About

Concentrations

Quantum Field Theory, Quantum Gravity, General Relativity, Geometry, Quantum
Information Theory

Interests

I am a theoretical physicist working to better our understanding of the theory of quantum gravity. To accomplish this my research utilizes the holographic principle which relates certain quantum field theories to gravitational theories in one higher spacetime dimension. This duality allows difficult problems in one description to be translated into simpler problems in the other.

A particularly important aspect of this correspondence is the relationship between quantum information and geometry. Quantities that measure information or quantum entanglement in the quantum theory can often be related to geometric objects in the gravitational theory. By studying these geometric constructions, we can gain new insight into the structure of quantum information. For example, they can be used to provide simple derivations of otherwise complex properties and relations between measures. A central theme of my research is understanding more completely this connection between information and geometry.

One major aspect of my research is the characterization of multipartite entanglement, which describes patterns of quantum entanglement shared among three or more systems. While bipartite entanglement can be fully captured by a single measure of information called the entanglement entropy the structure of entanglement between three or more parties is much richer and less fully understood. I study measures of multipartite entanglement to characterize those which have meaningful quantum information interpretation and useful properties, but which are also suited to direct calculation in holographic theories. Part of this work involves understanding when gravitational constraints prevent the geometric constructions needed to represent these quantities, a phenomenon known as bulk replica symmetry breaking.

Another area of interest is 3d gravity and gravitational path integrals. In three spacetime dimensions finding solutions to the vacuum equations of motion is simplified in part because the theory has no propagating degrees of freedom and is topological. As a consequence symmetric solutions can be consistently constructed from simpler ones by a quotienting procedure and in addition the entire theory can be reformulated using Chern-Simons theory, a type of topological quantum field theory. I am interested in gravitational path integrals, which involve summing over possible spacetime geometries subject to specified boundary conditions. A major challenge is in determining which geometries should be included in this sum and how to perform such calculations consistently.

Publications

arXiv Preprints
Inspire HEP Author Page