Talks

One of the most challenging problems in theoretical physics today is the so called cosmological constant problem. While current observational constraints are consistent with the predictions of GR with a tiny cosmological constant, often referred to as the dark energy, it remains possible that it\'s the deviation of the law of gravity at large distance from Einstein\'s theory that resolves the puzzle. In this talk, I will briefly review some of the theoretical attempts made along this line, including the simple massive gravity, large extra dimensions, Unimodular gravity, classically constrained gravity, as well as their difficulties. I will then focus on some most recent study on the theory of massive graviton in de Sitter space, which may be more closely related to the reality both today and during the inflationary epoch. In particular, I would describe a model, in which one is able to open up the forbidden mass range of the graviton on a de Sitter background discovered by Higuchi.

In an asymptotically anti-de Sitter space, three-dimensional topologically massive gravity has some remarkable properties, which suggest interesting applications to quantum gravity. Unfortunately, though, the theory appears to be unstable, even at the special \'chiral\' value of the coupling. I will discuss recent work, and recent controversies, in this field.

We study the possibility of a self-correcting quantum memory based on stabilizer codes with geometrically-local stabilizer generators. We prove that the distance of such stabilizer codes in D dimensions is bounded by O(L^{D-1}) where L is the linear size of the D-dimensional lattice. In addition, we prove that in D=1 and D=2, the energy barrier separating different logical states is upper-bounded by a constant independent of L. This shows that in such systems there is no natural energy dissipation mechanism which prevents errors from accumulating. Our results are in contrast with the existence of a classical 2D self-correcting memory, the 2D Ising ferromagnet.

The “clock ambiguity” is a general feature of standard formulations of quantum gravity, as well as a much wider class of theoretical frameworks. The clock ambiguity completely undermines any attempt at uniquely specifying laws of physics at the fundamental level. In this talk I explain in simple terms how the clock ambiguity arises. I then present a number of concrete results which suggest that a statistical approach to physical laws could allow sharp predictions to emerge despite the clock ambiguity. Along the way, I get to ask some interesting questions about what we expect of fundamental laws of physics, and give some surprising answers.