School of Natural Sciences

From the collapse of molecular clouds into stars to spectacular galactic mergers, binary systems form on many scales across the universe. Interactions between binaries and their environments can sculpt the stellar populations we observe today, alter...

There is a revolution afoot in our understanding of supermassive black holes (SMBHs), that is reshaping our view of their formation, growth and influence on cosmic architecture. This talk will spotlight three recent breakthroughs that have enriched...

We analyze a model of qubits which we argue has an emergent quantum gravitational description similar to the fermionic Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model. The model we consider is known as the quantum $q$-spin model because it features $q$-local...

We construct compactifications of type IIB string theory that yield, at leading order in the α ′ α ′ and g s g s expansions, de Sitter vacua of the form envisioned by Kachru, Kallosh, Linde, and Trivedi. We specify explicit Calabi-Yau orientifolds...

Superradiant instabilities may create clouds of ultralight bosons around rotating black holes, forming so-called "gravitational atoms". In this talk, I will review a series of papers that study the effects of a binary companion’s presence. The...