Talks

The Principle of Equivalence, stating that all laws of physics take their special-relativistic form in any local inertial frame, lies at the core of General Relativity. Because of its fundamental status, this principle could be a very powerful guide in formulating physical laws at regimes where both gravitational and quantum effects are relevant. However, its formulation implicitly presupposes that reference frames are abstracted from classical systems (rods and clocks) and that the spacetime background is well defined. Here, we we generalise the Einstein Equivalence Principle to quantum reference frames (QRFs) and to superpositions of spacetimes. We build a unitary transformation to the QRF of a quantum system in curved spacetime, and in a superposition thereof. In both cases, a QRF can be found such that the metric looks locally flat. Hence, one cannot distinguish, with a local measurement, if the spacetime is flat or curved, or in a superposition of such spacetimes. This transformation identifies a Quantum Local Inertial Frame. These results extend the Principle of Equivalence to QRFs in a superposition of gravitational fields. Verifying this principle may pave a fruitful path to establishing solid conceptual grounds for a future theory of quantum gravity.

The defining feature of a classical black hole horizon is that it is a "perfect absorber". Any evidence showing otherwise

would indicate a departure from the standard black-hole picture. Due to the presence of the horizon, black holes in binaries exchange

energy with their orbit, which backreacts on the orbit. This is called tidal heating. Tidal heating can be used to test the presence of a horizon.

I will discuss the prospect of tidal heating as a discriminator between black holes and horizonless compact objects, especially supermassive ones, in LISA.

I will also discuss a similar prospect for distinguishing between neutron stars and black holes in the LIGO band.

No. Obviously not. It's a daft question. But, buried underneath
this daft question is an extremely interesting one: is it possible to
simulate the known laws of physics on a computer? Remarkably, there is a
mathematical theorem, due to Nielsen and Ninomiya, that says the answer is
no. I'll explain this theorem, the underlying reasons for it, and some
recent work attempting to circumvent it.

I will review recent progress in application of separation of variables method.

In particular I will review the construction for the integrable spin chains with gl(N) symmetry. 

By finding, for the first time, the matrix elements of the SoV measure explicitly I will show how to compute various correlation functions and wave function overlaps in a simple determinant form. 

General philosophy of application of these methods to the problems related to AdS/CFT, N=4 SYM etc. will be discussed too. 

With much of the cosmological information in the primary CMB having already been mined, the next decade of CMB observations will revolve around the secondary CMB lensing effect, which will touch nearly all aspects of observation in some way. At the same time, the increasingly low noise levels of these future observations will render existing "quadratic estimator" methods for analyzing CMB lensing obsolete. This leaves us in an exciting place where new methods need to be developed to fully take advantage of the upcoming generation of CMB data just on our doorstep. I will describe my work developing such new lensing analysis tool, made possible by Bayesian methods, modern statistical techniques, and borrowing ideas from machine learning. I will present the recent first-ever application of such methods to data (from the South Pole Telescope; https://arxiv.org/abs/2012.01709) and discuss prospects for this analysis in the future with regards to not just lensing but also primordial B modes, reionization, and extragalactic foreground fields.

In this talk I will present a general framework to distinguish different classes of charge insulators based on whether or not they insulate or conduct higher multipole moments (dipole, quadrupole, etc.). This formalism applies to generic many-body systems that support multipolar conservation laws. Applications of this work provide a key link between recently discovered higher order topological phases and fracton phases of matter.