Friday, October 10, 2025
11:00 AM -
12:00 PM
Online and In-Person Event
High Energy Theory Seminar
Horizon Edge Modes in Λ > 0 Quantum Gravity
Albert Law,
Stanford University,
One-loop studies of de Sitter thermodynamics revealed universal codimension-2 "edge" degrees of freedom on the horizon of a static patch. I will show how to determine their spectra for fields of arbitrary mass and spin. For the graviton, these modes can be identified as geometric fluctuations associated with the cosmic horizon, an interpretation that also persists in the static Nariai black hole. For higher-spin gauge fields, the edge spectra display patterns of shift symmetries, pointing to a symmetry-breaking phenomenon.
The talk is in 469 Lauritsen.
Contact [email protected] for Zoom information.
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For more information, please visit http://www.theory.caltech.edu/seminars/high-energy-theory-seminars.