Physics

Six dimensional superconformal quantum field theories are in between the most interesting quantum systems whose existence is guaranteed by stringy arguments. In this seminar I am going to discuss some aspects of their geometric engineering using F...

Four sets of results in lattice QCD thermodynamics matured to a well-established status in recent years: the nature of the transition, the transition temperature, the equation of state and various fluctuations. This means, that all systematic...

There is growing evidence that the central charges a and c count degrees of freedom of four-dimensional conformal field theories. I will present further support for this connection in a supersymmetric context by demonstrating that they may be...

Experimental constraints on models such as supersymmetry have challenged our assumptions about naturalness, while simultaneously pushing exploration into alternatives that might be more natural. One such scenario is supersymmetry with Dirac...

I will discuss the spectrum of 2d CFTs in the large c limit. In view of holographic CFTs, I will give necessary and sufficient conditions on the light spectrum for a Hawking-Page transition to occur. As examples of candidate holographic CFTs I will...

In the presence of strong magnetic fields, the QCD vacuum may become unstable towards condensation of charged rho mesons, forming a superconducting state. I will talk about our investigation of this possible instability in a well-known holographic...

The fundamental string length explicitly breaks scale invariance. However, in field theory, the gravitational constant, which is directly related to the string length, can be promoted to a dynamical field if the standard model coupled to gravity (SM...

Line operators in class S theories correspond to network operators on the associated Riemann surface. I will describe the algebra of functions on the moduli space of flat SL(N)-connections in terms of a set of networks that are naturally associated...