School of Natural Sciences

AI progress is accelerating, and now the leaders expect “artificial general intelligence” (AGI) in 2 to 3 years. While difficult to believe, we must prepare for the possibility. We can take some lessons from previous episodes in which computers...

Despite the undeniable success of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), Beyond the Standard Model (BSM) physics remains elusive. In this talk, I will outline a multifaceted strategy to maximize discovery potential at current and future high-energy...

The first structures of particle dark matter form by gravitationally condensing out of the smooth mass distribution of the early universe. This formation mechanism leaves these "prompt cusps" with uniquely compact r^-1.5 density profiles and links...

I will start with a broad overview of the theory of initial conditions of the universe, what we know and what we hope to know in the near future.

Then I will describe some recent work. Motivated by precision calculations in primordial cosmology, a...

Neutron stars born with magnetic fields greater than 1014 G (“magnetars”) are common in the Galaxy. Approximately 10 - 50% of the young neutron star population possesses such field strengths. These objects exhibit very slow rotation, spectacular...

Stars orbiting sufficiently close to massive black holes inevitably inspiral towards the black hole due to gravitational wave radiation. The fate of such stars is subtle and depends on an interplay between tidal heating of the star, mass transfer...

On-shell methods have found a new application to local observables such as asymptotic radiation fields and gravitational waveforms. While these observables are invariant under small gauge transformations, they are known to depend on a choice of...

On general grounds one expects that global symmetries are absent in quantum gravity. We discuss some aspects of this issue, focusing on the recently proposed Swampland Cobordism Conjecture, and related conjectures connected with completeness of the...

Observations of fluctuations in the CMB provide information about primordial inhomogeneities in the universe. However, the B-mode polarization of the inflationary gravitational wave is contaminated by the Galactic dust and synchrotron foreground...