The discovery of compact object mergers by LIGO has opened up a new window into the Universe’s most exotic objects, neutron stars and black holes. Maximizing the scientific return of this new window requires connecting gravitational wave detections to the wealth of electromagnetic data on similar sources. I…
I will provide a brief overview of recent projects in my group where we identify new analytical and physical features of flows common to modern research questions. First, I will share some of our work (experimental and numerical) on fluid dynamics themes related to virus transmission by speech, which has…
String theory landscape of vacua point to new consistency conditions that a quantum gravitational system must satisfy. There are only a small number of quantum field theories that satisfy these conditions and all the rest belong to the `Swampland' which cannot be consistently coupled to gravity. In this talk I review some of these conditions…
Panel discussion with Duncan Haldane (Princeton), Michael Manfra (Purdue) and Gwendal Feve (ENS)
The possibility of particles with fractional statistics intermediate between those of fermions and bosons in two dimensional systems was raised as early as 1976 in theoretical work by…
The power of quantum information lies in its capacity to be non-local, encoded in correlations among two, three, or many entangled particles. Yet our ability to produce, understand, and exploit such correlations is hampered by the fact that the interactions between particles and ordinarily local. I will report on…
Neutron stars are by far the strongest known magnets in the universe. Some of them (called magnetars) generate explosions by suddenly dissipating magnetic energy with a rate up to $10^{47}$ erg/s. These magnetic explosions emit giant gamma-ray flares observed in our and neighboring galaxies. Similar explosions in…
Panel Discussion with Suvi Gezari, Brian Metzger and Marta Volonteri
This panel discussion accompanies the conference “Exploring Supermassive Black Holes”. We (Suvi Gezari, Jenny Greene, Brian Metzger, Marta Volonteri) will discuss the critical stages in the life…
DNA of the human genome is 2 meters long and is folded into chromosomes that fit in a 10-micron cellular nucleus. I will discuss physical principles that govern folding of long DNA molecules, including phase separation, topological effects in polymer systems, and non-equilibrium phenomena. Recent studies have shown…
The AdS/CFT correspondence maps correlators of local operators in a conformal field theory to scattering amplitudes in a gravitational/string theory on curved space-time. The study of such amplitudes is incredibly hard and has mostly been done in a certain classical limit. We show how modern analytic bootstrap techniques allow us to go much…
Cells in our body move in groups during development, wound healing, and tumor spreading. Bacterial cells also coordinate their motion to aggregate into biofilms, to feed cooperatively, and to form fruiting bodies. All these collective movements rely on physical mechanisms involving cell-generated propulsion forces and both mechanical and…
The immune system is composed of a large number of heterogenous interacting components that collectively recognize and clear pathogens. To cover the high-dimensional molecular space of all possible threats, including those that have never been seen before, the adaptive immune system is endowed with a wide variety of receptor proteins, which are…
The National Academy has recently called for the US to adopt a strategy to produce fusion electricity from a compact pilot plant by mid-century. This approach requires innovations in technology (e.g. magnet systems and power handling systems) and innovations in physics. I will introduce the key issues that challenge the current program and…
We are now experiencing a revolution in optical technologies, where one can print and control massive optical circuits, on a microelectronic chip. This revolution is enabling a whole range of applications that are in need for scalable optical technologies and it is opening the door to areas that only a decade ago were…
Building a quantum computer in the highly manufacturable material silicon offers many advantages. Phosphorus atom qubits in silicon in particular have demonstrated extremely long (up to 35 s) coherence times with >99.9% fidelity. Their small size, combined with the magnetically quiet environment of isotopically pure silicon, make them…
The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) is a Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) array operating at the shortest possible wavelengths, which can resolve the event horizons of the nearest supermassive black holes. Observing at mm radio wavelengths enables detection of photons that originate from deep within the gravitational potential well of the…
Moiré patterns are ubiquitous in layered van der Waals materials and can now be fabricated with considerable control by combining mechanical exfoliation of van der Waals layers with tear and stack device fabrication techniques. I will explain why the electronic and optical properties of two-dimensional semiconductors and semimetals are…
Using our state-of-the-art code Fornax we have simulated the collapse and explosion of the cores of many massive-star models in three spatial dimensions. This is the most comprehensive set of realistic 3D core-collapse supernova simulations yet performed and has provided very important insights into the mechanism and character of this 50-year…
Quantising a black hole can be done starting with conventional physics. We just assume matter to keep the form of point particles until they come close to the horizon. The gravitational back reaction of these particles generates a novel relation between particles going in and particles going out, enabling us to transform in-going particles into…
Conformal Field Theory (CFT) is a framework used to describe physical systems with no intrinsic length or energy scales. CFTs have wide applicability across theoretical physics, ranging from critical points in the phase diagrams of water or magnetic materials to the low-energy dynamics of extended objects in string theory. In this talk, I…
Cosmological hypotheses and oracular dreams of grandly unifying all the forces of nature foretold: neutrinos might weigh a tiny bit, those elusive particles might blow up stars, and the protons (and your ashes) would transform into light in 1029 years. Indeed, that man can live to 100, without the radioactivity in his bones killing him,…
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