From Gravity to Thermal Gauge Theories: The Ads/CFT Correspondence

Zwiebach is once again faithful to his goal of making string theory accessible to undergraduates. This text now includes AdS/CFT correspondence, as well introducing superstrings. With almost 300 problems and exercises it is perfectly suited for introductory courses for students with a background in physics.

Gauge/gravity duality creates new links between quantum theory and gravity. It has led to new concepts in mathematics and physics, and provides new tools to solve problems in many areas of theoretical physics. This book is the first textbook on this important topic, enabling graduate students and researchers in string theory and particle, nuclear and condensed matter physics to get acquainted with the subject. Focusing on the fundamental aspects as well as on the applications, this textbook guides readers through a thorough explanation of the central concepts of gauge/gravity duality. For the AdS/CFT correspondence, it explains in detail how string theory provides the conjectured map. Generalisations to less symmetric cases of gauge/gravity duality and their applications are then presented, in particular to finite temperature and density, hydrodynamics, QCD-like theories, the quark-gluon plasma and condensed matter systems. The textbook features a large number of exercises, with solutions available online at www.cambridge.org/9781107010345. Worked examples or Exercises; 72 Line drawings, unspecified

Suite du billet précédent : L’univers holographique (3) : De l’entropie à l’hypothèse holographique Confrontés à la difficulté d’appliquer le principe holographique à un modèle d’univers réaliste, les physiciens se sont tournés vers des modèles d’univers simplifiés, dans lesquels le principe pourrait s’appliquer. La première réalisation concrète a été l’œuvre du jeune chercheur argentin Juan […]

Image courtesy google The Strangest Coincidence in Physics: The AdS/CFT Correspondence. Attempts to turn string theory into a workable theory of nature have led to the potential conclusion that our…

Last week, Pavel Kovtun gave a seminar here on PI about the AdS/CFT correspondence and its applications for RHIC physics. For a brief introduction, see e.g. our earlier post Does String Theory explain Heavy Ion Physics?. It was the same seminar that I heard at the KITP in spring, and on which I reported in the Banana-post. If you are interested in the topic, you can now download audio, video and slides from the PI streaming seminars: Title: How can AdS/CFT be useful for heavy-ion physics? (Windows Media , Macromedia Flash , MP3 Audio , PDF) Speaker(s): Pavel Kovtun Date: 14/11/2006 - 11:00 amOn Tuesday, I missed another seminar on the subject, but as the seminar schedule tells me, on Thursday there will be even another seminar by Andrei Starinets. It's not that I am so tremendously interested in the topic, I just find it remarkable how much fuss there is around it. Despite the fact that Pavel started his talk with a very nice motivation about RHIC experiments, I could not avoid noticing the sharp contrast between his predictions, and the predictions I am used to from nuclear physics talks. The latter of which usually include some plots of calculated observables, how well they fit the actual data points (and error bars to both if necessary). Based on this, a conclusion on the quality of the model should be given, and how they compare to other approaches. It seems to me that the AdS/CFT calculations haven't yet quite reached this state. I have wondered for some while how the importance of the results is seen from the nuclear physicist's community, which has gathered last week in Shanghai on the Quark Matter 2006. The Quark Matter is the largest annual meeting of the community, which I am very sorry to have missed this year. But interestingly, yesterday a friend (who kindly agreed that I post his email) reported the following on the closing talk: ----- Original Message ----- From: "******* *******" To: [...] sabine[@]perimeterinstitute.ca Sent: Tuesday, November 21, 2006 9:00 PM Subject: Tearing string theory a new a*hole This is pretty weird/interesting. We just concluded quark matter. At the theory summary, in what was supposed to be the closing session, the guy speaking (Larry McLerran, a pretty famous person) went on a 20 minute rant on string theory in general, attempts to use it to describe RHIC in particular, and Brian Greene in personal. See Larry McLerran's talk (PPT), slides 19 onwards for what I am talking about (the slides do not convey his tone, e.g. giving Brian Greene a "Pinocchio award"). [...] In any case, an amusing closing talk to conclude a somewhat politicized (no surprise) but fun (as always) conference. [...] ------End of Original Message --------- The powerpoint file is pretty large (11MB), so here are the last some slides as jpgs (click to enlarge), starting with the Pinocchio award for Brian Greene: Please don't ask me details about the talk, as I mentioned, I didn't hear it. This is just to convey some skepticism from 'the other side'. Update: See also Clifford's post Nuclear Guy goes Nuclear at Asymptotia, and Lubos' post Heavy Ion Physics and AdS/QCD. Update: A written version of the summary talk is now available on the arxiv Theory Summary: Quark Matter 2006 Authors: Larry McLerran hep-ph/0702004

Barton Zwiebach is once again faithful to his goal of making string theory accessible to undergraduates. Complete and thorough in its coverage, the author presents the main concepts of string theory in a concrete and physical way in order to develop intuition before formalism, often through simplified and illustrative examples. This new edition now includes AdS/CFT correspondence, which is the hottest area of string theory right now as well as introducing superstrings. The text is perfectly suited to introductory courses in string theory for students with a background in mathematics and physics. New sections cover strings on orbifolds, cosmic strings, moduli stabilization, and the string theory landscape.

Dimensions (Overall): 10.2 Inches (H) x 7.3 Inches (W) x 1.8 Inches (D) Weight: 3.65 Pounds Suggested Age: 22 Years and Up Number of Pages: 888 Genre: Science Sub-Genre: Physics Series Title: In a Nutshell Publisher: Princeton University Press Format: Hardcover Author: Elias Kiritsis Language: English Street Date: April 16, 2019 TCIN: 82965408 UPC: 9780691155791 Item Number (DPCI): 247-18-2107 Origin: Made in the USA or Imported If the item details above aren’t accurate or complete, we want to know about it. Report incorrect product info.

Scientists in the UK have even identified four cases of "chronic déjà vu."

Is our universe expanding, contracting, then expanding again in an endless cycle of universes? Ed Belbruno explains how the earliest universe is approached from both the reality of observations and the equations that help inform it.

This book offers recent developments regarding Q-curvature and conformal holonomy. Discussion includes Q-curvature origin, its relevance in geometry, spectral theory and physics. Here emerges the influence of ideas originating in the AdS/CFT-correspondence.\nConformal invariants (conformally invariant tensors, conformally covariant differential operators, conformal holonomy groups etc.) are of central significance in differential geometry and physics. Well-known examples of such operators are the Yamabe-, the Paneitz-, the Dirac- and the twistor operator. The aim of the seminar was to present the basic ideas and some of the recent developments around Q-curvature and conformal holonomy. The part on Q-curvature discusses its origin, its relevance in geometry, spectral theory and physics. Here the influence of ideas which have their origin in the AdS/CFT-correspondence becomes visible. The part on conformal holonomy describes recent classification results, its relation to Einstein metrics and to conformal Killing spinors, and related special geometries.

This primer is a comprehensive collection of analytical and numerical techniques that can be used to extract the non-perturbative physics of quantum field theories. The intriguing connection between Euclidean Quantum Field Theories (QFTs) and statistical mechanics can be used to apply Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods to investigate strongly coupled…

A quarter century ago, physicist Juan Maldacena proposed the AdS/CFT correspondence, an intriguing holographic connection between gravity in a three-dimensional universe and quantum physics on the universe's two-dimensional boundary. This correspondence is at this stage, even a quarter century after Maldacena's discovery, just a conjecture.

If string theorists can show that their framework is the only consistent theory of quantum gravity, does that make it true even without tangible evidence?

[latexpage] The main appeal of the AdS/CFT duality is its holographic reconstructive interpretation of spacetime, and thus, by GR, of gravity, as emergent entropic phenomena

Al tachtig jaar proberen natuurkundigen de twee grote theorieën van de twintigste eeuw, de relativiteitstheorie van het grote en de kwantum-mechanica van het

Un amigo me ha preguntado qué dice la física sobre la muerte. Le he respondido que, primeramente, deberíamos entender qué dice la física sobre la vida o lo qué no dice sobre la muerte y buscar por reductio ad absurdum alguna conclusión valedera. Y pensando en todo esto recordé que en la naturaleza existe lo que parece imposible… un animal inmortal. Su nombre científico es turritopsis nutricula. Es una medusa de mar de la clase hidrozoo que cuando alcanza la madurez sexual revierte su desarrollo para regresar a un estado de pólipo y comenzar su ciclo vital nuevamente. Esto lo hace mediante el proceso denominado transdiferenciación. Entendemos dicho proceso porque los biólogos que han estudiado células madre los últimos 30 años han investigado un proceso similar más básico denominado diferenciación. Este es el proceso por el cual una célula embriónica no especializada adquiere las características de una célula especializada como las de un corazón, hígado o músculo. La diferenciación está controlada por la interacción de los genes de una célula con las condiciones físicas y químicas fuera de la célula, usualmente a través de indicadores compuestos por proteínas inmersas en su superficie. En la transdiferenciación, estas células, propias de un tipo de tejido, se diferencian hacia células de otro tipo de tejido. Esta capacidad hace de la turritopsis nutricula un animal biológicamente inmortal. Pero podemos preguntarnos ¿sabe la turritopsis nutricula que esta viva? Porque ¿qué es la muerte sino la disolución de la conciencia? Y, entonces, ¿qué es la conciencia? Roger Penrose, en su libro The Emperor’s New Mind, ha dicho que los procesos racionales concientes no pueden ser considerados algorítmicos ni, por lo tanto, corresponden al funcionamiento de una máquina de Turing, sino, más bien, estos procesos deben ser explicados considerando efectos cuánticos (en particular mediante el colapso de la función de onda). Ahora bien, si hemos de considerar efectos cuánticos esto quiere decir que todo hecho conciente sería sujeto de una de las posibles interpretaciones que se adscriben a la mecánica cuántica. El más probable, de todos los posibles, es el que considera que la realidad es una suma de historias o promedio de todas las posibilidades asociadas a un evento antes de su realización o medición (al colapsar su función de onda). Sin embargo, en 1957, Hugh Everett propuso una interpretación diferente a la mecánica cuántica, denominada interpretación de los muchos mundos, que afirma la realidad objetiva de una función de onda universal, pero niega la realidad del colapso de la función, lo que implica que todas las posibles historias alternativas y futuros son reales – cada una representando un mundo o un universo real. Keith Lynch, un empleado en DBS (una compañía comercial que Everett cofundó), recuerda que Everett creía firmemente que su teoría de muchos mundos le garantizaba la inmortalidad: su conciencia, argüía, está sujeta, en cada bifurcación [de la realidad], a seguir el sendero que no conduzca a la muerte – y así ad infinitum. Pero mientras no podamos evitar la muerte a la manera de la turritopsis nutricula o a la manera de los muchos mundos, me quedo con las palabras de Richard Dawkins (autor de The Selfish Gene): “Vamos a morir y ello nos hace los afortunados. La mayoría de las personas nunca van a morir porque nunca van a nacer. Las potenciales personas que podrían haber estado aquí en mi lugar pero que, de hecho, nunca verán la luz del día superan los granos de arena de Arabia. Estos fantasmas no natos ciertamente incluyen mayores poetas que Keats, mayores científicos que Newton. Sabemos esto porque el conjunto de posibles personas permitidas por nuestro ADN excede masivamente el conjunto de personas actuales. Es a pesar de estas sorprendentes probabilidades que tú y yo, simples como somos, estamos aquí.”

This book focuses on the study of different aspects of the AdS/CFT correspondence, the celebrated conjecture in string theory that relates gauge and gravity theories. It begins with a detailed review of the correspondence, with the main body of work being split into two chapters. The first chapter concerns the evaluation of correlation functions of BPS operators in the AdS/CFT correspondence, as these are useful to make indirect tests of the conjecture and to uncover dynamical features pertaining to the theories in the correspondence. In particular we look at four-point functions in AdS supergravity and their gauge theory interpretation. The second chapter has to do with the application of duality ideas in black hole physics, with emphasis on small black holes. We focus on the fundamental string small black hole and give arguments supporting its study via its CFT dual. The last chapter of the book summarises the content and suggests some interesting directions that could be pursued in the future.

In a distilled and pedagogical fashion, the contributions to this volume of the famous summer school in Les Houches cover the recent developments in supersymmetric string theory, the gauge theory/string theory correspondence and string duality. Further chapters deal with quantum gravity and D-brane geometry. Black hole mechanics and cosmology are treated too, as well as the AdS-CFT correspondence. The book is a comprehensive introduction to the recent developments in string/M-theory and quantum gravity. It addresses graduate students in physics and astrophysics.