Scientific Series

Time is one of the most basic features of nature which has been extensively discussed in philosophy and physics. In contrast, time is rather neglected in neuroscience; here time is only conceived in terms of our perception and cognition of time. That leaves open the relevance of time itself, that is, how the brain constitutes its own temporal dynamics and how that is relevant for, for instance, consciousness and other mental features like self. My talk will discuss recent findings showing various features of the brain's temporal dynamics and how these are relevant in constituting mental features like consciousness and self as well as their changes in psychiatric disorders. 

I will discuss joint work with Roman Bezrukavnikov on a categorical version of Hikita duality, which relates coherent sheaves on a symplectic resolution to constructible sheaves on the loop space of the dual resolution. I will focus on a basic case, where this can be made very explicit, and finish with some wild speculation on further generalisations.

In this talk I review some of what we have learned from string theory about the criteria one needs for a quantum theory to be able to consistently couple to quantum gravity (the landscape) as opposed to one that looks consistent but cannot be consistently coupled to gravity (the swampland).  Moreover, I review some of the cosmological implications of these conditions for our universe.

We will review the bosonization approach to Fermi liquids in dimensions above one. We will use this to study a sharp change in the neutral excitation spectrum of fermi liquids that occurs beyond a critical interaction strength whereby an unconventional collective mode exits the particle-hole continuum. This mode is a collective shear wave that features purely transverse current oscillations, in analogy to the transverse sound of crystals. Because it is hard to “see" due to its transversal nature, the shear sound might be already “hiding`' in several metals. We will describe two strategies to “see” the shear sound: the appearance of sharp conductivity dips in ultra clean narrow channels and its coupling to charge-fluctuations under weak magnetic fields.

Weak values are quantities accessed through quantum experiments involving weak measurements and post-selection. It has been shown that ‘anomalous’ weak values (those lying beyond the eigenvalue range of the corresponding operator) defy classical explanation in the sense of requiring contextuality [M. F. Pusey, Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 200401, arXiv:1409.1535]. We elaborate on and extend that result in several directions. Firstly, the original theorem requires certain perfect correlations that can never be realised in any actual experiment. Hence, we provide new theorems that allow for a noise-robust experimental verification of contextuality from anomalous weak values. Secondly, the original theorem connects the anomaly to contextuality only in the presence of a whole set of extra operational constraints. Here we clarify the debate surrounding anomalous weak values by showing that these conditions are tight -- if any one of them is dropped, the anomaly can be reproduced classically. Thirdly, whereas the original result required the real part of the weak value to be anomalous, we also give a version for any weak value with nonzero imaginary part. Finally, we show that similar results hold if the weak measurement is performed through qubit pointers, rather than the traditional continuous system. All in all, we provide inequalities for witnessing nonclassicality using experimentally realistic measurements of any anomalous weak value, and clarify what ingredients of the quantum experiment must be missing in any classical model that can reproduce the anomaly.

The averaged null energy condition (ANEC) can be used to put constraints on the scaling dimensions of operators in a local CFTs. In some cases these are stronger than the unitarity bounds. I will consider four dimensional N=1 superconformal field theories (SCFTs) and discuss bounds on generic long and protected multiplets with spin (j,0). Some of them can be obtained analytically and others can be studied by means of a simple semidefinite programming problem. I will also briefly mention the consequences for N=2,4 SCFTs. Based on [1905.09293].

Large galaxy surveys have dramatically improved our understanding of astrophysics and cosmology in the high-redshift universe, but they are fundamentally limited by the need to integrate long enough to detect each individual source. Line intensity mapping has recently arisen as a powerful alternative to these surveys, offering access to fainter sources and larger volumes than conventional techniques. There has been a surge of experimental interest in this technique, with surveys planned or in progress across the electromagnetic spectrum. In this talk, I will describe the wide variety of science which we will obtain from these experiments in the next few years and illustrate the methods by which we can go from maps of confused line emission to useful astrophysics. I will show how intensity maps can give new insights into topics ranging from star formation to the high-redshift ISM to the Hubble constant tension. I will further discuss the utility of combining intensity maps with conventional surveys, both for systematics control and for studying processes like AGN feedback. I will close with a discussion of how modern machine learning methods can be used to further extend what we can learn from these surveys.

We review recent efforts to turn the cosmological constant into a dynamical variable without an ungainly proliferation of free parameters. In a cosmological setting where parity invariance is imposed (along with homogeneity and isotropy) this leads to phenomenological disaster. However, in this theory it is possible to construct parity violating Friedman models due to torsion, a re-enactment of "Cartan's spiral staircase". We examine the Hamiltonian structure of the 2 branches (parity compliant and parity violating) and conclude that they must correspond to different theories, with different numbers of degrees of freedom. Parity violation may save these models phenomenologically, giving observational relevance to the Pontryagin invariant (and possibly the Immirzi parameter) in cosmology.

I will discuss a theorem, joint work in progress with Constantin Teleman, in which we characterize which topological 3-dimensional Chern-Simons theories admit nonzero boundary theories.  Accepting some physical heuristics, it tells which gapped systems in 2+1 dimensions admit only gapless boundary systems.

The event horizon and the Cauchy horizon of an extremal black hole admit conserved charges associated with scalar perturbations. We will see that these charges are externally measurable from null infinity. This suggests that these charges have the potential to serve as an observational signature for extremal black holes. The proof of this result is based on obtaining precise late-time asymptotics for the radiation field of outgoing perturbations.

Topology illuminates properties of geometric spaces which are independent of scale.  Scale-independent features of physical systems play an important role, for example when deducing the large-scale behavior from a small-scale description.  After an introduction to basic topological ideas, I will discuss two joint results with Mike Hopkins, one an application to string theory and the other an application to condensed matter theory.