Scientific Series

There have been recent claims that the weak gravity conjecture (WGC) rules out multi-field natural inflation. I review these claims and then show how 2-field natural inflation can be consistent with even the most stringent form of WGC. I also discuss my recent attempt at numerically proving the WGC via the conformal bootstrap.

One necessity to avoid the measurement problem in quantum mechanics is a clear ontology. Such an ontology is for instance provided by Bohmian mechanics. In the non-relativistic regime, Bohmian mechanics is a theory about particles whose motion is governed by a velocity field. The latter is generated by a wave

function solving the Schrödinger equation. In view of Feynman's criticism towards classical field theory one may wonder whether such a complex object as the wave function is needed to account for quantum phenomena. After all the value of the velocity field, i.e., of the wave function, is only needed in the vicinity of the configuration of the particle positions, however, it is defined everywhere in configuration space, even in places where the configuration might never roam.  In a joint work with M. Hall and H. Wiseman we were able to formulate an approach to quantum mechanics that is capable to describe typical quantum phenomena like interference without a wave function, having only particles.  This approach comes at the cost of introducing many classical worlds, hence the name Many-Interacting-Worlds approach (MIW). In MIW the force on each particle is given by 1) Newton's force describing the interaction within each world and 2) an additional force term describing an interaction between the worlds.  Similar approaches have been suggested by B. Poirier and C. Sebens. I will give an overview on MIW, discuss the nature of its equations of motion, and its empirical import.

The concept of quantum entanglement entropy is playing a key role in understanding the mechanism underlying holography. In this talk we will discuss how entanglement can capture non-trivial geometric properties of the bulk spacetime. The goal is to exploit the interplay between anomalies and entanglement entropy, and for concreteness we will focus on AdS3/CFT2.  Anomalies play as well a key role in RG flows, and in this context we will see how entanglement, anomalies and geometry conspire to capture dynamically the correct physics.

 Super-massive black holes that grow at the center of dark matter halos distort the dark matter within their zone of influence into a steep density spike.  This spike can give rise to strong enhancements of standard indirect detection signals, and can lead to qualitatively new windows onto the physics of the early universe.   I will talk about potential dark matter signals from the Milky Way's central black hole, some astrophysical caveats, and the possible use of black holes as dark matter accelerators.

Recent landmark measurement of the muonic hydrogen Lamb shift generated more questions than answers, as it stands in a sharp disagreement with what was predicted based on known properties of muons and protons. It adds on top of the existing anomalies in the muon sector (discrepancy in g-2 and in radiative muon capture). I will critically review some suggestions for the new physics explanations of these anomalies, and describe their implications. One of the outstanding effects, not tested for muons, is the parity violation in the neutral current channel, which has proven to be an extremely difficult problem, and where the enhancement relative to the standard model prediction is still possible. Following my suggestion for a new way to approach this measurement, this summer the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland will conduct a preliminary muonic atom experiment, tentatively called mu-ARC.

Freeze-in is a general and calculable mechanism for dark matter production in the early universe. Assuming a standard cosmological history, such a framework predicts metastable particles with a lifetime generically too long to observe their decays in a collider environment. In this talk I will report work in progress where we consider alternative cosmologies, where entropy dumped in the primordial Standard Model plasma leads to shorter lifetime for the metastable particles in order to reproduce the observed dark matter density. Famous examples are moduli decays in SUSY theories and inflationary reheating. Remarkably, for a large region of the parameter space the decay lengths are in the displaced vertex range and they can be observable at present and future colliders.

A classical Einstein-Rosen bridge changes the topology of spacetime,allowing (for example) electric field lines to penetrate it. It has recently been suggested that in the bulk of a theory of quantum gravity, the quantum entanglement of ordinary perturbative quanta should be viewed as creating a quantum version of an Einstein-Rosen bridge between the quanta, or a “quantum wormhole”. For this “ER=EPR” correspondence to make sense it then seems necessary for a quantum wormhole to allow (for example) electric field lines to penetrate it. I will discuss (within low-energy effective field theory) whether or not this happens.

I propose a quantum gravity model in which the fundamental degrees of freedom are pure information bits for both discrete space-time points and links connecting them. The Hamiltonian is a very simple network model consisting of a ferromagnetic Ising model for space-time vertices and an antiferromagnetic Ising model for the links. As a result of the frustration arising between these two terms, the ground state self-organizes as a new type of low-clustering graph with finite Hausdorff dimension. The model has three quantum phases: a mean field phase in which the spectral and Hausdorff dimensions coincide and are larger then 4. A fluctuations-dominated phase in which the Hausdorff dimension can only be 4 and the spectral dimension is lower than the Hausdorff dimension and a disordered phase in which there is no space-time interpretation. The large-scale dimension 4 of the universe is related to the upper critical dimension 4 of the Ising model. An ultraviolet fixed point at the lower critical dimension of the Ising model implies the absence of space-time at very small scales. At finite temperatures the universe emerges without big bang and without singularities from a ferromagnetic phase transition in which space-time itself forms out of a hot soup of information bits. When the temperature is lowered the universe unfolds and expands by lowering its connectivity, a mechanism I have called topological expansion. The model admits also macroscopic black hole configurations corresponding to graphs containing holes with no space time inside and around which there are "Schwarzschild-like horizons" with a lower spectral dimension and an entropy proportional to their surface. 

The known basic building blocks of matter, the quarks and leptons, come in three generations or flavors.
The masses and interactions of the different flavors show a very hierarchical structure and the origin of these hierarchies remains an unsolved mystery of particle physics. The same hierarchies lead to a very high sensitivity of flavor changing processes to new undiscovered particles even outside the reach of direct searches at particle colliders.
In this colloquium I will present recent developments in constructing a theory of flavor and highlight the complementarity of flavor, Higgs, and collider physics in searching for new phenomena at the TeV scale and beyond.

Most of the matter in the Universe is dark; determining the composition and interactions of this dark matter is among the defining challenges in particle physics today. I will briefly summarize the present status of dark matter searches and the case for exploration beyond the WIMP paradigm, particularly “light dark matter” close to but beneath the weak scale. I will define sharp milestones in sensitivity needed to decisively explore the best-motivated light dark matter scenarios, and describe experimental techniques to reach these milestones over the next several years.

Using quantum control in foundational experiments allows new theoretical and experimental possibilities. We show how, e.g.,  quantum controlling devices reverse a temporal ordering in  detection. We consider probing of wave–particle duality in   quantum-controlled and the entanglement-assisted delayed-choice experiments. Then we discuss other situations where quantum control may be useful, and finally demonstrate how the techniques we developed are applied to the study of  consistency of the classically reasonable requirements.  In a version of the delayed-choice experiment which ostensibly combines determinism, independence of hidden variables on the conducted experiments, and wave-particle objectivity we show that these ideas are incompatible with any theory, not only with quantum mechanics.

We review recent versions of the information paradox, framed in the context of the AdS/CFT correspondence. We describe how they can be resolved using "state dependent" bulk to boundary maps for the black hole interior in AdS/CFT. We argue that this feature is necessary not only for single sided black holes but also for the eternal black hole.

We resolve some potential ambiguities in this map. We extend this construction of the black hole interior to entangled systems and show how a version of the ER=EPR conjecture emerges naturally in this process. Finally, we comment on the possible semi-classical origins of state-dependence.