Broad Theory Seminar: Dan Beller (JHU)

Bloomberg 462

Title: Topological defects in liquid crystals, Abstract: I will present an introduction to the theory of topological defects in materials, giving an intuitive overview of homotopy theory and exploring how it is used to understand physically (and often visually!) observable quasiparticles. I will focus primarily on nematic liquid crystals, while highlighting analogous phenomena in other […]

Special condensed matter seminar: Amir Yacoby (Harvard)

Title: "Local Probes of Spin Excitations in Quantum Matter”. Abstract: Major scientific discoveries are often enabled by new measurement capabilities that provide novel perspectives into complex physical problems. Recent advances and discoveries made on quantum materials have challenged experimentalists to come up with new ways to probe their intrinsic properties. In this talk I will […]

High energy particle physics and cosmology theory seminar: Sergio Hernández-Cuenca (MIT)

Bloomberg 462

Title: Topological Resummation in Quantum Gravity, Abstract: The gravitational path integral remains one of the most elusive constructs in quantum gravity, particularly in regimes dominated by topological fluctuations. In this talk, I will present recent progress in Jackiw–Teitelboim (JT) gravity, where the sum over geometries can be made precise. We demonstrate that in a low-temperature […]

High energy physics and cosmology theory seminar: Zihan Zhou (Princeton)

Bloomberg 462

Title: When black hole perturbation theory meets scattering amplitudes and conformal field theory  Abstract: The study of black hole perturbation theory has seen a resurgence in recent years after the observation of the gravitational waves generated by the coalescence of binary black holes. In this talk, I will summarize some of the recent progress in […]