Video Lectures

In the solar system as elsewhere, we learn most from the unexpected. I will describe three recent observational projects challenging existing ideas about solar system objects, and provoking new ones. The freaks are an interstellar object (‘Oumuamua)...

In conformal field theory, in contrast to gapped theories, S-matrix is not well-defined. Similarly, various inclusive observables which make sense in a gapped theory, such as "energy squared" calorimeters, suffer from IR divergences in CFTs. Using...

Turbulence is ubiquitous in astrophysical media and plays an essential role in a variety of fundamental astrophysical processes. The turbulent power-law spectra have been observed in the solar wind, the interstellar medium, the intracluster medium...

Building genuinely a priori models of galaxy formation in a cosmological context is one of the grand challenges of modern astrophysics. Most large volume simulations of galaxy formation currently adopt phenomenological scaling relations to model...

The observation of compact binary mergers by the LIGO/Virgo collaboration marked the dawn of a new era in astronomy. LISA will expand this vision by opening a new observational window at low frequencies. The gravitational radiation emitted by...

Surveys of young stellar objects (YSOs) populating nearby molecular clouds are bringing us closer to an integrated picture of star and cluster formation, one that incorporates processes spanning many orders of magnitude in size, from accretion on...

I discuss string theory on AdS3xS3xT4 in the tensionless limit, with one unit of NS-NS flux. This theory is conjectured to be dual to the symmetric product orbifold CFT. I show how to compute the full string partition function on various locally...

Over the last decade it has become clear that there is a close connection between the BPS sector of N=2 supersymmetric field theories in four dimensions and the exact WKB method for analysis of ordinary differential equations (Schrodinger equations...

I will present enhanced corrections to the entanglement entropy of a subsystem in holographic states. These corrections appear near phase transitions in the entanglement entropy due to competing extremal surfaces, and they are holographic avatars...

I will describe and explore the consequences of a newly identified physical phenomenon: volumetric stellar emission into gravitationally bound orbits of weakly coupled particles such as axions, moduli, hidden photons, and neutrinos. While only a...