Scientific Series

Quantum Mechanics has been shown to provide a rigorous foundation for Statistical Mechanics. Concentration of measure, or typicality, is the main tool to construct a purely quantum derivation for the methods of Statistical Mechanics. From this point of view statistical ensembles are effective description for isolated quantum systems, since typically a random pure state of the system will have properties similar to those of the ensemble. Nevertheless, it is often argued that most of the states of the Hilbert space are not relevant for realistic systems. This talk will address this issue, presenting recent results on the emergence of typicality in the context of matrix product states, a set of physically and computationally relevant states associated to many-body Hamiltonians.

Cosmic strings, generic in brane inflationary models, may be detected by the current generation of gravitational wave detectors. An important source of gravitational wave emission is from isolated events on the string called cusps and kinks. I first review cosmic strings, discussing their effective action and motion, and showing how cusps and kinks arise dynamically. I then show how allowing for the motion of the strings in extra dimensions gives a potentially significant reduction in signal strength, and comment on current LIGO bounds.

I will discuss a powerful way to examine the nature of dark energy using a measurement of the growth of galaxy clusters over cosmic time. A novel technique that uses the Cosmic Microwave Background as a backlight allows the detection of galaxy clusters out to the time of their first formation. Using this technique, I will present the first constraints on cosmological parameters obtained with the Atacama Cosmology Telescope, as well as exciting prospects for the future.

I discuss a new scenario called Hylogenesis (hylo=matter) that explains the baryon and dark matter densities of Universe in a unified way. Early universe dynamics generate the baryon asymmetry and an equal antibaryon asymmetry in a GeV-scale hidden sector. The hidden antibaryons are dark matter. Our model has a striking signature that dark matter can annihilate baryons, mimicking nucleon decay. I discuss the effective nucleon decay rates and implications for existing nucleon decay searches.

We describe a classification of 4d N=2 superconformal theories obtained from the compactification of 6d N=(2,0) A_N theories on punctured Riemann surfaces. We show the basic building blocks to construct any such theory and its various S-dual frames. A host of new S-dualities and interacting (non-Lagrangian) superconformal theories are unconvered. We also compute various properties of these interacting superconformal theories.

Black holes are associated with a variety of the most extreme and counter-intuitive phenomena in astronomy and physics. However, despite the passage of nearly 40 years since the discovery of the first strong black hole candidate, we have scant evidence that general relativity provides an accurate description of gravity in the immediate vicinity of astrophysical black holes. Over the next few years this will change dramatically.

The simulation of systems of anyons offers a significant challenge to the condensed matter physicist. These systems are presently of substantial theoretical and experimental interest due to their potential for universal quantum computation, but due to their non-trivial exchange statistics, the tools available for their study have been limited. In this talk, I will present a formalism whereby any existing tensor network algorithm may be adapted for use with both Abelian and non-Abelian anyons, culminating in our recent simulations of infinite 1-D chains of interacting anyons using the Multi-scale Entanglement Renormalisation Ansatz, or MERA, demonstrating that tensor network algorithms may be effectively employed in the study of anyonic systems.

Scattering amplitudes in gauge theories and gravity have extraordinary properties that are completely invisible in the textbook formulation of quantum field theory using Feynman diagrams. In the standard approach--going back to the birth of quantum field theory--space-time locality and quantum-mechanical unitarity are made manifest at the cost of introducing huge gauge redundancies in our description of physics. As a consequence, apart from the very simplest processes, Feynman diagram calculations are enormously complicated, while the final results turn out to be amazingly simple, exhibiting hidden infinite-dimensional symmetries. This strongly suggests the existence of a new formulation of quantum field theory where locality and unitarity are derived concepts, while other physical principles are made more manifest. Rapid advances have been made towards uncovering this new picture, especially for the maximally supersymmetric gauge theory in four dimensions. These developments have interwoven and exposed connections between a remarkable collection of ideas from string theory, twistor theory and integrable systems, as well as a number of new mathematical structures in algebraic geometry. In this talk I will review the current state of this subject and and describe a number of ongoing directions of research.

I will discuss a novel approach to time-dependent background fields of string theory, which allows the identification of configurations which satisfy the conformal invariance conditions to all orders in the Regge slope parameter alpha'. I will present a graviton, dilaton and tachyon configuration which is a resummation of all orders in the Regge slope and is shown to satisfy the conformal invariance conditions order by order, to all orders in alpha', up to field redefinitions which do not change the dependence of the fields on the target space-time coordinates, due to a property termed as "homogeneity" of the Weyl anomaly coefficients. It describes an inflationary universe in the sigma-model frame, while in the Einstein frame it corresponds either to a de Sitter or to a power-law universe, depending on the values of the dilaton and the tachyon amplitudes. Possible ways to connect these different solutions, which may correspond to different epochs of the universe, will also be discussed.

Gauge/gravity duality, a concept which emerged from string theory, holds promise for revealing the secrets of certain strongly interacting real world condensed matter systems. Historically, string theorists presented their subject as a promising framework for a quantum theory of gravity. More recently, the AdS/CFT correspondence and gauge/gravity dualities have emerged as powerful tools for using what we already know about gravity to investigate the properties of strongly interacting field theories. I will cherry pick and discuss a few recent developments where black holes are used to calculate the thermodynamic and transport properties of quantum critical systems, superconductors, and superfluids.

Symmetric monoidal categories provide a convenient and enlightening framework within which to compare and contrast physical theories on a common mathematical footing. In this talk we consider two theories: stabiliser qubit quantum mechanics and the toy bit theory proposed by Rob Spekkens. Expressed in the categorical framework the two theories look very similar mathematically, reflecting their common physical features. There are differences though: in particular a finite Abelian group emerges naturally in the categorical framework, and this group is different in each case ($Z_4$ for the stabiliser theory and $Z_2 \times Z_2$ for the toy bit theory). It turns out that this mathematical difference corresponds directly with a key physical difference between the theories: the stabiliser theory cannot be modelled by local hidden variables, while the toy bit theory can. This analysis can be extended to other Abelian groups yielding a group-theoretic criterion for determining the possibility of local hidden variable interpretations for other physical theories.

In the picture of eternal inflation, our observable universe resides inside a single bubble nucleated from an inflating false vacuum. Some of the theories giving rise to eternal inflation predict that we have causal access to collisions with other bubble universes, providing an opportunity to confront these theories with observation. In this talk, I will outline progress on the theoretical description of eternal inflation and bubble collisions, and present results from the first search for the effects of bubble collisions in the WMAP 7-year data.