Archive of IAS Physics Group Meetings

Motivated by an apparent counterexample to the Weak Gravity Conjecture, I will describe the difference between black hole extremality bounds and BPS bounds and (relatedly) the difference between superextremal particles and self-repulsive particles...

I will review the perturbative (genus) expansion of one-matrix integrals via the loop equations, and the streamlined version due to Eynard. I will review double-scaled matrix integrals and discuss a heuristic method for computing some...

Light scalar dark matter fields can exhibit several interesting aspects to their cosmological evolution. I will focus mostly on structure formation with ultralight axions and with the QCD axion. The standard scenario leads to a suppression of...

I will give a review of recent progress in studying 6D SYM and supergravity amplitudes. Based on the spinor-helicity formalism of Cheung and O'Connell, recent work has shown that superamplitudes in 6D have a simple and compact form, not unlike 4D...

I will go over the new proof of the quantum null energy condition (QNEC):https://arxiv.org/abs/1812.04683The proof uses tools and techniques from the modular theory. In particular, see Section 2.4 theorem B of Borchers notes:https://www.mat.univie...

Operators with non-integer spin have been considered in the literature in various forms and contexts, and have been suggested to control the Regge limit and the OPE of average null energy operators. I will discuss the idea of formally introducing...

I will discuss an approach to integrable models from a four-dimensional Chern-Simons-type gauge theory. For introduction please have a look at E. Witten arXiv:1611.00592 or K. Costello arXiv:1308.0370. It might be interesting to look into some...

I will introduce the notion of the Swampland, first defined in 0509212/hep-th. I will then discuss a number of Swampland Conjectures, including "No Global Symmetries" (1011.5120/hep-th, 1810.05337/hep-th), the "Weak Gravity Conjecture" (0601001/hep...

These were originally discovered by Sen (see hep-th/9808141, hep-th/9809111, hep-th/9904207, for example). Another interesting paper is by Kraus and Larsen, hep-th/0012198.
I will describe a new perspective based on anomalies.