Women are 51% of the population and, in Mao Zedong's timeless words, "hold up half the sky." In the context of astrophysics, science, and STEM, why are women
glaringly absent from studies of the sky, and what can we do as colleagues, researchers, and everyday allies to increase their representation and support their
success in…

The graph of interactions in a quantum many-body system is crucial for governing the flow of information and the structure of correlations.  We engineer programmable nonlocal interactions in an array of atomic ensembles within an optical resonator, where photons convey information between distant atomic spins.  In our system of spin-1 atoms,…

Magic angle twisted bilayer graphene (MATBG) has been shown to host a variety of correlated insulator states at integer fillings. These correlated insulator states are believed to arise from symmetry breaking within the flatband manifold arising from spin, valley, and band degrees of freedom. However, it has been difficult to…

After a century of biochemical and genetic onslaught on the embryo we are left with an inexhaustive parts list with an increasingly baroque logic. How do we begin to assemble complex living systems from knowledge of the parts list? In this talk I will attempt to pursue a statistical (physics) approach to discerning the design principles that…

I will introduce the gravitational path integral and discuss some of its modern applications. Our first application will be to the black hole information paradox, where we will see that nontrivial gravitational saddles are important in exhibiting unitarity of black hole evaporation. Our second application will be to cosmological spacetimes,…

The study of hyperuniform states of matter is an emerging multidisciplinary field, influencing and linking developments across the physical sciences, mathematics and biology. A hyperuniform many-particle system in d-dimensional Euclidean space is characterized by an anomalous suppression of large-scale density fluctuations relative to those in…

Molecules are cool. They can be used to generate robust qubits, build quantum simulators, test fundamental physics, study quantum chemistry and are the building blocks of life. Recent advances in direct laser cooling of molecules has led to tweezer arrays of diatomic CaF, magneto-optical trap of triatomic CaOH and 1D laser cooling of the…

Abstract: Advances in optical neural imaging provide an opportunity to record panneuronal neural activity and behavior simultaneously. With a compact nervous system, the transparent nematode Caenorhabditis elegans is a good candidate for whole-brain imaging and investigating the neural representation of behaviors. The analysis…

According to Gibbons and Hawking the entropy of a dS universe is encoded in the Euclidean gravitational path integral over compact manifolds with dominant sphere saddle. In this talk I will report on recent work in which we explicitly calculate this gravitational path integral in two spacetime dimensions. Whereas the Euclidean two-dimensional…

Magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) is a theory with a broad range of applications, from plasma physics to heavy-ion collisions and astrophysics. In this talk, I will show how methodologies in formal hydrodynamics allows to reformulate MHD in terms of symmetry considerations. In particular, I will show that MHD can be viewed as a theory of…

I will introduce a class of non-invertible topological defects in (3+1)d gauge theories whose fusion rules are the higher-dimensional analogs of those of the Kramers-Wannier defect in the (1+1)d critical Ising model. As in the lower-dimensional case, the presence of such non-invertible defects implies self-duality under a particular gauging of…

Remarkable experimental advances enabled creation of  highly tunable and controllable quantum systems of ultracold atoms, trapped ions, and superconducting quantum bits. These platforms proved to be uniquely suited for probing non-equilibrium properties of interacting quantum systems. Based on the intuition…

We start by revisiting the task of constructing a holographic dual to quantum gravity in asymptotically flat spacetimes. Upon recasting the S-matrix in terms of data at the conformal boundary, we see that the two standard approaches amount to slicing up the bulk and boundary in different ways.

The Celestial Hologram organizes…

Observations have shown that nearly all galaxies harbor massive or supermassive black holes at their centers. Gravitational wave (GW) observations of these black holes will shed light on their growth and evolution, and the merger histories of galaxies. Pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) use observations of millisecond pulsars…

Abstract:  

The upper critical dimension of the O(N) vector model is well-known to be 4. In dimension 4-epsilon it is described by the Wilson-Fisher IR fixed point of the O(N) invariant scalar field theory with a small positive quartic coupling. Above 4 dimensions, this theory is non-renormalizable, but in 4+epsilon dimensions it…

I will review the state of the field of gravitational wave astrophysics, framing the challenges, current observations, and future prospects within the context of the predictions of Einstein's theory of general relativity.

Recording of Prof. Pretorius' Talk: http:/…

I will report on my recent work with Natalie Paquette, where we derive expressions for form factors and scattering amplitudes of gauge theory as correlators of a chiral algebra.  The chiral algebra is closely related to algebras appearing in the celestial holography program.

https…