Princeton University Gravity Initiative Spring Seminar Series

Abstract: Celestial holography aims to uncover aspects of a theory of quantum gravity in asymptotically flat spacetime by studying a putative dual "celestial" conformal field theory (cCFT) that lives on its boundary. A primary way to do this is to match the symmetries on either side of this duality, namely via studies of their associated algebras. In this talk I will give an overview of some important aspects of the celestial holography program and discuss a recent paper where we have understood how deformations of cCFT symmetry algebras arise from studying the bulk theory in certain non-trivial backgrounds.