Physics

We develop an effective field theory for dissipative fluids which governs the dynamics of long-lived gapless modes associated with conserved quantities. The resulting theory gives an action formulation of fluctuating hydrodynamics which incorporates...

Abstract: Soft theorems for the scattering of low energy photons and gravitons and cosmological consistency relations on the squeezed-limit correlation functions are both understood to be consequences of invariance under large gauge transformations...

Abstract: I'll review a few recent papers that discuss the subject in the title, focusing on results based on AdS/CFT.References:https://arxiv.org/abs/1603.09745http://arxiv.org/pdf/1510.07911.pdfhttps://arxiv.org/abs/1509.06374For background, see:h...

We present a method in 2d CFT for calculating correlators in a state corresponding to the spherical collapse of a shell of matter in three dimensional quantum gravity. In field theory terms, we describe the equilibration process, from early times to...

The extremal gravity proposal is a conjectured duality between pure gravity in three dimensions and a speculative set of 2d CFTS. I will discuss a computation of the number of black hole micro-states in these theories. This micro-state counting...

One can easily be frustrated by the tremendous redundancy in possible physical description. By this I mean the freedom to choose gauge, make field redefinitions, add any amount of auxiliary spectator matter, and the such. Happily we can exploit...

I will describe a method for determining the spins of framed BPS states supported on line defects in 4d N=2 theories of class S. Via the 2d-4d correspondence, this amounts to constructing quantum holonomies on a punctured Riemann surface. The main...

This talk will describe recent work on the classification of elliptic Calabi-Yau threefolds and fourfolds, and consequences for the physics of supersymmetric F-theory vacua. The mathematical theory of minimal surfaces and the physically-motivated...

N=8 supergravity is not renormalizable. This means the presense of power divergences in the amplitudes. There are also logarithmic divergences that multiply higher-dimensional counterterms. In all probability, the latter appear starting from the 7...