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In this talk  will develop Rafael D. Sorkin's heuristic that a partially ordered process of the birth of spacetime atoms in causal set quantum gravity can provide an objective physical correlate of our perception of time passing. I will argue that one cannot have an external, fully objective picture of the birth process because the order in which the spacetime atoms are born is a partial order. I propose that live experience in causal set theory is an internal ``view'' of the objective birth process in which events that are neural correlates of consciousness occur. In causal set theory, what ``breathes fire'' into a neural correlate of consciousness is that which breathes fire into the whole universe: the unceasing, partially ordered process of the birth of spacetime atoms.

Zoom link: https://pitp.zoom.us/j/95170823205?pwd=QW9YM3QrZU12Ti9HTUQ4TDlVNmN5Zz09

The NLTS (No Low-Energy Trivial State) conjecture of Freedman and Hastings [2014] posits that there exist families of Hamiltonians with all low energy states of non-trivial complexity (with complexity measured by the quantum circuit depth preparing the state). Our recent work https://arxiv.org/abs/2206.13228 (with Nikolas Breuckmann and Chinmay Nirkhe) proves this conjecture by showing that the recently discovered families of constant-rate and linear-distance QLDPC codes correspond to NLTS local Hamiltonians. This talk will provide background on the conjecture, its relevance to quantum many-body physics and quantum complexity theory, and touch upon the proof techniques.

Zoom link: https://pitp.zoom.us/j/94224635225?pwd=SUovNXA3MWlkRUJlcTIxV0pLQzQxdz09

Within the AdS/CFT correspondence, the entanglement properties of the CFT are related to wormholes in the dual gravity theory. This gives rise to questions about the factorisation properties of the Hilbert spaces on both sides of the correspondence.  We  show how the Berry phase, a geometrical phase encoding information about topology, may be used to reveal the Hilbert space structure. Wormholes are characterized by a non-exact symplectic form that gives rise to the Berry phase. For wormholes connecting two spacelike regions in AdS3 spacetimes, we find that the non-exactness is linked to a variable appearing in the phase space of the boundary CFTs. Mathematical concepts such as coadjoint orbits and geometric actions play an important role in this analysis.  We classify Berry phases according to the type of dual bulk diffeomorphism involved, distinguishing between Virasoro, gauge and modular Berry phases.

In addition to its relevance for quantum gravity, the approach presented also suggests how to experimentally realize the Berry phase and its relation to entanglement in table-top experiments involving photons or electrons. This provides a new example for relations between very different branches of physics that follow from the AdS/CFT correspondence and its generalizations. Based on 2202.11717 and 2109.06190.

Zoom link: https://pitp.zoom.us/j/96113910200?pwd=YXJnSWxiMHRIb21xdGFnNFM0cFFvUT09

Information about the late-time Universe is imprinted on the small scale CMB as photons travel to us from the surface of last scattering. Several processes are at play and small scale fluctuations are very rich and non-Gaussian in nature. I will review some of the most important effects and I will focus on the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect and gravitational lensing. I will discuss how a combination of measurements can probe velocity fields at cosmological distances and inform us on cluster energetics. I will also show recent measurements of weak lensing of the CMB and how they can help us interpret intriguing discrepancies in cosmological parameters between the high and low redshift Universe.

Zoom link: https://pitp.zoom.us/j/94451033605?pwd=Tkx4dHZTblMxUFJlZENyblJQVFo2dz09

The huge separation between the Planck scale and typical laboratory scales makes it extremely difficult to detect quantum gravitational effects; however, the situation is in principle much more favourable in cosmology. In particular, the Planck and Hubble scales were only separated by about 5 to 6 orders of magnitude during inflation. This motivates looking for present-day signatures of Planck-scale physics from the early universe. The question, then, is what quantum gravitational effects should we look for, and what are their observational signatures? Here I will discuss predictions for how a generic, quantum gravity-motivated, natural ultraviolet cutoff manifests in primordial power spectra. The cutoff is model-independent, both in the sense that it does not rely on a particular UV completion of quantum gravity, nor does it assume a particular model of inflation. The predicted signature consists of small oscillations that are superimposed on the conventional primordial power spectra, where the template waveform is parameterized by the location of the cutoff between the Planck and Hubble scales. This will allow experiments to place new rigorous bounds on the scale at which quantum gravity effects become important.