Probability Seminar Speaker: Hugo Falconet (Courant Institute, NYU) Title: Liouville quantum gravity from random matrix dynamics Abstract: The Liouville quantum gravity measure is a properly renormalized exponential of the 2d GFF. In this talk, I will explain how it appears as a limit of natural random matrix dynamics: if (U_t) is a Brownian motion on the unitary […]
https://youtu.be/hhjIPdyIM3U General Relativity Seminar Speaker: Pierre Heidmann (Johns Hopkins) Title: Schwarzschild-like Topological Solitons in Gravity Abstract: We present large classes of non-extremal solitons in gravity that are asymptotic to four-dimensional Minkowski spacetime plus extra compact dimensions. They correspond to smooth horizonless geometries induced by topology in spacetime and supported by electromagnetic flux, which characterize coherent states of quantum gravity. We discuss […]
Member Seminar Speaker: Mauricio Romo Title: Quantum trace and length conjecture for hyperbolic knot Abstract: I will define the quantum trace map for an ideally triangulated hyperbolic knot complement on S^3. This map assigns an operator to each element L of the Kauffman Skein module of knot complement. Motivated by an interpretation of this operator in the context of […]
Quantum Matter Seminar Speaker: Pok Man Tam (University of Pennsylvania) Title: Topology of the Fermi sea: Ordinary metals as topological materials Abstract: It has long been known that the quantum ground state of a metal is characterized by an abstract manifold in momentum space called the Fermi sea. Fermi sea can be distinguished topologically in […]
Swampland Seminar Speaker: Alvaro Herraez (Saclay) Title: The Emergence Proposal in Quantum Gravity and the Species Scale Abstract: The Emergence Proposal claims that in Quantum Gravity the kinetic terms of the fields in the IR emerge from integrating out (infinite) towers of particles up to the QG cutoff. After introducing this proposal in the context of the Swampland […]
https://youtu.be/mtheRASO2e0 Topological Quantum Matter Seminar Speaker: Jérôme Faist (ETH Zurich) Title: Vacuum fluctuations in cavities: breakdown of the topological protection in the integer Quantum Hall effect Abstract: When a collection of electronic excitations are strongly coupled to a single mode cavity, mixed light-matter excitations called polaritons are created. The situation is especially interesting when the […]
Colloquium Speaker: Hidenori Tanaka (NTT Research at Harvard) Title: Noether’s Learning Dynamics: Role of Symmetry Breaking in Neural Networks Abstract: In nature, symmetry governs regularities, while symmetry breaking brings texture. In artificial neural networks, symmetry has been a central design principle, but the role of symmetry breaking is not well understood. Here, we develop a […]
Probability Seminar Speaker: Ainesh Bakshi (MIT) Title: Outlier-Robust Algorithms for Clustering Non-Spherical Mixtures Abstract: In this talk, we describe the first polynomial time algorithm for robustly clustering a mixture of statistically-separated, high-dimensional Gaussians. Prior to our work this question was open even in the special case of 2 components in the mixture. Our main conceptual contribution […]
General Relativity Seminar Speaker: Semyon Dyatlov (MIT) Title: Ringdown and geometry of trapping for black holes Abstract: Quasi-normal modes are complex exponential frequencies appearing in long time expansions of solutions to linear wave equations on black hole backgrounds. They appear in particular during the ringdown phase of a black hole merger when the dynamics is expected to […]
Active Matter Seminar Speaker: Max Prigozhin (Harvard) Title: Dynamic and multicolor electron microscopy Abstract: My lab is developing biophysical methods to achieve multicolor and dynamic biological imaging at the molecular scale. Our approach to capturing the dynamics of cellular processes involves cryo-vitrifying samples after known time delays following stimulation using custom cryo- plunging and high-pressure freezing […]
Member Seminar Speaker: Damian van de Heisteeg Title: Light states in the interior of CY moduli spaces Abstract: In string theory one finds that states become massless as one approaches boundaries in Calabi-Yau moduli spaces. In this talk we look in the opposite direction, that is, we search for points where the mass gap for these light […]
Quantum Matter Seminar Speaker: Gabriel Wong (Harvard CMSA) Title: 3D gravity and gravitational entanglement entropy Abstract: Recent progress in AdS/CFT has provided a good understanding of how the bulk spacetime is encoded in the entanglement structure of the boundary CFT. However, little is known about how spacetime emerges directly from the bulk quantum theory. We […]