Archive of IAS Monday High Energy Theory Seminars

Abstract: It is believed that topologically ordered gapped local Hamiltonians in 2+1d consisting of commuting terms may not realize a chiral anyon theory. There is even a formula that expresses the chiral central charge of the edge theory as an...

Abstract: Conformal field theories in 3D are central to condensed-matter and high-energy physics. Among them, critical gauge theories, especially Chern-Simons-matter theories, stand out: They describe transitions where one or both phases are...

Abstract: Entanglement Bootstrap is a research program to understand and extract the universal data of quantum many body states from local entanglement information.  Since this universal data is usually encoded in a quantum field theory, the program...

Abstract: In a spacetime with asymptotically anti-de-Sitter boundaries, localized bulk events produce characteristic signals at boundary locations that are lightlike from the event. I will describe (thought) experiments that use boundary wavepackets...

Abstract: In large N theories with a gravity dual, generic heavy operators should be dual to black holes in the bulk. The microscopic details of such operators should then be irrelevant in the low energy theory. We look for such universality in the...

Abstract: I will discuss the path integral of pure 3D gravity on a finite region of spacetime, with boundary conditions that fix dihedral angles or geodesic lengths. This amplitude calculates corrections to the Gaussian statistics of OPE...

Abstract: Symmetries play a crucial role in both quantum field theory and quantum many-body systems on the lattice. One key topological feature that a global symmetry can have is a "('t Hooft) anomaly". But how exactly should an anomaly be defined...

Abstract: Theories comprehensively addressing the origin and robustness of the observed hierarchical structure of particle physics face significant challenges from the non-appearance of new particles, explicitly in LHC searches or virtually within...

Abstract: Powerful techniques have been developed in quantum field theory that employ algebras of local operators, yet local operators cannot create physical charged states in gauge theory or physical nonzero-energy states in perturbative quantum...

Abstract: AI progress is accelerating, and now the leaders expect “artificial general intelligence” (AGI) in 2 to 3 years. While difficult to believe, we must prepare for the possibility. We can take some lessons from previous episodes in which...