Triangle Seminars

Week of 10 May 2010 - 16 May 2010

Thursday, 13 May 2010

Higher Derivative Gravity and AdS/CFT
Manuela Kulaxizi (Amsterdam)
Venue: QMW ยท Room: 208 ยท Time: 14:00 ยท Type: Regular Seminar
Abstract:
We will discuss a special class of higher derivative gravity theories called Lovelock gravities, in the context of holography. For a generic Lovelock gravity in arbitrary dimensions, we will formulate the existence condition for asymptotically AdS black holes. Then, causality of the dual finite temperature CFT will be shown to impose constraints on the Lovelock parameters. Calculation of the holographic Weyl anomaly in 6+1 dimensions reveals that these constraints are completely equivalent to the ones determined by requiring positivity of the energy flux. Implications of these results on the viscosity to entropy bound will also be discussed. This talk is based on hep-th/0910.5347, 0912.1877, 0912.4244.
Posted by: QMW

Friday, 14 May 2010

Non-Gaussianity as a Probe of Fundamental Physics
Yi Wang (McGill)
Venue: QMW ยท Room: 609 ยท Time: 14:00 ยท Type: Regular Seminar
Abstract:
Non-Gaussianity, which denotes the non-Gaussian feature of
the CMB temperature fluctuation, is potentially the most promising
probe of inflation. In this talk, we discuss some recent research
topics in this field, namely non-Gaussianity for DBI inflation,
quasi-single field inflation and multi-stream inflation. Special
attention is paid on the relation between non-Gaussianity and string
theory.
Posted by: QMW

Week of 10 May 2010 - 16 May 2010