Research interests

One longstanding goal of theoretical physics is to piece together General Relativity, which gives us a very good understanding of "classical" gravity at length scales above 10⁻³⁵ meters (far smaller than subatomic particles), with Quantum Mechanics into a theory of Quantum Gravity describing our universe. Such a theory is necessary to properly describe fundamental questions about the early universe or the inside of black holes. Much work in the theoretical physics community revolves around exploring novel mathematical aspects of Quantum Gravity which do not appear classically.

I am primarily interested in one such aspect—the holographic correspondence or "holography," which is a type of mathematical equivalence between theories of Quantum Gravity and theories describing quantum phenomena with no gravity. Most of my work uses the AdS/CFT correspondence, which is the most concrete and explored realization of holography. I use this machinery to study the quantum aspects of black holes, something which General Relativity is unable to do on its own. I also study quantum phenomena in a perturbative fashion using classical gravity—something which only makes sense because of holography.

I am also generally interested in many-body quantum systems, which are typically able to be modeled on a computer or even created in the lab. My interest in these systems is primarily motivated by how they may reflect quantum gravitational phenomena. Nonetheless, putting holography aside, such quantum systems are also useful in their own right as tools to study quantum information and chaos.