Talks

The near horizon region of any black hole looks like flat space and displays an approximate Poincare symmetry. We study the way these symmetries are realized for near extremal black holes.

We construct SL(2) generators that move matter fields relative to the boundaries. The construction is exact to all orders in the gravitational coupling. We also display an approximate realization of these generators in terms of simple operators defined at the boundary. These can also be realized in the boundary quantum mechanical theory. We also discuss the realization of these in the SYK model.

Recently we pointed out that the black hole interior operators can be reconstructed by using the Hayden-Preskill recovery protocols. Building on this observation, we propose a resolution of the firewall problem by presenting a state-independent reconstruction of interior operators. Our construction avoids the non-locality problem which plagued the "A=RB" or "ER=EPR" proposals. We show that the gravitational backreaction by the infalling observer, who simply falls into a black hole, disentangles the outgoing mode from the early radiation. The infalling observer crosses the horizon smoothly and sees quantum entanglement between the outgoing mode and the interior mode which is distinct from the originally entangled qubit. Namely, any quantum operation on the early radiation cannot influence the experience of the infalling observer as description of the interior mode does not involve the early radiation at all. We also argue that verification of entanglement by the outside observer does not create a firewall. Instead it will perform the Hayden-Preskill recovery which saves an infalling observer from crossing the horizon.

In this talk, I will discuss a newly proposed (pseudo-)critical phenomena governed by complex fixed points. I will start with the idea of complex fixed point at complex physical couplings and then introduce the recent conjectured complex conformal field theory with complex conformal data (e.g. central charge and scaling dimensions) which is suggested to describe these complex fixed points. These new concepts are putatively related to many interesting topics, such as the deconfined criticality, walking behavior in the gauge theories, weakly first order phase transitions and so on. Particularly, I will focus on a concrete example of the weakly first order phase transition, the Q>4 Potts model, where we did our numerics and found approximate conformality at intermediate length scale. Our results also give supportive evidence for the complex conformal data proposed based on the conjecture of complex CFT.

I will present a study of the single-particle properties of hot, lukewarm and cold electrons that coexist in the two-dimensional antiferromagnetic quantum critical metal within a unified theory. I will show how to generalize the theory that describes the interaction of critical spin-density wave fluctuations and electrons near the hot spots on the Fermi surface (hot electrons) by including electrons far away from the hot spots (lukewarm and cold electrons). Through an analytically tractable functional renormalization group scheme it will be shown that low-energy electrons are characterized by a universal momentum-dependent quasi-particle weight that decays to zero as the hot spots are approached along the Fermi surface, owing to the coexistence of quasiparticle and non-quasiparticle excitations within the same metallic state. This approach allows to characterize how the global shape of the Fermi surface is renormalized due to the strong interaction between the electrons and the critical spin fluctuations. I will finalize by commenting on the scope of this approach to study properties that are sensitive to the entirety of the Fermi surface, paying special attention to some preliminary results on the superconducting instability of this metallic state.

The interplay of symmetry and topology has been at the forefront of recent progress in quantum matter. In this talk I will discuss an unexpected connection between band topology and competing orders in a quantum magnet. The key player is the two-dimensional Dirac spin liquid (DSL), which at low energies is described by an emergent Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) with massless Dirac fermions (a.k.a. spinons) coupled to a U(1) gauge field. A long-standing open question concerns the symmetry properties of the magnetic monopoles, an important class of critical degrees of freedom. I will show that the monopole properties can be determined from the topology of the underlying spinon band structure. In particular, the lattice momentum and angular momentum of monopoles can be determined from the charge (or Wannier) centers of the corresponding spinon insulators. I will then discuss the consequences of the monopole properties, such as the stability of the DSL on different lattices, universal (experimental and numerical) signatures of DSL, and competing symmetry-breaking phases near the DSL state.

I will discuss several examples of novel continuous phase transitions, primarily in 3+1-D, that are beyond the standard Landau paradigm of order parameter fluctuations. These provide non-trivial examples of deconfined quantum critical points.