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MINICOURSE:

SPACETIME THERMODYNAMICS

 

ARON WALL

INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED STUDY, PRINCETON

 

Location: PSC 3150

Part I

Mon, March 21

  1:30pm – 3:00pm

Tues, March 22

  11:00am – 12:30pm

Wed, March 23

  1:30pm – 3:00pm

 

Part II

Wed, March 30 

   1:30pm – 3:00pm

Thurs, March 31

    4:15pm – 5:45pm

Fri, April 1

   1:30pm – 3:00pm

 

 The lectures will be recorded and made available online. Check back here for update.

 

Recently, there has been a lot of interdisciplinary research exploring connections between spacetime geometry, field theory, and quantum information theory. These lectures, sponsored by the Maryland Center for Fundamental Physics, are intended to provide a rapid introduction to the fundamentals of this field, geared at the level of grad students and postdocs (but faculty are also welcome!), who are familiar with the basics of GR and QFT.  Along the way I will note several unsolved problems, to inspire those who are interested in doing research in this field.

 

Part I is likely to be of interest to researchers in quantum information theory, field theory & string theory, gravity, and condensed matter theory.  Part II will begin with a broad overview of black hole thermodynamics; the remainder will be slightly more technical, and of particular interest to those studying gravity, string theory, or holography.

 

PART I (March 21, 22, 23) will center on the concept of "entanglement entropy" in field theory, a measure of the information in a region.  I will describe how to calculate this quantity by various tricks (including holographic methods), and spell out some applications to renormalization theory, condensed matter physics, and quantum gravity.

 

PART II (March 30, 31, April 1) will review a closely related topic, the mysterious entropy associated with black holes and other causal horizons (e.g. in cosmology). This part will explain why horizons obey the laws of thermodynamics, and how corrections coming from quantum mechanics and string theory are manifested.  I will also discuss nonperturbative speculations concerning microstates, the information puzzle, and firewalls.