Swampland Seminar Speaker: Jake McNamara (Caltech) Title: Parity and Cobordism Abstract: The swampland cobordism conjecture provides a convenient way to discuss conserved charges associated with the topology of spacetime. However, much of the power of the cobordism conjecture comes from a mathematical black box: the Adams spectral sequence. In this talk, I will give physical meaning to […]
Speaker: Tristan Collins, MIT Title: Complete Calabi-Yau metrics: Recent progress and open problems Abstract: Complete Calabi-Yau metrics are fundamental objects in Kahler geometry arising as singularity models or "bubbles" in degenerations of compact Calabi-Yau manifolds. The existence of these metrics and their relationship with algebraic geometry are the subjects of several long standing conjectures due […]
Member Seminar Speaker: Farzan Vafa Title: Dynamics of active nematic defects on cones Abstract: In the first part of the talk, we investigate the ground-state configurations of two-dimensional liquid crystals with p-fold rotational symmetry (p-atics) on cones. The cone apex develops an effective topological charge, which in analogy to electrostatics, leads to defect absorption and emission […]
Probability Seminar Speaker: Zhigang Yao (Harvard CMSA/National University of Singapore) Title: Manifold Fitting: An Invitation to Statistics Abstract: This manifold fitting problem can go back to H. Whitney’s work in the early 1930s (Whitney (1992)), and finally has been answered in recent years by C. Fefferman’s works (Fefferman, 2006, 2005). The solution to the Whitney extension problem […]
Active Matter Seminar Speaker: Jörn Dunkel, MIT Title: Towards programmable living materials and quantitative models of active matter Abstract: Over the last two decades, major progress has been made in understanding the self-organization principles of active matter. A wide variety of experimental model systems, from self-driven colloids to active elastic materials, has been established, and an extensive […]
https://youtu.be/taeAnXApzg4 General Relativity Seminar Speaker: Kwinten Fransen (UC Santa Barbara) Title: Quasinormal Modes from Penrose Limits Abstract: In this talk, I will explain how to describe quasinormal modes with large real frequencies using Penrose limits. To do so, I first recall relevant aspects of the Penrose limit, and its resulting plane wave spacetimes, as well as quasinormal […]
Quantum Matter Seminar Speaker: Rahul Sahay (Harvard) Title: Quantum Spin Lakes: NISQ-Era Spin Liquids from Non-Equilibrium Dynamics Abstract: While many-body quantum systems can in principle host exotic quantum spin liquid (QSL) states, realizing them as ground states in experiments can be prohibitively difficult. In this talk, we show how non-equilibrium dynamics can provide a streamlined […]
Member Seminar Speaker: Dan Kapec Title: Hints of Flat Space Holography Abstract: Despite our detailed understanding of holography in Anti-de Sitter space, flat space holography remains somewhat mysterious. “Celestial CFT” is a formalism which attempts to recast quantum gravity in (d+2)-dimensional asymptotically flat spacetimes in terms of a d-dimensional Euclidean conformal field theory residing at the conformal […]
Speaker: Netta Engelhardt (MIT) Title: The Black Hole Information Paradox: A Resolution on the Horizon? Abstract: The black hole information paradox — whether information escapes an evaporating black hole or not — remains one of the most longstanding mysteries of theoretical physics. The apparent conflict between validity of semiclassical gravity at low energies and unitarity […]
Probability Seminar Speaker: Vishesh Jain (University of Illinois Chicago) Title: Thresholds for edge colorings Abstract: We show that if each edge of the complete bipartite graph K_{n,n} is given a random list of C(\log n) colors from , then with high probability, there is a proper edge coloring where the color of each edge comes […]
https://youtu.be/z7q0LGNVPII General Relativity Seminar Speaker: Nikolaos Athanasiou (University of Crete, Greece) Title: Formation of trapped surfaces in the Einstein-Yang-Mills system Abstract: The purpose of this talk is to give an overview of a semi-global existence result and a trapped surface formation results in the context of the Einstein-Yang-Mills system. Adopting a “signature for decay rates” […]
Algebraic Geometry in String Theory Seminar Speaker: Chao-Ming Lin (University of California, Irvine) Title: On the convexity of general inverse $\sigma_k$ equations and some applications Abstract: In this talk, I will show my recent work on general inverse $\sigma_k$ equations and the deformed Hermitian-Yang-Mills equation (hereinafter the dHYM equation). First, I will show my recent […]