Colloquia & Seminars

Speaker: Sarah Harrison

Title: Liouville Theory and Weil-Petersson Geometry

Colloquium Speaker: Sarah Harrison (Northeastern University) Title: Liouville Theory and Weil-Petersson Geometry Abstract: Two-dimensional conformal field theory is a powerful tool to understand the geometry of surfaces. Liouville conformal field theory in the classical (large central charge) limit encodes the geometry of the moduli space of Riemann surfaces. I describe an efficient algorithm to compute the Weil--Petersson metric to arbitrary accuracy using Zamolodchikov's recursion relation for conformal blocks, focusing on examples of a sphere with four punctures and generalizations to other one-complex-dimensional moduli spaces. Comparison with analytic results for volumes and geodesic lengths finds excellent agreement. In the case of M_{0,4}, I discuss numerical results for eigenvalues of the Weil-Petersson Laplacian and connections with random matrix theory. Based...

Speaker: Sergiy Verstyuk

Title: On using ML for Economics

CMSA Member Seminar Speaker: Sergiy Verstyuk Title: On using ML for Economics Abstract: I will introduce some tools from the field of machine learning and discuss how they can be leveraged to get a fresh perspective on economics.

Speaker: Albert Law

Title: Real-time observables in horizon thermodynamics

General Relativity Seminar Speaker: Albert Law, Stanford Title: Real-time observables in horizon thermodynamics Abstract: Euclidean black hole 1-loop determinants have recently been shown to compute a renormalized thermal canonical partition function for free fields in Lorentzian signature. A key ingredient is a 'quasinormal mode (QNM) character', whose Fourier transform equals the renormalized spectral density of the single-particle Hamiltonian. Using a static patch in de Sitter space as an example, in this talk, I will offer new perspectives on the QNM character, including its connection with the local density of states for the single-particle quantum mechanical problem associated with the Klein-Gordon equation, and its direct relationships with (thermal) correlators of the free fields. I will discuss how these considerations might point...

Speaker: Eric Pichon-Pharabod

Title: Algebraic Geometry in String Theory Seminar

Algebraic Geometry in String Theory Seminar Speaker: Eric Pichon-Pharabod, Universite Paris-Saclay

Title: Quantum Matter in Mathematics and Physics Seminar

Quantum Matter in Mathematics and Physics Seminar

Speaker: Robert Moscrop

Title: Member Seminar

CMSA Member Seminar Speaker: Robert Moscrop, Harvard CMSA

Speaker: Mikhail Molodyk

Title: General Relativity Seminar

General Relativity Seminar Speaker: Mikhail Molodyk, Stanford

Title: General Relativity Seminar

General Relativity Seminar Speaker: Marcelo Disconzi, Vanderbilt University

Title: Member Seminar

CMSA Member Seminar Speaker: Jue Liu

Speaker: Franco Rota

Title: Algebraic Geometry in String Theory Seminar

Algebraic Geometry in String Theory Seminar Speaker: Franco Rota, University of Glasgow

Title: Active Matter Seminar

Active Matter Seminar Speaker: Kevin Mitchell, University of California, Merced

Speaker: Mikhail Ivanov

Title: Love and Naturalness

Quantum Matter in Mathematics and Physics Seminar Speaker: Mikhail Ivanov (MIT) Title: Love and Naturalness Abstract: Recent progress in gravitational wave astronomy has spurred the development of efficient tools to describe gravitational binary dynamics. One such tool is classical worldline effective field theory (EFT). In the first part of my talk, I will show how to use this EFT for systematic studies of tidal heating and deformations (Love numbers) of compact objects. I will present a gauge-invariant definition of Love numbers and show how to extract them in a coordinate-independent way from scattering amplitudes of the gravitational Raman process. I will show that the worldline EFT exhibits strong fine-tuning when applied to black holes. This gives rise to a naturalness...