Talks

In recent years, precise cosmological measurements have provided strong evidence for new physics beyond the Standard Model, occurring both in the very early universe and also today.  In the near future, large-scale galaxy surveys will open another window on many different areas of physics, including tests of gravity, probes of dark energy, and cosmic inflation.  However, interpreting galaxy surveys presents new challenges, because galaxies are sensitive to astrophysics that are unimportant for the cosmic microwave background.  I will discuss how galaxies may be used to study cosmology, and will argue that the messy astrophysics in galaxies actually offers entirely new probes of fundamental physics.  I will illustrate this with 3 examples, related to inflation, neutrino masses, and the properties of dark matter.

To describe observed phenomena in the lab and to apply superposition principle to gravity, quantum theory needs to be generalized to incorporate indefinite causal structure. Practically, indefinite causal structure offers advantage in communication and computation. Fundamentally, superposing causal structure is one approach to quantize gravity (spacetime metric is equivalent to causal structure plus conformal factor, so quantizing causal structure effectively quantizes gravity). 

We develop a framework to do Operational Probabilistic Theories (OPT) with indefinite causal structure. For the interest of quantum gravity, this framework gives a general prescription to quantize causal structure, assuming linearity is intact. For the interest of quantum foundations, this framework can support new experimental tests about the validity of quantum theory in complex Hilbert space. It also offers opportunities for constructing new OPT models to substitute ordinary quantum theory. Along this direction, we identify principles that single out the complex Hilbert space theory within the general framework.

We will study the entanglement structure of states in Chern-Simons (CS) theory defined on n-copies of a torus. We will focus on states created by performing the path-integral of CS theory on special 3-manifolds, namely link complements of n-component links in S^3. The corresponding entanglement entropies provide new framing independent link-invariants. In U(1)_k CS theory, we will give a general formula for the entanglement entropy across a bi-partition of a generic n-link into sub-links. In the non-Abelian case, we study various interesting 2 & 3-links including the Whitehead link & Borromean rings, both of which have non-trivial entanglement entropies. 

In this talk, we explore the possibility of gravitational wave production due to ultra-relativistic bubble wall collisions. This occurs due to a process of post-inflationary vacuum decay that takes place via quantum tunnelling within a warped throat (of Randall-Sundrum type). We emphasise the differences between vacuum decay via quantum tunnelling, and a thermal first order phase transition, and how potential gravitational wave signals from both processes differ. We explore a specific example in the context of type IIB string theory, although we argue that our conclusions are more generally applicable to theories with hidden sectors featuring metastable vacua. Many such transitions could have occurred in the post-inflationary Universe, as a large number of throats with exponentially different IR scales can be present in the string landscape, potentially leading to several signals of widely different frequencies – a soundscape connected to the landscape of vacua. Future detectors like LISA will have the required sensitivity to detect these potential signals.

I will discuss the potential for the LISA space-based interferometer to detect the stochastic Gravitational Wave (GW) background produced from different mechanisms during inflation. In particular, I will present the GW contributions from particle production during inflation, inflationary spectator fields with varying speed of sound, effective field theories of inflation with specific patterns of symmetry breaking and models leading to the formation of primordial black holes. I will show that LISA is able to probe these inflationary scenarios beyond the irreducible vacuum tensor modes expected from any inflationary background.

Quantum phase transitions arise at zero temperature when ground state energy meets non-analyticity upon tuning a non-thermal parameter.

Physical properties around quantum critical points (QCPs) are of extensive current interests because the fierce competition between critical quantum and thermal fluctuations near the QCPs can strongly affect dynamics and thermodynamics, leading to unconventional physics.

Despite of its great interests, however, it remains challenge to analytically understand such real frequency dynamics in strongly-correlated quantum systems, even for the dynamics in the quantum systems of one spatial dimension.

In the talk, motivated by recent experimental progresses, we shall take the challenge via analytically exploring finite temperature dynamics at the QCP of 3(space)+1(time) quantum φ^4 model, and zero-temperature spin dynamics in the quantum critical regime of XXZ Heisenberg model.

During the exciting excursion, sophisticated but powerful theoretical tools were introduced, and a bunch of new physics beyond conventional pictures were discovered. At the end we shall also discuss the implication of our results for experiments in relevant materials and suggest proper future experimental setups to test our theoretical findings.

By applying loop quantum gravity techniques to 2+1 gravity with a positive cosmological constant Λ, we show how the local gauge symmetry of the theory encoded in the constraint algebra acquires the quantum group structure of SOq(4). By means of an Inonu-Wigner contraction of the quantum group bi-algebra we obtain the kappa-Poincaré algebra of the flat quantum space-time symmetries.

The anti-de Sitter (AdS) space is of great interest in contemporary
theoretical physics due to the AdS/CFT correspondence. However, the
question of stability of AdS space is unanswered till now. After
giving the motivation for studies of asymptotically AdS spaces, I will
review dynamics of such spacetimes in the context of AdS instability
problem. This survey will include: evidence for instability of AdS
space, existence and properties of time-periodic solutions, and
finally an application of analytical technique called multiscale or
resonant approximation approach. If time permits, I will comment on
other asymptotically AdS solutions. Along with the results, I will
highlight some details of methods relevant to the topic.