Archive of IAS Monday High Energy Theory Seminars

I will describe my work, all joint with D. Gaiotto and some also joint with E. Witten, to understand the homotopy type of the space of (1+1)d N=(0,1) SQFTs --- what a condensed matter theorist would call "phases" of SQFTs. Our motivating hypothesis...

I will discuss time-dependent probes of the renormalization group, and derive new constraints that govern the spread of local operators in holographic theories. The same methods lead to sum rules for inflationary correlators, relating observables...

When absorbing boundary conditions are used to evaporate a black hole in AdS/CFT, we show that there is a phase transition in the location of the quantum Ryu-Takayanagi surface, at precisely the Page time. The new RT surface lies slightly inside the...

We construct a general form for an F-theory Weierstrass model over any base giving a 6D or 4D supergravity theory with gauge group SU(3) x SU(2) x U(1) / Z_6 and associated generic matter. The concept of 'generic matter' can be rigorously defined in...

We present a first-principles derivation of a weak-strong duality between the four-dimensional fishnet theory in the planar limit and a discretized string-like model living in AdS5. At strong coupling, the dual description becomes classical and we...

We present recent advances in constructions of globally consistent
F-theory compactifications with the exact chiral spectrum of the minimal
supersymmetric Standard Model. We highlight the first such example and
then turn to a subsequent systematic...

In many-body chaotic systems, the size of an operator generically grows in Heisenberg evolution, and is measured by out-of-time-ordered four-point functions. However, these only provide a coarse probe of the full underlying operator growth structure...

I will describe a large ensemble of compactifications of type IIB string theory on Calabi-Yau threefold hypersurfaces, obtained by triangulating polytopes from the Kreuzer-Skarke list. We have developed methods to compute effective theories in the...

In 1975 Hawking showed that the evaporation of black holes creates a problem for unitarity. This argument can be made rigorous through the small corrections theorem, and implies that there must be a fundamental change in our picture of semiclassical...