High Energy Theory Seminar

Singular geometries are important in 3d gravity. For example, conical singularities represent point particles. There are also more surprising examples that appear naturally in 3d gravity theories. I discuss them in the hope that they will shed light on puzzling issues such as black hole micro-state counting and the existence of minimal quantum gravity theories with a classical limit. Similar solutions arise in the Chern-Simons formulation, in higher spin gravity and in multigravity theories.