• Summing Over Bordisms In 2d TQFT

    Virtual

    Abstract: Some recent work in the quantum gravity literature has considered what happens when the amplitudes of a TQFT are summed over the bordisms between fixed in-going and out-going boundaries. We will comment on these constructions. The total amplitude, that takes into account all in-going and out-going boundaries can be presented in a curious factorized form. […]

  • 2-categorical 3d mirror symmetry

    Virtual

    Abstract: It is by now well-known that mirror symmetry may be expressed as an equivalence between categories associated to dual Kahler manifolds. Following a proposal of Teleman, we inaugurate a program to understand 3d mirror symmetry as an equivalence between 2-categories associated to dual holomorphic symplectic stacks. We consider here the abelian case, where our theorem […]

  • Resonant side-jump thermal Hall effect of phonons coupled to dynamical defects

    Virtual

    https://youtu.be/nnczlM1xhy4 Abstract: We present computations of the thermal Hall coefficient of phonons scattering off defects with multiple energy levels. Using a microscopic formulation based on the Kubo formula, we find that the leading contribution perturbative in the phonon-defect coupling is of the 'side-jump' type, which is proportional to the phonon lifetime. This contribution is at resonance […]

  • Anomalies, topological insulators and Kaehler-Dirac fermions

    Virtual

    Abstract: Motivated by a puzzle arising from recent work on staggered lattice fermions we introduce Kaehler-Dirac fermions and describe their connection both to Dirac fermions and staggered fermions. We show that they suffer from a gravitational anomaly that breaks a chiral U(1) symmetry specific to Kaehler-Dirac fermions down to Z_4 in any even dimension. In odd dimensions […]

  • 4d strings at strong coupling

    Virtual

    Speakers: Fernando Marchesano (UAM-CSIC, Madrid)  and Max Wiesner (Harvard CMSA) Title: 4d strings at strong coupling As usual, the format will be 45 min talk + 30 min discussion, to encourage participation from the audience. Looking forward to seeing you there!

  • Callan Rubakov Effect and Higher Charge Monopoles

    Virtual

    Abstract: In this talk we will discuss the interaction between magnetic monopoles and massless fermions. In the 1980’s Callan and Rubakov showed that in the simplest example and that fermion-monopole interactions catalyze proton decay in GUT completions of the standard model. Here we will explain how fermions in general representations interact with general spherically symmetric monopoles […]

  • Scaling Laws and Their Implications for Coding AI

    Virtual

    https://youtu.be/Suhp3OLASSo Speaker: Jared Kaplan, Johns Hopkins Dept. of Physics & Astronomy Title: Scaling Laws and Their Implications for Coding AI Abstract:  Scaling laws and associated downstream trends can be used as an organizing principle when thinking about current and future ML progress.  I will briefly review scaling laws for generative models in a number of […]

  • Dimers and webs

    Virtual

    Speaker: Richard Kenyon (Yale) Title: Dimers and webs Abstract: We consider SL_n-local systems on graphs on surfaces and show how the associated Kasteleyn matrix can be used to compute probabilities of various topological events involving the overlay of n independent dimer covers (or “n-webs”). This is joint work with Dan Douglas and Haolin Shi.

  • Virtual localization for Artin stacks

    Virtual

    Abstract: This is a report about work in progress with: Adeel Khan, Aloysha Latyntsev, Hyeonjun Park and Charanya Ravi. We will describe a virtual Atiyah-Bott formula for Artin stacks.  In the Deligne-Mumford case our methods allow us to remove the global resolution hypothesis for the virtual normal bundle.

  • Extreme Black Holes: Anabasis and Accidental Symmetry

    Virtual

      https://youtu.be/USKZjJ8_LI0   Speaker: Achilleas Porfyriadis, Harvard Black Hole Initiative Title: Extreme Black Holes: Anabasis and Accidental Symmetry Abstract: The near-horizon region of black holes near extremality is universally AdS_2-like. In this talk I will concentrate on the simplest example of  AdS_2 x S^2 as the near-horizon of (near-)extreme Reissner-Nordstrom. I will first explain the SL(2)transformation properties of the spherically […]

  • Holographic Cone of Average Entropies and Universality of Black Holes

    Virtual

    Speaker: Bartek Czech, Tsinghua University Title: Holographic Cone of Average Entropies and Universality of Black Holes Abstract:  In the AdS/CFT correspondence, the holographic entropy cone, which identifies von Neumann entropies of CFT regions that are consistent with a semiclassical bulk dual, is currently known only up to n=5 regions. I explain that average entropies of p-partite subsystems can […]

  • Higgs-Coulomb correspondence in abelian GLSM

    Virtual

    Abstract: We construct a certain type of Gauged Linear Sigma Model quasimap invariants that generalize the original ones and are easier to compute. Higgs-Coulomb correspondence provides identification of generating functions of our invariants with certain analytic functions that can be represented as generalized inverse Mellin transforms. Analytic continuation of these functions provides wall-crossing results for GLSM […]