Henry Maxfield (Stanford University) “Topology change as extended gauge symmetries of quantum gravity”
Abstract: Recent progress in quantum gravity is underpinned by a sum over spacetimes of different topologies, providing geometric explanations for a variety of quantum properties of black holes. To better understand the Hilbert space interpretation, I will discuss these results from the perspective of the canonical formalism and Lorentzian spacetimes. A simple model demonstrates that topology change can result in a gravitational … Read More
Jinzhao Wang (Stanford University) “The refined quantum minimal surface prescription from the asymptotic equipartition property”
Abstract: The holographic entanglement entropy is a very useful tool in studying the information-theoretic aspects of AdS/CFT, and its efficacy is manifested in the recent black hole page curve calculation. On the other hand, the one-shot entropies, such as the smooth min/max-entropies, are less discussed in AdS/CFT. They are however more fundamental entropy measures from the quantum information perspective and … Read More
String Math Seminar: Vivek Vijay Shende (UCB and Berkeley and the University of Southern Denmark) “Perverse Microsheaves”
Abstract: I will explain how to define a t-structure on the wrapped Fukaya category of a complex conic symplectic manifold, whose heart is the global sections of a perverse sheaf of categories on the core of the symplectic manifold. Here, a perverse sheaf of a categories is just a sheaf of categories whose hom sheaves are (shifted) perverse. I will … Read More
Aasmund Folkestad (MIT) “The Penrose Inequality as a Constraint on Low Energy Quantum Gravity”
Abstract:In this talk, I argue that the Penrose inequality (PI) can be used to constrain low energy theories compatible with AdS/CFT. It is shown that the PI can be violated for minimally coupled scalar fields, and I produce exclusion plots on couplings that respect the PI. I also present numerical evidence that top-down scalar theories and supersymmetric theories respect the … Read More