modern, post WMAP era, the utility of studying temperature anisotropies in the CMB is clear and much of the work has been done. I will describe two exciting new directions in which the field is currently heading: small-scale secondary CMB anisotropy and CMB polarization anisotropy. In this context, I will briefly discuss preliminary results from our small-scale secondary anisotropy experiment, the Sunyaev-Zel\'dovich Array (SZA), and will describe our two upcoming CMB polarization experiments, the Q U Imaging ExperimenT (QUIET) and the E B EXperiment (EBEX).

We derive a set of Bell inequalities using correlated random variables. Our inequalities are necessary conditions for the existence of a local realistic description of projective measurements on qubits. We analyze our inequalities for the case of two qubits and find that they are equivalent to the well known CHSH inequalities. We also discuss the sufficiency of our inequalities as well as their applicability to more than two qubits.

A class of operations distinct to entangled states shared between more than two parties is their conversion to entangled states shared between fewer parties. The extent to which these can be achieved in the regime of local operations and classical communication provides an operational characterisation of multiparty states, for example in the \"entanglement of assistance\" and related quantities. I will give a brief overview of this topic and discuss our results showing qualitatively different behaviour when the parties receiving the final state are not chosen beforehand.

Several finite dimensional quasi-probability representations of quantum states have been proposed to study various problems in quantum information theory and quantum foundations. These representations are often defined only on restricted dimensions and their physical significance in contexts such as drawing quantum-classical comparisons is limited by the non-uniqueness of the particular representation. Here we show how the mathematical theory of frames provides a unified formalism which accommodates all known quasi-probability representations of finite dimensional quantum systems.

We have two strong reasons to argue that Einstein\'s theory of general relativity may be incomplete. First, given that it cannot be expressed within a consistent quantum field theory there is reason to expect higher energy corrections. Second, the observation that we are undergoing a current epoch of accelerated expansion might indicate that our understanding of gravity breaks down at the largest scales. A generic result of modified gravity is the creation of a new degree of freedom within the gravitational sector. This new degree of freedom then generically connects local physics to cosmological dynamics. I will present the results of studying two modified theories of gravity emphasizing how they bridge the gap between local and cosmological physics. First I will discuss work I have done on f(R) modified gravity theories, delineating under what conditions these theories deviate strongly from general relativity. Using these results I will talk about some recent work on attempting to detect a characteristic signature of these theories from gravitational lensing. Second I will discuss recent results on ways we may test Chern-Simons gravity (a result of the low energy effective string action) in the Solar System. Chern-Simons gravity has been identified as a candidate for leptogenesis as well as a source for circularly polarized gravitational-waves from inflation. As I will discuss, constraints to Chern-Simons gravity may improve in the near future with further observations of double pulsar systems.

We describe simple systems where stringy instantons induce dynamical supersymmetry breaking, without any non-Abelian gauge dynamics. In suitable cases, a dual description via geometric transitions allows one to recast the instanton-generated superpotential as a classical flux superpotential. These simple DSB systems may have applications in model building.

There is a deep relation between Loop Quantum Gravity and notions from category theory, which have been pointed out by many researchers, such as Baez or Velhinho. Concepts like holonomies, connections and gauge transformations can be naturally formulated in that language. In this formulation, the (spatial) diffeomorphisms appear as the path grouopid automorphisms. We investigate the effect of extending the diffeomorphisms to all such automorphisms, which can be viewed as \"distributional diffeomorphisms\". We also give a notion of \"categorial holonomy-flux-algebra\", and present the construction of the automorphism-invariant Hilbert space for abelian gauge groups, which will be entirely combinatorial.