It has been very recently realized that large charge sectors in QFT’s exhibit interesting properties and simplifications. In this talk we will discuss two particular examples, namely the case of N=2 superconformal QCD in d=4 and the case of the Wilson-Fisher fixed point in various dimensions. It turns out that it is possible to find different regimes if the coupling of the theory scales...
I will talk about recent progress in analytic approaches to the conformal bootstrap.
I will introduce Mellin space as a convenient tool to perform both perturbative and nonperturbative computations in conformal field theories. I will discuss dispersion relations in Mellin space, the sum rules that they lead to, and applications thereof. These include the Wilson-Fisher model in d=4-eps...
Recently introduced generalized global symmetries have been useful in order to understand non-perturbative aspects of quantum field theories in four and lower dimensions. In this talk I will focus on 1-form symmetries of weakly coupled 6d supersymmetric gauge theories coupled to tensor multiplets and their interplay with large gauge transformations for dynamical tensor fields. In a non-trivial...
Is there any room for non-trivial unitary and conformal defects in the theory of a single free massless scalar field? And what about boundaries? We use the free scalar equation of motion and the structure of the bulk-to-defect operator expansion to rule out the existence of such defects in several (co-)dimensions. For boundaries we are led to a non-trivial system of crossing equations that we...
Class S theories are a broad and interesting class of N=2 superconformal field theories arising from wrapping the six dimensional (2,0) theory on Riemann surfaces. Most of these theories have no known Lagrangian description. I will present a method (based on brane engineering) that allows to systematically construct N=1 Lagrangians flowing to some of these N=2 theories. As an illustration of...
In this talk we analyse several aspects related to type B conformal anomalies associated with Coulomb branch operators in 4d \mathcal{N}=2 SCFTs. In particular, when the vacuum preserves the conformal symmetry, these anomalies coincide with the two point function coefficients in the Coulomb branch chiral ring. We analyse the behaviour of these anomalies on the Higgs branch, where conformal...
Recent discussions of the information paradox involve rather puzzling regions in spacetime called ‘Quantum extremal islands’. We show how these are easily understood from the standard Ryu-Takayanagi formula in the presence of Randall-Sundrum branes in arbitrary dimensions.
In this talk I will briefly review the theory of Random Tensors. In the limit of large size (large N), random tensors exhibit a new "melonic" limit, simpler than the planar limit of random matrices but richer than the one of random vectors. This "not too complicated but not too trivial" situation is ideal for analytic computations. I will then discuss some applications of random tensors to...
Upon torus reduction to two dimensions, (super)gravity theories exhibit an infinite-dimensional group of global symmetries – such as the Geroch group for GR, and E9 for maximal supergravity. These symmetries can be gauged to give rise to more non-trivial dynamics, possibly reflecting flux compactifications on complicated backgrounds. For instance, AdS2 solutions in 2d gauged supergravity may...
The source-free Maxwell’s equations are both conformal invariant and invariant under an SO(2) electromagnetic duality group. It is commonly thought that these conditions imply their uniqueness. However, there are two interacting electrodynamics theories with the same field content and all the symmetries of Maxwell’s equations. One was found in 1983 by Bialynicki-Birula from a strong-field...
We overview recent developments in the study of radiation in conformal field theories. We show that in conformal field theories including scalar fields, the radiative energy density is not positive definite, the radiated power is not Lorentz invariant and it depends on the derivative of the acceleration. We then discuss the coupling dependence of radiation, and we present unified results for...
Quantum chaotic systems are often defined via the assertion that their spectral statistics coincides with, or is well approximated by, random matrix theory. In this talk I will explain how the universal content of random matrix theory emerges as the consequence of a simple symmetry-breaking principle and its associated Goldstone modes. This approach gives a natural way to identify...
The asymptotic symmetries of gravity and electromagnetism are remarkably rich. The talk will explain the asymptotic structure of these theories in the asymptotically flat case by making central use of the Hamiltonian formalism. In particular, how the relevant infinite-dimensional asymptotic symmetry groups emerge at spatial infinity will be discussed. Extensions to supergravity will be...
We formulate a series of conjectures relating the geometry of conformal manifolds to the spectrum of local operators in conformal field theories in d > 2 spacetime dimensions. Our central conjecture is that all theories at infinite distance in the Zamolodchikov metric possess an emergent higher-spin symmetry, generated by an infinite tower of currents whose anomalous dimensions vanish...
We present the power of a geometric framework for supergravity and supersymmetric theories solely based on differential calculus on supermanifolds. The relevant field theory Lagrangians are expressed by integral forms, ready to be integrated on the full supermanifold and automatically implementing the invariance under super-diffeomorphisms. We show that different superspace formulations of a...
The term S-folds denotes F-theory compactifications which involve non-trivial S-duality transformations. In this talk I will discuss 4d N=2 preserving S-folds and the worldvolume theories on D3-branes probing them. They consist of two new infinite series of superconformal theories whose distinction lies in the discrete torsion carried by the S-fold and in the difference in the asymptotic...
In this talk I will discuss N=2 SCFTs realised on the worldvolume of D3-branes probing an S-fold plane with 7-branes. I will show how to formulate a projection on string junctions ending on 7-branes that generalises the usual orientifold projection of perturbative string theory to the case of S-fold planes. Using this technique it is possible to read off the flavour symmetry of the SCFT for...
The term S-folds denotes F-theory compactifications which involve non-trivial S-duality transformations. In this talk I will discuss 4d N=2 preserving S-folds and the worldvolume theories on D3-branes probing them. They consist of two new infinite series of superconformal theories whose distinction lies in the discrete torsion carried by the S-fold and in the difference in the asymptotic...
While multicenter black holes in asymptotically flat space have long been studied, the construction of multi black holes geometries in Anti-de Sitter spacetimes remains so far elusive. In this talk I will discuss recent progress on the search for these solutions. Working in the probe approximation, I will show that there exist stable and metastable black hole bound states in compactifications...
In this talk we will overview some approaches to study 4d strong coupling phenomena. In particular we will discuss a geometric re-interpretation of N=1 SQCD with special unitary gauge groups. We will argue that the 4d SU(M) SQCD in the middle of the conformal window can be engineered by compactifying certain 6d SCFTs on three punctured spheres. We will also discuss in this context the...
I will discuss confinement in 4d N = 1 SU(N) Super-Yang Mills (SYM) from holography, focusing on the 1-form symmetry and the holographic realization in terms of the Klebanov-Strassler solution. I will show how from the 5d consistent truncation it is possible to identify the topological couplings that determine the 1-form symmetry (and thus global forms of the gauge group) and its ’t Hooft...
Multifield models with a curved field space have already been shown to be able to provide viable quintessence models for steep potentials that satisfy swampland bounds. The simplest dynamical systems of this type are obtained by coupling Einstein gravity to two scalar fields with a curved field space. In this talk I will discuss the stability properties of the non-trivial fixed points of this...
I will discuss confinement in 4d N = 1 SU(N) Super-Yang Mills (SYM) from holography, focusing on the 1-form symmetry and the holographic realization in terms of the Klebanov-Strassler solution. I will show how from the 5d consistent truncation it is possible to identify the topological couplings that determine the 1-form symmetry (and thus global forms of the gauge group) and its ’t Hooft...
In the first part of the talk I will review some aspects of the Painlevé/gauge correspondence. In particular I will show how we can construct generic and explicit solutions to such nonlinear ODEs by using the Nekrasov partition function in the (epsilon1+ epsilon2=0) phase of the Omega background (Kiev construction).
In the second part I will show how we can systematically associate a set of...
We propose a new swampland conjecture stating that the limit of vanishing gravitino mass corresponds to the massless limit of an infinite tower of states and to the consequent breakdown of the effective field theory. We test our proposal in large classes of models coming from compactification of string theory to four dimensions, where we identify the Kaluza-Klein nature of the tower of states...
We propose a new swampland conjecture stating that the limit of vanishing gravitino mass corresponds to the massless limit of an infinite tower of states and to the consequent breakdown of the effective field theory. We test our proposal in large classes of models coming from compactification of string theory to four dimensions, where we identify the Kaluza-Klein nature of the tower of states...
We investigate in a conformally extended BSM scenarios radiative plateau Higgs inflation while dynamically generating the Electroweak and Seesaw scales via Coleman-Weinberg. The inflationary flat potential is a result of cancellations of quantum corrections between the gauge and Yukawa couplings. We show the theoretically consistent parameter space regions in LHC searches for this particle as...
