Applied Physics/Physics Colloquium: Simon Caron-Huot- "Gravity from Strong Correlations"

Abstract: Can gravity and extra directions of space emerge from systems that naively lack them?  Holography - the celebrated AdS/CFT correspondence - predicts that this can happen via one magic ingredient: entanglement, or strong quantum correlations. I will present in an accessible manner recent advances on this longstanding theoretical idea, using (thought) experiments that an observer "living" inside the hologram could perform to answer basic questions: why do I see particles, forces, gravity?  Surprisingly, many similar answers apply to our own world.  I will briefly comment on challenges to experimentally realize holography.

Simon Caron-Huot is an Assistant Professor of Physics at McGill University, where he joined the faculty in 2016. His research focuses on high-energy particle theory, particularly the study of scattering amplitudes in quantum chromodynamics—the theory describing the strong interaction between quarks and gluons. Caron-Huot develops new on-shell techniques that simplify complex calculations in particle physics and open the door to previously intractable problems. He also studies the highly symmetric N=4 Super Yang–Mills theory, a model that may become the first exactly solved quantum field theory in four dimensions. In addition, his work explores the physics of the quark–gluon plasma, an extreme high-temperature state of strongly interacting matter produced in heavy-ion collisions, with a focus on modeling how energetic particles (hard probes) interact with the plasma. In 2020, he was awarded the New Horizons in Physics Prize for his contributions to theoretical particle physics