The Landau levels of a two-dimensional electron system support a plethora of fascinating many-body ground states and collective low-energy excitations, thanks to enhanced electron-electron interactions and the characteristics of the LL wave functions. The n=1 LL is particularly fascinating as it hosts even-denominator fractional quantum Hall…
We consider two models of random loops where we prove breaking of translational symmetry. The first is a mirror model, where the loops are formed by light rays bouncing in a labyrinth of randomly oriented mirrors. The second is a probabilistic representation of a quantum spin chain, and can be obtained as a limit of the first, for inhomogeneous…
The density of states of a unitary conformal field theory is known to have a universal behavior at high energy. In two dimensions, this behavior is described by the Cardy formula. If the theory has symmetry, it is interesting to understand the symmetry resolution, namely the decomposition of its Hilbert space into irreducible representations of…
I will present general arguments, based on fundamental physics principles, as to why we should expect a significant, horizon scale, departure from semiclassical gravity inside astrophysical black holes. Then, I will present a simple model which realizes this idea: the frozen star model. I will show that a static frozen star looks exactly like a…
In this talk, I will discuss the 2d SU(N) gauge theory coupled to an adjoint Majorana fermion using two approaches. First, I will describe the computation of the spectrum at finite N using Discretized Light-Cone Quantization. Then, for the N=2 case, I will introduce a Hamiltonian lattice model that can also be used to compute…
Localization/delocalization transition in random Schrödinger operators cannot in general be seen from the behavior of the corresponding Integrated Density of States (IDS). Here we consider a random Schrödinger operator appearing in the study of certain reinforced random processes in connection with a supersymmetric sigma-model, and show that…
Abstract: In recent years, the fields of natural language processing and computer vision have been revolutionized by the success of large models pretrained with task-agnostic objectives on massive, diverse datasets. This has, in part, been driven by the use of self-supervised pretraining methods which allow models to utilize far more training…
We add non-linear and state-dependent terms to the Hamiltonian of quantum field theory. The resulting low-energy theory, non-linear quantum mechanics, is causal, preserves probability and permits a consistent description of the process of measurement. We explore the consequences of such terms and show that non-linear…
Nanofluidic devices, e.g. based on nanochannels or nanopores, are networks of fluid-filled structures on a chip with dimensions ~1-100 nm. These dimensions are on order of molecular length scales, giving rise to the ability to directly analyze, manipulate and confine single biomolecules. In this talk I will focus on two different…
In four-dimensional asymptotically flat spacetimes, the infinite tower of soft graviton modes is known to generate a w(1+infinity) symmetry algebra at tree-level. In this talk, I will review this symmetry and demonstrate that it acts non-trivially on massive scalar particles. The symmetry action is derived from previously-discovered…
I will review recent progress in understanding perturbative corrections to the large N limit of various observables in holographic 3d SCFTs. For supersymmetric observables, these corrections are obtained from supersymmetric localization and can be used to infer the value of higher-derivative couplings in the dual…
In electrostatic terminology, an electrical field of a stationary point process is a vector field whose distributional divergence is equal to the counting measure of the point process minus the Lebesgue measure. In the talk we will give a simple answer to the following question: when does a planar stationary point process generate a stationary…
The irreversibility of RG flows on conformal defects has been a subject of great interest recently. In this talk I will present an entropy function defined on 2D spherical defects, interpolating between the defect anomaly coefficient at the fixed points. We reproduce the IR sum-rule proving irreversibility and show…
For certain black hole spacetimes, we are fortunate to have three complementary views of the same physics: (1) the low-energy gravity theory on the spacetime M, (2) worldsheet string theory with target space M, and (3) a holographic description living on the boundary of M. In this talk, I describe ongoing efforts to compare these perspectives…
Infectious disease-causing pathogens have plagued humanity since antiquity, and the COVID-19 pandemic has been a vivid reminder of this perpetual existential threat. Vaccination has saved more lives than any other medical procedure, and effective vaccines have helped control the COVID-19 pandemic. However, we do not have effective vaccines…
The towers of massive states in quantum gravity are ubiquitous and highly constrained. I will review some of the Swampland conjectures, known as distance conjectures, that quantify the universal behaviors of such towers in string theory. Due to the strong implications of distance conjectures, connecting them to more fundamental principles…
I will showcase the computation of the next-to-leading order scattering waveform in classical gravity using amplitude techniques. I will first give an overview of how to compute generic classical observables in gravity using scattering amplitude techniques in the KMOC formalism. In particular, I will…
- Bill BialekAffiliationPrinceton University
- Josh ShaevitzAffiliationPrinceton University
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