Colloquia & Seminars

Speaker: Chetan Nayak

Title: Fusion Rule Measurement in a Topological Qubit

Quantum Matter in Mathematics and Physics Seminar Speaker: Chetan Nayak, Microsoft and UCSB Title: Fusion Rule Measurement in a Topological Qubit

Speaker: Sunghyuk Park

Title: Member Seminar

CMSA Member Seminar Speaker: Sunghyuk Park, Harvard CMSA Title: 3D quantum trace map Abstract: I will speak about my recent work (joint with Sam Panitch) constructing the 3d quantum trace map, a homomorphism from the Kauffman bracket skein module of an ideally triangulated 3-manifold to its (square root) quantum gluing module, thereby giving a precise relationship between the two quantizations of the character variety of ideally triangulated 3-manifolds. Our construction is based on the study of stated skein modules and their behavior under splitting, especially into face suspensions.  

Speaker: Chris Fewster

Title: Quantum Energy Inequalities

General Relativity Seminar Speaker: Chris Fewster, York University Title: Quantum Energy Inequalities Abstract: Many theorems of mathematical relativity, including singularity and positive mass theorems, include the classical energy conditions among their hypotheses. However, matter described by quantum field theory can violate the classical energy conditions and indeed there is no lower bound to the energy density at a given point as the quantum state is varied. Do the classical theorems apply to quantised matter? In this talk I discuss Quantum Energy Inequalities, lower bounds on averages of the energy density along timelike curves or over spacetime regions, that have been proved in QFT and are the remnants of the classical energy conditions after quantisation. I will also discuss...

Speaker: Melanie Weber

Title: CMSA Q&A Seminar 4/23/2024

Speaker: Melanie Weber, Harvard Question: What is the Ricci curvature of a graph?

Speaker: Alessandro Chiodo

Title: Algebraic Geometry in String Theory Seminar

Algebraic Geometry in String Theory Seminar Speaker: Alessandro Chiodo, IMJ-Paris Rive Gauche (Jussieu)

Speaker: Mikhail Ivanov

Title: Love and Naturalness

Quantum Matter in Mathematics and Physics Seminar Speaker: Mikhail Ivanov (MIT) Title: Love and Naturalness Abstract: Recent progress in gravitational wave astronomy has spurred the development of efficient tools to describe gravitational binary dynamics. One such tool is classical worldline effective field theory (EFT). In the first part of my talk, I will show how to use this EFT for systematic studies of tidal heating and deformations (Love numbers) of compact objects. I will present a gauge-invariant definition of Love numbers and show how to extract them in a coordinate-independent way from scattering amplitudes of the gravitational Raman process. I will show that the worldline EFT exhibits strong fine-tuning when applied to black holes. This gives rise to a naturalness...

Speaker: Jesse Thaler

Title: What Observables are Safe to Calculate?

Quantum Matter in Mathematics and Physics Seminar Speaker: Jesse Thaler, MIT Title: What Observables are Safe to Calculate? Abstract: In collider physics, perturbative quantum field theory is the workhorse framework for computing theoretical predictions to compare to experimental measurements. An observable is called "safe" if its cross section can be predicted order-by-order in perturbation theory with controlled non-perturbative corrections. In this talk, I show that naive definitions of "safety" are inadequate to determine which observable are perturbatively calculable. I then argue for a more refined definition of safety based on principles from optimal transport theory.

Speaker: Matteo Parisi

Title: Member Seminar

CMSA Member Seminar Speaker: Matteo Parisi, Harvard CMSA

Speaker: Lance Dixon

Title: Colloquium

Colloquium Speaker: Lance Dixon, Stanford  

Title: CMSA Q&A Seminar 4/30/2024

Speaker: Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan Question: What is morphogenesis? (Morphogenesis: geometry and biology)

Title: Active Matter Seminar

Active Matter Seminar Speaker: Jayson Paulose, University of Oregon Title: Non-dispersive one-way signal amplification in sonic metamaterials Abstract: Parametric amplification -- injecting energy into waves via periodic modulation of system parameters -- is typically restricted to specific multiples of the modulation frequency. However, broadband parametric amplification can be achieved in active metamaterials which allow local parameters to be modulated both in space and in time. Inspired by the concept of luminal metamaterials in optics, we describe a mechanism for one-way amplification of sound waves across an entire frequency band using spacetime-periodic modulation of local stiffnesses in the form of a traveling wave. When the speed of the modulation wave approaches that of the speed of sound in the metamaterial...

Speaker: Sarah Harrison

Title: Colloquium

Colloquium Speaker: Sarah Harrison, Northeastern University

Speaker: Albert Law

Title: General Relativity Seminar

General Relativity Seminar Speaker: Albert Law, Stanford

Speaker: Eric Pichon-Pharabod

Title: Algebraic Geometry in String Theory Seminar

Algebraic Geometry in String Theory Seminar Speaker: Eric Pichon-Pharabod, Universite Paris-Saclay

Title: Quantum Matter in Mathematics and Physics Seminar

Quantum Matter in Mathematics and Physics Seminar