Member Seminar

Speaker: Dan Kapec

Title: Black Holes, 2D Gravity, and Random Matrices

Abstract: I will discuss old and new connections between black hole physics, 2D quantum gravity, and random matrix theory. Black holes are believed to be very complicated, strongly interacting quantum mechanical systems, and certain aspects of their Hamiltonians should be well approximated by random matrix theory. The near-horizon effective dynamics of near-extremal black holes is two-dimensional, and many theories of 2D quantum gravity are known to have random matrix descriptions. All of these expectations were recently borne out in surprising detail with the solution of the Jackiw-Teitelboim (JT) model, but this result raises more questions than it answers. If time permits, I will discuss some extensions of these results and possible future directions.