Is String Theory Holographic? 1 Introduction
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Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) World-Renowned Physicist Who Defied the Odds
COMMENT OBITUARY Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) World-renowned physicist who defied the odds. hen Stephen Hawking was speech synthesizer processed his words and diagnosed with motor-neuron generated the androidal accent that became disease at the age of 21, it wasn’t his trademark. In this way, he completed his Wclear that he would finish his PhD. Against best-selling book A Brief History of Time all expectations, he lived on for 55 years, (Bantam, 1988), which propelled him to becoming one of the world’s most celebrated celebrity status. IAN BERRY/MAGNUM scientists. Had Hawking achieved equal distinction Hawking, who died on 14 March 2018, was in any other branch of science besides cos- born in Oxford, UK, in 1942 to a medical- mology, it probably would not have had the researcher father and a philosophy-graduate same resonance with a worldwide public. As mother. After attending St Albans School I put it in The Telegraph newspaper in 2007, near London, he earned a first-class degree “the concept of an imprisoned mind roaming in physics from the University of Oxford. He the cosmos” grabbed people’s imagination. began his research career in 1962, enrolling In 1965, Stephen married Jane Wilde. as a graduate student in a group at the Uni- After 25 years of marriage, and three versity of Cambridge led by one of the fathers children, the strain of Stephen’s illness of modern cosmology, Dennis Sciama. and of sharing their home with a team of The general theory of relativity was at that nurses became too much and they sepa- time undergoing a renaissance, initiated in rated, divorcing in 1995. -
Holographic Principle and Applications to Fermion Systems
Imperial College London Master Dissertation Holographic Principle and Applications to Fermion Systems Author: Supervisor: Napat Poovuttikul Dr. Toby Wiseman A dissertation submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Sciences in the Theoretical Physics Group Imperial College London September 2013 You need a different way of looking at them than starting from single particle descriptions.You don't try to explain the ocean in terms of individual water molecules Sean Hartnoll [1] Acknowledgements I am most grateful to my supervisor, Toby Wiseman, who dedicated his time reading through my dissertation plan, answering a lot of tedious questions and give me number of in- sightful explanations. I would also like to thanks my soon to be PhD supervisor, Jan Zaanen, for sharing an early draft of his review in this topic and give me the opportunity to work in the area of this dissertation. I cannot forget to show my gratitude to Amihay Hanay for his exotic string theory course and Michela Petrini for giving very good introductory lectures in AdS/CFT. I would particularly like to thanks a number of friends who help me during the period of the dissertation. I had valuable discussions with Simon Nakach, Christiana Pentelidou, Alex Adam, Piyabut Burikham, Kritaphat Songsriin. I would also like to thanks Freddy Page and Anne-Silvie Deutsch for their advices in using Inkscape, Matthew Citron, Christiana Pantelidou and Supakchi Ponglertsakul for their helps on Mathematica coding and typesetting latex. The detailed comments provided -
CERN Celebrates Discoveries
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HIGH-ENERGY PHYSICS CERN COURIER VOLUME 43 NUMBER 10 DECEMBER 2003 CERN celebrates discoveries NEW PARTICLES NETWORKS SPAIN Protons make pentaquarks p5 Measuring the digital divide pl7 Particle physics thrives p30 16 KPH impact 113 KPH impact series VISyN High Voltage Power Supplies When the objective is to measure the almost immeasurable, the VISyN-Series is the detector power supply of choice. These multi-output, card based high voltage power supplies are stable, predictable, and versatile. VISyN is now manufactured by Universal High Voltage, a world leader in high voltage power supplies, whose products are in use in every national laboratory. For worldwide sales and service, contact the VISyN product group at Universal High Voltage. Universal High Voltage Your High Voltage Power Partner 57 Commerce Drive, Brookfield CT 06804 USA « (203) 740-8555 • Fax (203) 740-9555 www.universalhv.com Covering current developments in high- energy physics and related fields worldwide CERN Courier (ISSN 0304-288X) is distributed to member state governments, institutes and laboratories affiliated with CERN, and to their personnel. It is published monthly, except for January and August, in English and French editions. The views expressed are CERN not necessarily those of the CERN management. Editor Christine Sutton CERN, 1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland E-mail: [email protected] Fax:+41 (22) 782 1906 Web: cerncourier.com COURIER Advisory Board R Landua (Chairman), P Sphicas, K Potter, E Lillest0l, C Detraz, H Hoffmann, R Bailey -
M Theory As a Holographic Field Theory
hep-th/9712130 CALT-68-2152 M-Theory as a Holographic Field Theory Petr Hoˇrava California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA [email protected] We suggest that M-theory could be non-perturbatively equivalent to a local quantum field theory. More precisely, we present a “renormalizable” gauge theory in eleven dimensions, and show that it exhibits various properties expected of quantum M-theory, most no- tably the holographic principle of ’t Hooft and Susskind. The theory also satisfies Mach’s principle: A macroscopically large space-time (and the inertia of low-energy excitations) is generated by a large number of “partons” in the microscopic theory. We argue that at low energies in large eleven dimensions, the theory should be effectively described by arXiv:hep-th/9712130 v2 10 Nov 1998 eleven-dimensional supergravity. This effective description breaks down at much lower energies than naively expected, precisely when the system saturates the Bekenstein bound on energy density. We show that the number of partons scales like the area of the surface surrounding the system, and discuss how this holographic reduction of degrees of freedom affects the cosmological constant problem. We propose the holographic field theory as a candidate for a covariant, non-perturbative formulation of quantum M-theory. December 1997 1. Introduction M-theory has emerged from our understanding of non-perturbative string dynamics, as a hypothetical quantum theory which has eleven-dimensional supergravity [1] as its low- energy limit, and is related to string theory via various dualities [2-4] (for an introduction and references, see e.g. -
FIELDS MEDAL for Mathematical Efforts R
Recognizing the Real and the Potential: FIELDS MEDAL for Mathematical Efforts R Fields Medal recipients since inception Year Winners 1936 Lars Valerian Ahlfors (Harvard University) (April 18, 1907 – October 11, 1996) Jesse Douglas (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) (July 3, 1897 – September 7, 1965) 1950 Atle Selberg (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton) (June 14, 1917 – August 6, 2007) 1954 Kunihiko Kodaira (Princeton University) (March 16, 1915 – July 26, 1997) 1962 John Willard Milnor (Princeton University) (born February 20, 1931) The Fields Medal 1966 Paul Joseph Cohen (Stanford University) (April 2, 1934 – March 23, 2007) Stephen Smale (University of California, Berkeley) (born July 15, 1930) is awarded 1970 Heisuke Hironaka (Harvard University) (born April 9, 1931) every four years 1974 David Bryant Mumford (Harvard University) (born June 11, 1937) 1978 Charles Louis Fefferman (Princeton University) (born April 18, 1949) on the occasion of the Daniel G. Quillen (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) (June 22, 1940 – April 30, 2011) International Congress 1982 William P. Thurston (Princeton University) (October 30, 1946 – August 21, 2012) Shing-Tung Yau (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton) (born April 4, 1949) of Mathematicians 1986 Gerd Faltings (Princeton University) (born July 28, 1954) to recognize Michael Freedman (University of California, San Diego) (born April 21, 1951) 1990 Vaughan Jones (University of California, Berkeley) (born December 31, 1952) outstanding Edward Witten (Institute for Advanced Study, -
Inflation, Large Branes, and the Shape of Space
Inflation, Large Branes, and the Shape of Space Brett McInnes National University of Singapore email: [email protected] ABSTRACT Linde has recently argued that compact flat or negatively curved spatial sections should, in many circumstances, be considered typical in Inflationary cosmologies. We suggest that the “large brane instability” of Seiberg and Witten eliminates the negative candidates in the context of string theory. That leaves the flat, compact, three-dimensional manifolds — Conway’s platycosms. We show that deep theorems of Schoen, Yau, Gromov and Lawson imply that, even in this case, Seiberg-Witten instability can be avoided only with difficulty. Using a specific cosmological model of the Maldacena-Maoz type, we explain how to do this, and we also show how the list of platycosmic candidates can be reduced to three. This leads to an extension of the basic idea: the conformal compactification of the entire Euclidean spacetime also has the topology of a flat, compact, four-dimensional space. arXiv:hep-th/0410115v2 19 Oct 2004 1. Nearly Flat or Really Flat? Linde has recently argued [1] that, at least in some circumstances, we should regard cosmological models with flat or negatively curved compact spatial sections as the norm from an Inflationary point of view. Here we wish to argue that cosmic holography, in the novel form proposed by Maldacena and Maoz [2], gives a deep new interpretation of this idea, and also sharpens it very considerably to exclude the negative case. This focuses our attention on cosmological models with flat, compact spatial sections. Current observations [3] show that the spatial sections of our Universe [as defined by observers for whom local isotropy obtains] are fairly close to being flat: the total density parameter Ω satisfies Ω = 1.02 0.02 at 95% confidence level, if we allow the imposition ± of a reasonable prior [4] on the Hubble parameter. -
What's Inside
Newsletter A publication of the Controlled Release Society Volume 32 • Number 1 • 2015 What’s Inside 42nd CRS Annual Meeting & Exposition pH-Responsive Fluorescence Polymer Probe for Tumor pH Targeting In Situ-Gelling Hydrogels for Ophthalmic Drug Delivery Using a Microinjection Device Interview with Paolo Colombo Patent Watch Robert Langer Awarded the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering Newsletter Charles Frey Vol. 32 • No. 1 • 2015 Editor Table of Contents From the Editor .................................................................................................................. 2 From the President ............................................................................................................ 3 Interview Steven Giannos An Interview with Paolo Colombo from University of Parma .............................................. 4 Editor 42nd CRS Annual Meeting & Exposition .......................................................................... 6 What’s on Board Access the Future of Delivery Science and Technology with Key CRS Resources .............. 9 Scientifically Speaking pH-Responsive Fluorescence Polymer Probe for Tumor pH Targeting ............................. 10 Arlene McDowell Editor In Situ-Gelling Hydrogels for Ophthalmic Drug Delivery Using a Microinjection Device ........................................................................................................ 12 Patent Watch ................................................................................................................... 14 Special -
Anomalies, Dualities, and Topology of D = 6 N = 1 Superstring Vacua
RU-96-16 NSF-ITP-96-21 CALT-68-2057 IASSNS-HEP-96/53 hep-th/9605184 Anomalies, Dualities, and Topology of D =6 N =1 Superstring Vacua Micha Berkooz,1 Robert G. Leigh,1 Joseph Polchinski,2 John H. Schwarz,3 Nathan Seiberg,1 and Edward Witten4 1Department of Physics, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ 08855-0849 2Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-4030 3California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125 4Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ 08540 Abstract We consider various aspects of compactifications of the Type I/heterotic Spin(32)/Z2 theory on K3. One family of such compactifications in- cludes the standard embedding of the spin connection in the gauge group, and is on the same moduli space as the compactification of arXiv:hep-th/9605184v1 25 May 1996 the heterotic E8 × E8 theory on K3 with instanton numbers (8,16). Another class, which includes an orbifold of the Type I theory re- cently constructed by Gimon and Polchinski and whose field theory limit involves some topological novelties, is on the moduli space of the heterotic E8 × E8 theory on K3 with instanton numbers (12,12). These connections between Spin(32)/Z2 and E8 × E8 models can be demonstrated by T duality, and permit a better understanding of non- perturbative gauge fields in the (12,12) model. In the transformation between Spin(32)/Z2 and E8 × E8 models, the strong/weak coupling duality of the (12,12) E8 × E8 model is mapped to T duality in the Type I theory. The gauge and gravitational anomalies in the Type I theory are canceled by an extension of the Green-Schwarz mechanism. -
Umbral Moonshine and K3 Surfaces Arxiv:1406.0619V3 [Hep-Th]
SLAC-PUB-16469 Umbral Moonshine and K3 Surfaces Miranda C. N. Cheng∗1 and Sarah Harrisony2 1Institute of Physics and Korteweg-de Vries Institute for Mathematics, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlandsz 2Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics, Department of Physics, and Theory Group, SLAC, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA Abstract Recently, 23 cases of umbral moonshine, relating mock modular forms and finite groups, have been discovered in the context of the 23 even unimodular Niemeier lattices. One of the 23 cases in fact coincides with the so-called Mathieu moonshine, discovered in the context of K3 non-linear sigma models. In this paper we establish a uniform relation between all 23 cases of umbral moonshine and K3 sigma models, and thereby take a first step in placing umbral moonshine into a geometric and physical context. This is achieved by relating the ADE root systems of the Niemeier lattices to the ADE du Val singularities that a K3 surface can develop, and the configuration of smooth rational curves in their resolutions. A geometric interpretation of our results is given in terms of the marking of K3 surfaces by Niemeier lattices. arXiv:1406.0619v3 [hep-th] 18 Mar 2015 ∗[email protected] [email protected] zOn leave from CNRS, Paris. 1 This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, under Contract No. DE-AC02-76SF00515 and HEP. Umbral Moonshine and K3 Surfaces 2 Contents 1 Introduction and Summary 3 2 The Elliptic Genus of Du Val Singularities 8 3 Umbral Moonshine and Niemeier Lattices 14 4 Umbral Moonshine and the (Twined) K3 Elliptic Genus 20 5 Geometric Interpretation 27 6 Discussion 30 A Special Functions 32 B Calculations and Proofs 34 C The Twining Functions 41 References 48 Umbral Moonshine and K3 Surfaces 3 1 Introduction and Summary Mock modular forms are interesting functions playing an increasingly important role in various areas of mathematics and theoretical physics. -
$ L $-Functions of Higher Dimensional Calabi-Yau Manifolds of Borcea
L-FUNCTIONS OF HIGHER DIMENSIONAL CALABI-YAU MANIFOLDS OF BORCEA-VOISIN TYPE DOMINIK BUREK Abstract. We construct a series of examples of Calabi-Yau manifolds in arbitrary dimension and compute the main invariants. In particular, we give higher dimensional generalisation of Borcea-Voisin Calabi-Yau threefolds. We compute Hodge numbers of constructed examples using orbifold Chen-Ruan cohomology. We also give a method to compute a local zeta function using the Frobenius morphism for orbifold cohomology introduced by Rose. 1. Introduction The first examples of mirror Calabi-Yau threefolds which are neither toric or complete intersection were constructed by C. Borcea ([Bor97]) and C. Voisin ([Voi93]). This construction involves a non- symplectic involutions γS : S ! S, αE : E ! E of a K3 surface S and an elliptic curve E. The quotient (S ×E)=(γS ×αE) has a resolution of singularities which is a Calabi-Yau threefold, the mirror Calabi-Yau threefold is given by the same construction using the mirror K3 surface. C. Vafa and E. Witten studied similar constructions in [VW95] as a resolution of singularities of (E × E × E)=(Z2 ⊕ Z2) and (E × E × E)=(Z3 ⊕ Z3), where E is an elliptic curve and Z2 (resp. Z3) acts as involution (resp. automorphism of order 3). This approach leads to abstract physical models studied by L. Dixon, J. Harvey, C. Vafa, E. Witten in [Dix+85; Dix+86]. More generally, quotients of products of tori by a finite group were classified by J. Dillies, R. Donagi, A. E. Faraggi an K. Wendland in [Dil07; DF04; DW09]. In this paper we shall study Calabi-Yau manifolds constructed as a resolution of singularities of n−1 (X1 × X2 × ::: × Xn)=Zd ; where Xi denotes a variety of Calabi-Yau type with purely non-symplectic automorphism φi;d : Xi ! Xi k of order d, where d = 2; 3; 4 or 6: If Fix(φi;d) for k j d and i = 2; : : : ; n is a smooth divisor and φ1;d satisfies assumption Ad then there exists a crepant resolution Xd;n which is a Calabi-Yau manifold. -
Introduction
Proceedings of Symposia in Pure Mathematics Volume 81, 2010 Introduction Jonathan Rosenberg Abstract. The papers in this volume are the outgrowth of an NSF-CBMS Regional Conference in the Mathematical Sciences, May 18–22, 2009, orga- nized by Robert Doran and Greg Friedman at Texas Christian University. This introduction explains the scientific rationale for the conference and some of the common themes in the papers. During the week of May 18–22, 2009, Robert Doran and Greg Friedman orga- nized a wonderfully successful NSF-CBMS Regional Research Conference at Texas Christian University. I was the primary lecturer, and my lectures have now been published in [29]. However, Doran and Friedman also invited many other mathe- maticians and physicists to speak on topics related to my lectures. The papers in this volume are the outgrowth of their talks. The subject of my lectures, and the general theme of the conference, was highly interdisciplinary, and had to do with the confluence of superstring theory, algebraic topology, and C∗-algebras. While with “20/20 hindsight” it seems clear that these subjects fit together in a natural way, the connections between them developed almost by accident. Part of the history of these connections is explained in the introductions to [11] and [17]. The authors of [11] begin as follows: Until recently the interplay between physics and mathematics fol- lowed a familiar pattern: physics provides problems and mathe- matics provides solutions to these problems. Of course at times this relationship has led to the development of new mathematics. But physicists did not traditionally attack problems of pure mathematics. -
Heterotic String Compactification with a View Towards Cosmology
Heterotic String Compactification with a View Towards Cosmology by Jørgen Olsen Lye Thesis for the degree Master of Science (Master i fysikk) Department of Physics Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences University of Oslo May 2014 Abstract The goal is to look at what constraints there are for the internal manifold in phe- nomenologically viable Heterotic string compactification. Basic string theory, cosmology, and string compactification is sketched. I go through the require- ments imposed on the internal manifold in Heterotic string compactification when assuming vanishing 3-form flux, no warping, and maximally symmetric 4-dimensional spacetime with unbroken N = 1 supersymmetry. I review the current state of affairs in Heterotic moduli stabilisation and discuss merging cosmology and particle physics in this setup. In particular I ask what additional requirements this leads to for the internal manifold. I conclude that realistic manifolds on which to compactify in this setup are severely constrained. An extensive mathematics appendix is provided in an attempt to make the thesis more self-contained. Acknowledgements I would like to start by thanking my supervier Øyvind Grøn for condoning my hubris and for giving me free rein to delve into string theory as I saw fit. It has lead to a period of intense study and immense pleasure. Next up is my brother Kjetil, who has always been a good friend and who has been constantly looking out for me. It is a source of comfort knowing that I can always turn to him for help. Mentioning friends in such an acknowledgement is nearly mandatory. At least they try to give me that impression.