Holography

Content

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Description

This module will provide an introduction to the holographic correspondence connecting theories of quantum gravity with non-gravitational theories in one fewer spacetime dimension. Over the past 30 years, holography has developed into a powerful tool for studying both fundamental questions about black holes and making concrete predictions in strongly-interacting quantum field theories. We will take a “bottom-up” approach to this correspondence, discussing very general features of gravitational theories and how they can be reinterpreted as statements in the language of conformal field theory.

Lectures are Tuesdays from 11:00 - 13:00 in room 5.46 of the Bayes Centre.

Tentative lecture schedule:

Week 1: Background and motivation
Week 2: Introduction to anti-de Sitter (AdS) spacetime
Week 3: Free scalar fields in AdS and at the boundary
Week 4: Conformal field theory (CFT) axioms from AdS perspective
Week 5: Interacting scalar fields in AdS and anomalous dimensions
Week 6: Gauge fields and gravity from conserved CFT operators
Week 7: Universal long-distance AdS physics from CFT
Week 8: Black holes and CFTs at finite temperature
Week 9: Entanglement and AdS bulk locality
Week 10: Holographic renormalization group and open questions

Assessment

To receive credit for this course, you must attempt ONE of the problem sets posted in the module content (under "Resources") and turn it in by March 25 (one week after the last lecture). This will be evaluated solely based on completion, not whether your solutions are correct.