Talks & Discussions

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Week 1
Time
Place*
Speaker
Title
Mon, Jan 6
2:00 pm
MSR
All participants
Organizational Meeting

Tues, Jan 7
10:30 am
MSR
GuidoFestuccia
Overview: Supersymmetry in curved spacetime

2:00 pm
MSR
Chris Herzog
Losing forward momentum holographically
ExploringPlasma
Weds, Jan 8
10:30 am
MSR
Misha Vasiliev
Overview: Higher-spin theory from main ideas to recent developments

Thurs, Jan 9
10:30 am
MSR
Maxim Zabzine
Overview: Localization and 5d Yang-Mills

Fri, Jan 10
10:30 am
MSR
David Poland
Overview: Conformal bootstrap

Week 2
Time
Place*
Speaker
Title
Mon, Jan 13
12:15pm
Aud
Cristina Marchetti
Active Matter: What is it?
Blackboard Lunch Seminar, All welcome.
Wed, Jan 15
10:30am
Aud
Emanuel Katz
A new approach for solving a strongly coupled theory.

Thurs, Jan 16
10:30am
Aud
Al Shapere
Constraints on the Spectra of 2D CFTs

2pm
SSR
Thomas Hertog
Holographic Quantum Cosmology

Fri, Jan 17
10:30am
Aud
Evgeny Skvortsov
Higher-spin symmetry in AdS and CFT
I will discuss RG-inspired derivation of constituents of Vasiliev theory, the problem of uniqueiness of higher-spin
symmetries and how to construct correlation functions
which are manifestly invariant under higher-spin symmetries.

11:10am
Aud
Viacheslav Didenko
4d black holes and their generalization in higher-spin theory

Week 3
Time
Place*
Speaker
Title
Mon, Jan 20

University Holiday,
Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Tue, Jan 21
10:30am
Aud
Ibou Bah
N=1 Class S theories and their gravity duals.

Wed,
Jan 22
10:30am
Aud
Tom Hartman
Entanglement Entropy and Geometry
I will give an overview of entanglement entropy in
various systems, describe old and new methods
to compute it in QFT, and discuss its relevance for holography.
Thurs,
Jan 22
10:30am
Aud
Francesco
Benini
Two-dimensional partition functions, elliptic genera and dualities

Thurs,
Jan 22
2:00pm
MSR
Dave
Morrison
Classification of 6D SCFTs

Fri, Jan 23
10:30am
Aud
Peng
Zhao
Central charges and RG flow of strongly-coupled N=2 theory.

Fri, Jan 23
2:00pm
Aud
Joe Polchinski
Cultural program: the firewall debate, update.
Week 4
Program conference

~Week 5
Time
Place*
Speaker
Title
Mon, Feb 3
12:15
Aud
Slava Rychkov
Conformal symmetry and the 3d Ising model.
Blackboard lunch. Caveat emptor: Highly unlikely that any participant of this program will learn anything new (perhaps the grad students). The talk will be aimed mainly at the other programs and will be extremely elementary.
Tue, Feb 4
10:30am
Aud
Balt van Rees
Infinite chiral symmetry in four-dimensional superconformal field theories

Wed, Feb 5
10:30am
Aud
Liam Fitzpatrick
Wilsonian and Large N Approaches to Non-Fermi Liquids
.

2:00pm
MSR
Walter Kohn
Visual Distortions in Macular Degeneration: Quantitative Diagnosis and Correction
KITP Colloquium, All welcome.
Thurs, Feb 6
10:30am
Aud
Joao Penedones
Black Holes and Matrix Quantum Mechanics

Fri, Feb 7

No talk day.

Week 6
Time
Place*
Speaker
Title
Mon, Feb 10

Tue, Feb 11
2:00pm
Aud
Victor Gorbenko
Fluxtube Spectra from Approximate Integrability

Wed, Feb 12
10:30am
Aud
David Simmons-Duffin
Covariant Approaches to Superconformal Blocks

Thu, Feb 13

Fri, Feb 14

*Week 7
Time
Place*
Speaker
Title
Mon, Feb 17

University Holiday

President's Day
Tue, Feb 18
10:30am
Aud
Tarun Grover
Consequences of F-theorem for quantum phase transitions and stability of 3D gauge theories

Wed, Feb 19
10:30am
Aud
Lorenzo
Di Pietro
(Non)-decoupled supersymmetric field theories

Thu, Feb 20
10:30am
Aud
Ken
Intriligator
Matching monopole operators and vortices in 3d
N=2 gauge theories.

Fri, Feb 21
TBA
TBA

Week 8
Time
Place*
Speaker
Title
Mon, Feb 24
10:30am
Aud
Jaemo Park
Seiberg-like dualities in 2+1 dimensions

Tue, Feb 25
10:30am
Aud
no talk

Wed, Feb 26
10:30am
Aud
Masahito
Yamazaki
3d N=2 revisited from 4d N=4

Thu, Feb 27

Joe Fest

Fri, Feb 28

Joe Fest

Week 9
Time
Place*
Speaker
Title
Mon, Mar 3
10:30am
Aud
Peter Koroteev
Revisiting Integrability in N=2 Gauge Theories
We discuss two different approaches to integrability within the framework of N=2 supersymmetric gauge theories. First we look at theories with finite number of massive vacua and study their parameter spaces. This approach leads to a description of quantum many-body systems like spin chains. Second, moduli spaces of vacua of N=2 theories can be conveniently described by VEVs of BPS line operators. In this case the dual many-body system counterparts are models of Hitchin type which arise as classical systems. In the talk I will explain how one can relate integrable systems of the above two kinds and derive various dualities between them.
Tue, Mar 4
11:00am

NOTE UNUSUAL
TIME!!
Aud
Zohar
Komargodski
Comments on scale invariance, anomalies, and the OPE.
We address the question of whether there are 4D Lorentz invariant unitary quantum field theories with scale invariance but not conformal invariance. An important loophole in the existing arguments is that trace of the energy-momentum tensor T could be a generalized free field. We rule out this possibility. This is achieved by using the structure of four-dimensional anomalies. In addition, we emphasize that short distance physics is not the same as large momentum physics and explain the relation to the problem of scale vs conformal invariance.
Mar 5
10:30am
Aud
TBA

Thu, Mar 6
10:30am
Aud
John Cardy
Thermalization and Revivals after a Quantum Quench in 1+1 dimensional CFT
We study the time evolution from a pure state with extensive energy above the ground state in a CFT. We show that the reduced density matrix of an interval of length $\ell$ in an infinite system is exponentially close to a thermal one after times $t>\ell/2$. For a finite system of length $L$ we study the overlap of the state at time $t$ with the initial state and show that this can expressed in terms of Virasoro characters. For a rational CFT there are finite revivals when $t$ is a multiple of $L/2$, and interesting structure near all rational values of $t/L$. We also study the effect of an irrelevant operator which breaks the integrability and show that the revivals then become increasingly broadened.
Thu,
Mar 6
3:30pm
Main
Seminar
Room
David Gross
Yang-Mills theory: part of a series on the Clay Millennium Prize Problems
Mathematics Colloquium
Fri, Mar 7
10:30am
Aud
TBA

Week 10
Time
Place*
Speaker
Title
Mon Mar 10

Tues Mar 11
10:30am
Aud
Greg Moore
Algebra of the Infrared: Mathematical Structures in the IR Limit of Massive d=2 N=(2,2) QFT

Weds Mar 12

Thurs Mar 13
10:30am
Aud
Joe Polchinski
The field theory of intersecting D3-branes
We argue that the low energy field theory on D3-D3' must have magnetically charged solitons. Finding them leads to some interesting puzzles. arXiv.1402.6326
Fri Mar 14

Week 11
Time
Place*
Speaker
Title
Mon Mar 17
10:30am
Aud
Reducing Supersymmetry of Two-dimensional Sigma Models Down to N=(0,2)
We study of N=(0,2) deformed (2,2) two-dimensional models, in particular,geometric aspects and holomorphic properties of these models. We derive a numberof exact relations for the $\beta$ functions in terms of the anomalous dimensions analogous to the NSVZ beta function in four-dimensional Yang-Mills. We also consider the N=(0,2) supercurrent supermultiplet and its anomalies, as well as the Konishi anomaly." This gives us another method for finding two-loop beta functions.
Tues Mar 18
10:30

Anton Kapustin
Anomalies of discrete global symmetries and group cohomology.

Weds Mar 19

Amihay Hanany
Coulomb Branch Hilbert Series and the moduli space of instantons

Thurs Mar 20
10:30am
Aud
Jared Kaplan
Universality of Long-Distance AdS Physics from the CFT Bootstrap

Fri Mar 21

Week 12
Time
Place*
Speaker
Title
Mon Mar 24
10:30am
Aud

Tues Mar 25
10:30
Aud
Andy Stergiou
"Superconformal OPE methods for gauge-mediated supersymmetry breaking."

Weds Mar 26
2:00 pm
note unusual time!
Aud
Philip Argyres
"New rank 1, N=2 SCFTs"

Thurs Mar 27
10:30am
Aud
Eliezer Rabinovici
"Noise and Geometry"

Fri Mar 28

University Holiday, Cesar Chavez Day

Week 13
Time
Place*
Speaker
Title
Mon Mar 31
10:30am
Aud
Susanne Reffert
Deformed supersymmetric gauge theories from string- and M-theory
Abstract: The fluxtrap background of string theory provides a transparent and algorithmic way of constructing supersymmetric gauge theories with both mass and Omega-type deformations in various dimensions. I will discuss a number of deformed supersymmetric gauge theories in two and four dimensions which can be obtained via the fluxtrap background from string or M–theory. Such theories, the most well-known being Omega–deformed super Yang–Mills theory in four dimensions, have met with a lot of interest in the recent literature. The string theory treatment offers many new avenues of analysis and applications.
Tues April 1
10:30
Aud
3d N=4 Gauge Theories, Hilbert series and Hall-Littlewood Polynomials

Weds April 2
10:30
Aud
Dan Xie
M5 branes and N=1 dynamics

Thurs April 3
10:30am-12:00noon
90 min talk
Aud
• Jaroslav
• Trnka
Introduction to the Amplituhedron
Note schedule change
Fri April 4
10:30am

Volker Schomerus
Non-abelian Bosonization and Supergeometry
Note schedule change

Week 14
Time
Place*
Speaker
Title
Mon April 7
10:30am
Aud
Kimyeong Lee
On M5 branes

Tues April 8
10:30
Aud
Hugh Osborn
Conformal partial waves: some lowbrow maths

Weds April 9
10:30
Aud
Shlomo Razamat
Down the rabbit hole with theories of class S

Thurs April 10
10:30am
Aud