Conveners
Strings
- Carsten van de Bruck
Strings
- Marco Fazzi
Strings: Generalized symmetries & Mathematical structures in string theory and QFT
- Piotr Suลkowski (University of Warsaw)
- Joseph Enea Davighi
Strings: Black Holes
- Arash Ardeali
- Marina David
Strings
- Alessandro Tomasiello
Strings: String phenomenology/cosmology
- Ivonne Zavala
- Susha Louise Parameswaran (University of Liverpool)
Strings
- There are no conveners in this block
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ROBERT Brandenberger (McGill University)22/06/2026, 11:10
Cosmological inflation has become the standard paradigm of
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early universe cosmology. I will argue that this scenario, at least
when described at the level of an effective field theory, suffers
from serious conceptual problems. In light of these problems, I will
discuss a new and more consistent approach to early universe scenario
based on a proposed non-perturbative definition... -
Sara Pasquetti (Milan-Bicocca University)22/06/2026, 11:45
We show that a broad class of 3d N=2 chiral Chern-Simons matter theories admit an abelian and planar dual description.
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These chiral-planar dualities emerge by performing real "axial" mass deformations on known N=4 mirror pairs, to flow to chiral theories on the electric side. While identifying the correct dual vacuum is subtle due to the rich structure of the Coulomb branch, we develop a... -
Francesco Benini23/06/2026, 09:00
Entanglement asymmetry is an entropic measure of symmetry breaking in
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quantum subsystems, inspired by quantum information theory,
particularly suited to study out-of-equilibrium states. I will present
the definition of asymmetry, and showcase computations in both ground
states as well as excited states of quantum field theories and
conformal field theories. Those will reveal interesting... -
Miranda Cheng23/06/2026, 09:35
Simulating quantum field theories on the lattice is the most trustworthy first-principles way to study a theory. Computationally, this can be challenging when the lattice becomes large or when the theory approaches a phase transition. In this talk, I will first give a review of recent efforts to apply generative AI to this simulation task. Next, we turn to the question: what have these neural...
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Sakura Schafer-Nameki (University of Oxford)23/06/2026, 10:10
I will give an overview of recently applications of generalized symmetries to QFT (in particular in some particle physics settings) as well as quantum matter systems. Generalized symmetries and the tools to study them, will be demonstrated to provide stringent constraints on IR properties of quantum systems across many applications.
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Adrita Chakraborty (AGH University of Science and Technology)23/06/2026, 14:15Contributed Talk
We model a soft-wall type nonconformal holography to study the gluon saturation phenomena occuring in a deep inelastic scattering process. The gravity background has been considered as a nonconformal warped version of 5D AdS geometry. The warpedness is characterized by a deformation parameter with finite length dimension. To represent a highly boosted target nucleus, we introduce a...
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Elisa Iris Marieni (University of Southampton)23/06/2026, 14:35Contributed Talk
String islands are isolated points in the space of string vacua that have no moduli except the dilaton, enjoy rank reduction and lead to consistent pure supergravity theories. Asymmetric orbifold constructions are powerful tools that enable us to access these points in the moduli space that are inaccessible to more standard string compactification techniques. In this talk, we classify all...
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Katarina Trailoviฤ (Institute Joลพef Stefan)23/06/2026, 14:55Contributed Talk
Path integrals in real time are plagued by violently oscillatory phases, and Lefschetz thimble methods offer one of the cleanest ways to make sense of them โ but only if the intersection numbers between thimbles and the original integration contour can be computed reliably. In practice, existing approaches have been limited to just one or two variables, leaving genuinely multivariable problems...
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Khoi Le Nguyen Nguyen (DAMTP, University of Cambridge)23/06/2026, 15:15Contributed Talk
Given a gauge Lie algebra, it is natural to seek representations for four-dimensional spacetime fermions that are anomaly-free and chiral. However, this problem is difficult to solve in full generality. Even for irreducible representations, where we only have to study $\mathfrak{su}(n)$ for $n\geq3$, solutions would seem to be few and far between: a trial-and-error scan by Eichten, Kang and...
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Matteo Parriciatu (Universitร Roma Tre)23/06/2026, 15:35Contributed Talk
We consider a new flavour framework in which quark mass hierarchies naturally arise from a small departure of the modulus VEV from special stabilised regions of genus 2. By extending the modular group to this genus, the same VEV can also account for the spontaneous breaking of the assumed CP symmetry. We present for the first time a quark model which is able to fit both the mass hierarchies...
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23/06/2026, 15:55
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Marco Carducci (Romatre university (INFN))23/06/2026, 16:15Contributed Talk
We consider a modular-invariant SU(5) model supplemented, for the first time, by a spontaneously broken generalized CP symmetry. Therefore, CP violation originates solely from the vacuum expectation value of the modulus, whose real component acts as the unique source of CP breaking. In the lepton sector, neutrino masses are generated via a type I+III seesaw mechanism, thanks to a single...
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Takafumi Aoki (ICRR, The University of Tokyo)23/06/2026, 16:35Contributed Talk
Instanton effects in gauge theories with spontaneously broken gauge symmetries are relevant to several phenomenological settings, including electroweak baryon-number violating processes and nonperturbative contributions to axion physics. In such theories, the relevant configurations are not exact classical minima of the action, so evaluating their effects requires some care. Earlier work...
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Sam Dolan25/06/2026, 09:30Contributed Talk
The quasinormal mode (QNM) spectra of black holes have been studied since the 1970s. In 2015 the imprint of the fundamental quadrupolar QNM was observed in the gravitational-wave signal from a binary merger. QNM (and Regge-pole) resonances have a local dependence on the potential maximum associated with the black hole light-ring, and also a global dependence on boundary conditions. In this...
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Michael Zantedeschi25/06/2026, 09:50Contributed Talk
The memory burden effect describes how an object's stored information resists its own decay. This mechanism is especially pronounced in saturonsโsystems that saturate unitarity bounds on entropyโwith black holes providing the prime example. I will show how memory burden can halt Hawking evaporation and dynamically stabilize black holes against complete decay. Crucially, this phenomenon is not...
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Robie Hennigar25/06/2026, 10:101
I will describe a new class of semiclassical geometries capturing the quantum backreaction of thermal conformal fields in three-dimensional anti-de Sitter space. These โquantum solitonsโ arise from placing a brane in the four-dimensional AdS C-metric. From the brane perspective, the construction gives solutions of three-dimensional gravity coupled to a strongly coupled holographic CFT. The...
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Llibert Arestรฉ Salรณ25/06/2026, 10:30Contributed Talk
I will discuss how Numerical Relativity can serve as a tool to study non-linear dynamics in effective field theories (EFTs) of gravity. I will first present our work on scalar-Gauss-Bonnet gravity, in which a change of gauge enables well-posed evolutions in black hole spacetimes, which reveal potential smoking gun signatures in gravitational-wave emission. I will then introduce a recently...
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25/06/2026, 10:50
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Farbod-Sayyed Rassouli (University of Nottingham)25/06/2026, 11:10Contributed Talk
Different notions of time arise from different choices of observer. In cosmological settings, a particularly natural choice is the spacetime volume, which is conjugate to the cosmological constant. This gives rise to unimodular time, deparametrizing the WheelerโDeWitt equation into a Schrรถdinger-like evolution equation. I will first explain how this construction appears in arbitrary dimension,...
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William Chan (University of Pennsylvania)25/06/2026, 11:30Contributed Talk
A step towards probing the black hole interior and its structure is being able to detect the black hole microstate. We demonstrate that the Euclidean two-point function of an appropriately chosen probe operator can detect the microstate of an asymptotically AdS black hole. This detection, which requires a tuned, state-dependent choice of probe, is the result of a new gravitational saddle,...
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Simone D'Onofrio (ICE - CSIC)25/06/2026, 11:50Poster
Tidal Love numbers (TLNs) encode the deformability of compact objects under external tidal fields and leave observable imprints in gravitational wave signals. While black hole TLNs vanish in vacuum general relativity, the presence of surrounding matter can alter this picture. This talk presents a study of the axial (magnetic) TLNs of a Schwarzschild black hole embedded in a spherically...
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Marina David25/06/2026, 12:10
In this work, we construct novel accelerating black hole solutions in higher derivative theories of gravity, focusing on an effective field theory extension of General Relativity that includes both odd-parity and even-parity terms up to six derivatives in the expansion. Unlike the case of rotating black holes, where corrections to the geometry generically fail to truncate, we find closed form...
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Diksha Jain25/06/2026, 16:15
In this talk, I will discuss the behaviour of the Euclidean path integral at low temperatures in the context of AdS_3 supergravity, highlighting the difference between near-extremal and near-bps limits. In our work, we analyzed quantum fluctuations in both the near-horizon and asymptotic regions and clarified various aspects of the bosonic fluctuations (namely, the rotational modes and gauge...
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Luigi Tizzano25/06/2026, 16:50
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Ivonne Zavala26/06/2026, 10:10
I will introduce SPIDER (Symbolic regression PIpeline for Dark Energy Reconstruction), an interpretable machine learning pipeline interfacing Exhaustive Symbolic Regression with a full Boltzmann solver to reconstruct dark energy properties directly from data. Applied to VCDM - a minimally modified gravity model - SPIDER uncovers remarkably simple analytic expressions for w(a), including a...
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Prof. Lilia Anguelova (INRNE, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences)26/06/2026, 10:30
In this talk we combine two previously disjointed areas of research, namely multifield cosmological models and effective actions with higher derivative terms. Cosmological models with many scalars are motivated by embeddings in a fundamental theoretical framework and, in addition, they lead to novel phenomena (of interest for both inflation and dark energy) in the rapid turn regime. Higher...
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26/06/2026, 10:50
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Hansel Gordillo Ruiz (UNAM, Mexico)26/06/2026, 11:10Contributed Talk
Recent results from DESI indicate that the accelerated expansion of the Universe may not be fully explained by a simple cosmological constant and instead may point toward a dynamical form of dark energy. At the same time, modular symmetries are emerging as important ingredients in string theory, as modular invariance is naturally built into many string compactifications. In this work, we...
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Mohammad Akhond26/06/2026, 11:30Contributed Talk
During the last decade, the notion of an 't Hooft anomaly has
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been generalised to the case of discrete symmetries. An interesting
instance, discussed by Tanizaki, is the mixed anomaly between the
discrete axial symmetry and the flavour and baryonic symmetries in
massless QCD. The goal of this talk is to provide a derivation of this
anomaly from a top-down holographic dual of QCD. I will... -
Shota Saito (Kavli IPMU)26/06/2026, 11:50Contributed Talk
We classify 4D N=1 truly confining supersymmetric gauge theories, in which no center charges can be screened. This property guarantees that Wilson loops in the fundamental representation exhibit an area law. We systematically identify all such theories for simple Lie groups and determine the allowed matter content. In each theory, we find condensing magnetic operators, which are expected to...
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Susha Louise Parameswaran (University of Liverpool)26/06/2026, 12:10
I will present an explicit string theory construction in which the particle physics contributions to the one-loop vacuum energy exactly cancel, whilst the gravitational contributions are suppressed in the size of one or two large extra dimensions. This provides an ultraviolet realisation of the Dark Dimension and Supersymmetric Large Extra Dimensions scenarios, with, moreover, an explanation...
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Salvatore Bottaro26/06/2026, 14:05
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Alessandro Tomasiello26/06/2026, 14:40
How many AdS vacua exist with no massive states below a given cutoff ฮผ? Taking a bird's eye view over all string theory vacua, we find that most classes display a power-law growth as ฮผ tends to zero. The exception comes from constructions that admit many brane charge choices, naively leading to an exponential growth. Taking into account moduli and tachyons suggests however a natural weight by...
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Albrecht Klemm26/06/2026, 15:15
Recently Calabi-Yau (CY) periods and their special geometry have been used to solve the Post-Minkowskian (PM) approximation to black hole scattering in the fifth PM order, i.e. to very high precision. This approximation uses effective Quantum Field Theory methods and in particular a Feynman graph expansion and Feynman integrals. In this talk we will outline the idea of the PM approximation...
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Lakshita Bageja (IISER,B)Contributed Talk
Holography(AdS/CFT correspondence) has proved to be quite useful in under-
standing field theory at the boundary from the information in the bulk and vice-
versa, the goal is to see if such a prescription can help us understand our universeand provide a mapping between cosmology and a CFT defined on a manifold with
boundary(BCFT). The bulk geometry is taken to be AdS with an...
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