Talks

A computational phase transition in a classical or quantum system is a non-analytic change in behavior of an order parameter which can only be observed with the assistance of a nontrivial classical computation. Such phase transitions, and the computational observables which detect them, play a crucial role in the optimal decoding of quantum error-correcting codes and in the scalable detection of measurement-induced phenomena. We show that computational phase transitions and observables can also provide important physical insight on the phase diagram of a classical statistical physics system, specifically in the context of the dislocation-mediated melting of a two-dimensional antiferromagnetic (AF) crystal. In the solid phase, elementary dislocations disrupt the bipartiteness of the underlying square lattice, and as a result, pairs of dislocations are linearly confined by string-like AF domain walls. It has previously been argued that a novel AF tetratic phase can arise when double dislocations proliferate while elementary dislocations remain bound. We will argue that, although there is no thermodynamic phase transition separating the AF and paramagnetic (PM) tetratic phases, it is possible to algorithmically construct a nonlocal order parameter which distinguishes the AF and PM tetratic regimes and undergoes a continuous computational phase transition. We discuss both algorithm-dependent and "intrinsic" algorithm-independent computational phase transitions in this setting, the latter of which includes a transition in one's ability to consistently sort atoms into two sublattices to construct a well-defined staggered magnetization.

In this talk I will do three things. First, I will outline the conditions under which the interaction rate of inelastic processes with a system consisting of N targets scales as N^2. Second, I will present computations of interaction rates for several weakly interacting particles, including the Cosmic Neutrino Background and QCD axion dark matter, and will explain the underlying physics. Third, I will introduce new quantum observables that do not rely on net energy transfer, but can still extract these N^2 effects. This talk will not address a concrete experimental proposal, but the effects presented may point to a new class of table-top and ultra-low threshold particle detectors.

In this seminar, I will discuss recent progress towards developing robust methods to constrain PNG in the non-linear regime based on the LSS consistency relations — non-perturbative statements about the structure of LSS correlation functions derived from symmetries of the LSS equations of motion. Specifically, I will present non-perturbative models for the squeezed matter bispectrum and collapsed matter trispectrum in the presence of local PNG, as well as in the presence of a more general “Cosmological Collider” signal sourced by inflationary massive particle exchange. Using N-body simulations with modified initial conditions, I will demonstrate that these models yield unbiased constraints on the amplitude of PNG deep into the non-linear regime (k~2 h/Mpc at z=0). Finally, I will discuss how these non-perturbative methods can provide insight into the scale-dependent bias signature associated with the Cosmological Collider scenario.

In the recent resolution of the strong Onsager’s conjecture in L^3 framework, so-called wavelet-inspired Nash’s iteration has been developed. In this lecture, we will sketch this new method and provide the necessary background. The lecture will be based on our recent joint work with Matthew Novack.

We say that an ordinary or partial differential equation is regularized by noise if the addition of a suitable noise term restores well-posedness or improves regularity of the solution to the equation. Regularization by noise is by now well understood for ODEs and linear transport-type PDEs, but it is less understood for nonlinear PDEs like Euler and Navier-Stokes equations, with many open questions.

In the first part of this series of lectures, we consider the case of ODEs and associated transport equations with irregular drift: we show that the addition of an additive Brownian noise restores well-posedness of the ODE; we introduce the corresponding transport noise and show that this noise restores well-posedness for the associated transport equation. In the second part, we focus our attention on the effect of a particular transport-type noise, which is divergence-free, Gaussian, white in time and poorly correlated in space (nonsmooth Kraichnan noise). The associated linear transpo...