Description
Strings and SUGRA seminars in Torino.
For more information please contact Lorenzo Bianchi or Domenico Orlando.
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...
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.
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...
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...
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...
