High Energy Physics

We evaluate the partition function of three dimensional general relativity with a negative cosmological constant, including all known perturbative and non-perturbative contributions to the sum over geometries.

I will introduce models of dynamical electroweak symmetry breaking and their present and future impact on LHC physics. I will start by reviewing what LHC has seen and not seen and the main challenges of models of dynamical electroweak symmetry breaking. To overcome some of these problems we need a better understanding of strong dynamics. I will therefore review the state-of-the-art of the phase diagram of strongly coupled theories as function of the number of flavors, colors and matter representation. I will then show how these models can also lead to natural dark matter candidates able to provide a simple resolution to current experimental observations. If times allows, I will introduce new successful models of inflation in which the inflaton emerges as a composite state from a natural four-dimensional strongly coupled theory coupled to gravity.

I will present a new approach to information theoretic foundations of quantum theory, developed in order to encompass quantum field theory and curved space-times. Its kinematics is based on the geometry of spaces of integrals on W*-algebras, and is independent of probability theory and Hilbert spaces. It allows to recover ordinary quantum mechanical kinematics as well as emergent curved space-times. Unlike the approaches based on lattices of projections, this kinematics provides a direct mathematical generalisation of the ordinary probability theory to the regime of non-commutative algebras. The new quantum information dynamics is provided by the constrained maximisation of quantum relative entropy. The von Neumann-Lueders rule and several other rules of that type, including Bayes' rule in commutative case, are the special cases of it. Using Favretti's generalisation of the Jaynes-Mitchell source theory, I will show how this dynamics allows one to derive `interacting QFT'-like correlation functions and perturbation expansions in geometric terms of experimental control-and-response parameters, without using Hilbert spaces or measure spaces. Finally, I will present a new bayesian interpretation of quantum theory, aimed at dealing with the intersubjective experimental verifiability, but without providing any ontological claims. Quite noticeably, this interpretation leads to a concrete category theoretic formulation of the new foundations.

I will present a newly found duality between an infinite class of 3-dimensional N=4 gauge theories at their conformal IR fixed point and type IIB string theory solutions. This correspondence gives a new tool to explore the strongly coupled phase of the supersymmetric gauge theories in question.