HirosiFest @ Caltech

27 Oct 2022, 09:00 → 28 Oct 2022, 23:30 Asia/Tokyo

Dates:  October 27-28, 2022
Venue: Caltech, Pasadena, USA

Overview: Prof. Hirosi Ooguri, who has long been a professor at Caltech, has made tremendous contributions in physics and mathematics, and is one of the most outstanding researchers of his generation. He is turning sixty this year, and we would like to take this opportunity to celebrate his remarkable contributions in physics and mathematics, bringing together experts worldwide.

This conference is proceeded by another event in celebration of Prof. Ooguri's 60th birthday: HirosiFest @ Kavli IPMU, October 20-21, 2022.

The conference is primarily in an "on-site/in-person" format, but we are thinking of making this event into a hybrid format, where online participation is also available. Note that Caltech requires on-site participants to be vaccinated and boosted.

Invited speakers:

Mina Aganagic (Berkeley)
Nathan Berkovits (ICTP-SAIFR, Sao Paulo)
Jan de Boer (Amsterdam)
Csaba Csaki (Cornell)
Dan Freed (UT Austin)
Jaume Gomis (Perimeter)
Rajesh Gopakumar (ICTS)
Daniel Harlow (MIT)
Igor Klebanov (Princeton)
Yaron Oz (Tel Aviv)
Natalie Paquette (Washington)
Nathan Seiberg (IAS)
Steve Shenker (Stanford)
Washington Taylor (MIT)
Tadashi Tokieda (Stanford)
Erik Verlinde (Amsterdam)
Herman Verlinde (Princeton)

Banquet Speeches:

Mark Wise (Caltech) as MC
David Gross (KITP, UCSB)
Spenta Wadia (ICTS)

Session Chairs:

Oliver DeWolfe (Colorado)
Sergei Gukov (Caltech)
Anton Kapustin (Caltech)
Christoph Keller (Arizona)
Juan Maldacena (IAS)
John H. Schwarz (Caltech)
David Simmons-Duffin (Caltech)
Spenta Wadia (ICTS)
Masahito Yamazaki (Kavli IPMU)

Organizing Committee:

Juan Maldacena (IAS)
David Simmons-Duffin (Caltech)
John H. Schwarz (Caltech)
Cumrun Vafa (Harvard)
Masahito Yamazaki (Kavli IPMU)

Address: 

1200 East California Boulevard, Pasadena, California 91125

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Thursday 27 October

09:00 Registration at Reception

1 Jan de Boer (Amsterdam)

[Session Chair: John H. Schwarz (Caletch)]

"quantum gravity and statistical physics"

deBoer.pdf

2 Nathan Berkovits (ICTP-SAIFR, Sao Paulo)

[Session Chair: John H. Schwarz (Caltech)]

"D=5 Holomorphic Chern-Simons and the Pure Spinor Superstring"

Superstring amplitudes can be computed using either the N=1 worldsheet supersymmetric prescription of the RNS formalism or the twisted N=2 worldsheet supersymmetric prescription of the pure spinor formalism. Although all amplitudes computed using the two prescriptions coincide, there is still no equivalence proof and multiloop computations.contain different subtleties in the two prescriptions. D=5 holomorphic Chern-Simons amplitudes can also be computed using either N=1 or twisted N=2 worldsheet supersymmetric prescriptions, and provide insights for an equivalence proof of the RNS and pure spinor prescriptions.

Berkovits.pdf

10:30 Break

3 Mina Aganagic (Berkeley)

[Session Chair: Anton Kapustin (Caltech)]

“Categorification of Chern-Simons link invariants from mirror symmetry”

Aganagic.pdf

4 Csaba Csaki (Cornell)

[Session Chair: Anton Kapustin (Caltech)]

"Magnetic scattering: pairwise little group and pairwise helicity"

I explain the concept of the pairwise little group which leads to the existence of pairwise helicity for multi-particle states. This pairwise helicity is needed to describe the scattering of magnetically charged particles. I show how to implement pairwise helicity into the spinor-helicity formalism and with its help construct the general 3 point functions. For 2->2 scattering we use the generalization of the partial wave decomposition and derive the famous helicity flip in the lowest partial wave as a simple consequence of a generalized spin-helicity selection rule, as well as the full angular dependence for the higher partial waves. We show a potential resolution of Callan's long-standing semiton problem in our approach. Finally we show how these pairwise states can be understood dynamically as dressed states which incorporate the effects of soft photons, and provide a novel fully field theoretic derivation of Dirac quantization in terms of a geometric Berry phase.

Csaki.pdf

12:00 Lunch

5 Jaume Gomis (Perimeter)

[Session Chair: Oliver DeWolfe (Colorado)]

"Anomalies and Symmetry Fractionalization”

’t Hooft anomalies play a central role in informing nonperturbative dynamics.
I will describe how the ’t Hooft anomalies of a physical
system can depend on additional data, whose physical interpretation we elucidate,
and discuss the implications of this for ’t Hooft anomaly matching.

Gomis.pdf

6 Dan Freed (UT Austin)

[Session Chair: Oliver DeWolfe (Colorado)]

"Topological symmetry in field theory"

Recently there has been lots of activity surrounding generalized notions of symmetry in quantum field theory, including "categorical symmetries", "higher symmetries", "noninvertible symmetries", etc. Inspired by definitions of abstract (finite) groups and algebras and their linear actions, we introduce a framework for these symmetries in field theory and a calculus of topological defects based on techniques in topological field theory. This is joint work with Constantin Teleman and Greg Moore.

Freed.pdf

14:30 Break

7 Tadashi Tokieda (Stanford)

[Session Chair: David Simmons-Duffin (Caltech)]

15:30 Break

8 Stephen Shenker (physics colloquium)

[Session Chair: David Simmons-Duffin (Caltech)]

Shenker.pdf

17:00 Wine and Cheese

9 Spenta Wadia (ICTS)

Banquet speech

Wadia.pdf

Friday 28 October

10 Rajesh Gopakumar (ICTS)

[Session Chair: Spenta Wadia (ICTS)]

"Deriving the Simplest Gauge-String Duality"

The simplest large N gauge theory is, arguably, the Gaussian matrix (or more generally, one hermitian matrix) integral. We will explicitly show that arbitrary correlators of single trace operators in this theory (without any double scaling limit) are identical to corresponding physical correlators in a dual topological string description. We will present both a novel A-model dual and also a mirror B-model Landau-Ginzburg description. The equality of correlators arises via open-closed-open string triality and a surprising relation to the c=1 string theory. The goal will be, however, to go beyond demonstrating equality but rather to make the duality manifest. For the B-model description this involves Eynard's recasting of topological recursion relations in terms of intersection numbers on moduli space. For the A-model this goes through the relation of Gaussian correlators to the special Belyi covering maps or equivalently, discrete volumes of moduli space. Finally, we also briefly mention the significance of these results for the gauge-string duality of N=4 Super Yang-Mills theory. (Based on upcoming works with Edward Mazenc).

Gopakumar.pdf

11 Yaron Oz (Tel Aviv)

[Session Chair: Spenta Wadia (ICTS)]

"Unraveling Turbulence: Modern Viewpoints On An Unsolved Problem"

Fluid turbulence is a major unsolved problem of physics exhibiting an emergent complex structure from simple rules.
We will briefly review the problem and discuss three avenues
towards its solution: field theory, holography and machine learning.

Oz.pdf

10:30 Break

12 Erik Verlinde (Amsterdam)

[Session Chair: Juan Maldacena (IAS)]

"K3, Topological Strings and the Entropic Principle"

Verlinde_E.pptx

13 Daniel Harlow (MIT)

[Session Chair: Juan Maldacena (IAS)]

"Where we are on the black hole information problem"

I'll give an overview of recent developments on the black hole information problem and a status report.

Harlow.pdf

12:00 Lunch

14 Igor Klebanov (Princeton)

[Session Chair: Sergei Gukov (Caltech)]

"Group Invariant States as Quantum Many-Body Scars"

Klebanov.pdf

15 Natalie Paquette (Washington)

[Session Chair: Sergei Gukov (Caltech)]

"Top-down topological holography & twists on twistor space"

Paquette.pdf

14:30 Break

16 Nathan Seiberg (IAS)

[Chair: Christoph Keller (Arizona)]

"Symmetries and Anomalies on the Lattice"

Seiberg.pdf

17 Washington Taylor (MIT)

[Chair: Christoph Keller (Arizona)]

"From geometry to 4D physics"

New insight into the topological structure of Calabi-Yau fourfolds provides a useful tool for organizing our understanding of chiral matter and how the Standard Model of particle physics can arise in the geometrical framework of F-theory. This work ties into a number of themes that have played an important role in Hirosi Ooguri's work over the course of his career.

Taylor.pdf

16:00 Break

18 Herman Verlinde (Princeton)

[Chair: Masahito Yamazaki (Kavli IPMU)]

"Some new observations about black hole partition functions"

Verlinde_H_1.pdf

Verlinde_H_2.pdf