Physics

I will discuss the contribution of higher-genus surfaces in JT gravity. In work with Saad and Shenker, we use Mirzakhani's recursion and work of Eynard and Orantin to show that these contributions exactly coincide with the genus expansion of a...

I will review the perturbative (genus) expansion of one-matrix integrals via the loop equations, and the streamlined version due to Eynard. I will review double-scaled matrix integrals and discuss a heuristic method for computing some...

Light scalar dark matter fields can exhibit several interesting aspects to their cosmological evolution. I will focus mostly on structure formation with ultralight axions and with the QCD axion. The standard scenario leads to a suppression of...

Infinite-dimensional conformal symmetry in two dimensions equips 2d CFTs with an integrable structure - an infinite tower of quantum KdV charges in involution. I will discuss the role of this integrable structure in constraining thermalization and...

In 1975 Hawking showed that the evaporation of black holes creates a problem for unitarity. This argument can be made rigorous through the small corrections theorem, and implies that there must be a fundamental change in our picture of semiclassical...

We revisit the problem of baryons in the large N limit of Quantum Chromodynamics. A special case in which the theory of Skyrmions is inapplicable is one-flavor QCD, where there are no light pions to construct the baryon from. More generally, the...

I will give a review of recent progress in studying 6D SYM and supergravity amplitudes. Based on the spinor-helicity formalism of Cheung and O'Connell, recent work has shown that superamplitudes in 6D have a simple and compact form, not unlike 4D...

Beem et al. used a superconformal supercharge to localize N=4 Yang-Mills to a two-dimensional chiral theory. I will discuss my work with Gaiotto, in which we analyze the holographic dual of this localization. We argue that the same localization...

Every (2+1) dimensional lattice model with an energy gap is believed to be described by a topological quantum field theory (TQFT) in the low energy, long wavelength limit. What this means concretely is that every lattice model of this kind is...