Latham Boyle

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I am interested in a variety of different topics including cosmology, particle physics, gravitational waves, black holes, and mathematical physics. Several topics particularly close to my heart have formed a running theme in my research in recent years: 1) The early universe was remarkably simple and symmetrical. What is the correct explanation? In 2018, my collaborators and I proposed a new cosmological model, the "CPT-Symmetric Universe," in which the universe before the bang is the CPT mirror image of the universe after the bang. In a series of papers (arxiv.org/abs/1803.08928, arxiv.org/abs/1803.08930, arxiv.org/abs/2109.06204, arxiv.org/abs/2110.06258, arxiv.org/abs/2201.07279, arxiv.org/abs/2208.10396), we have argued that this idea -- essentially that the Big Bang is a kind of mirror -- makes a number of observable predictions, and provides elegant new explanations for many of the observed properties of our universe. These explanations are rigid and inflexible (bad qualities for humans, but good qualities for scientific theories!). For an introduction, see our original paper "CPT-Symmetric Universe" in Physical Review Letters (arxiv.org/abs/1803.08928), and our recent pre-print "Thermodynamic solution of the homogeneity, isotropy and flatness puzzles (and a clue to the cosmological constant)" (https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.01142). For popular introductions to these results, see https://www.quantamagazine.org/why-this-universe-new-calculation-suggests-our-cosmos-is-typical-20221117/ and https://www.livescience.com/truth-behind-nasa-mirror-parallel-universe.html . 2) I would like to understand where the unexplained structures and patterns in the standard model of particle physics come from. See my paper on "The Standard Model, the Exceptional Jordan Algebra, and Triality" (arxiv.org/abs/2006.16265), the talks from the recent conference I organized on "Octonions and the Standard Model" (https://pirsa.org/C21001), or this recent New Scientist article for a popular introduction: https://www.newscientist.com/article/0-octonions-the-strange-maths-that-could-unite-the-laws-of-nature/ . 3) I am fascinated by self-similar quasiperiodic tilings -- like Penrose tiling (and its less-well-known decoration by "Ammann lines") -- both because of their mathematical beauty, and because of their connections to physics, e.g. as a new tool for discretizing scale-invariant physical systems: see our paper "Conformal Quasicrystals and Holography" in Physical Review X (arxiv.org/abs/1805.02665). To find and better understand all analogous patterns (in two dimensions or higher), I have developed a perspective in which these patterns originate from special pairs of reflection groups (which I call "Coxeter pairs"). An initial version of this story is described in my paper "Coxeter Pairs, Ammann Patterns and Penrose-like Tilings" (arxiv.org/abs/1608.08215, which also includes many figures displaying all of the 2D patterns and tilings), and a more complete version will be described in a forthcoming paper.
  • Adjunct Faculty, University of Waterloo, 2011-present
  • Postdoctoral Fellow, Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics, 2006-2009
  • PhD Student, Physics Department, Princeton University, 2001-2006
  • Editor's Suggestion, "CPT-Symmetric Universe", Physical Review Letters, 2018
  • Editor's Suggestion, "Symmetric Satellite Swarms and Choreographic Crystals", Physical Review Letters, 2016
  • Editor's Suggestion, "Quantifying the BICEP2-Planck Tension over Gravitational Waves", Physical Review Letters, 2014
  • Viewpoint article, "Proving Inflation: A Bootstrap Approach", Physical Review Letters, 2010
  • Junior Fellowship, Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR), 2008
  • Turok, N., & Boyle, L. (2023). A Minimal Explanation of the Primordial Cosmological Perturbations. doi:10.48550/arxiv.2302.00344
  • Boyle, L., & Turok, N. (2022). Thermodynamic solution of the homogeneity, isotropy and flatness puzzles (and a clue to the cosmological constant). doi:10.48550/arxiv.2210.01142
  • Boyle, L., & Steinhardt, P. J. (2022). Coxeter pairs, Ammann patterns, and Penrose-like tilings. Physical Review B, 106(14), 144113. doi:10.1103/physrevb.106.144113
  • Boyle, L., & Steinhardt, P. J. (2022). Self-similar one-dimensional quasilattices. Physical Review B, 106(14), 144112. doi:10.1103/physrevb.106.144112
  • Boyle, L., Teuscher, M., & Turok, N. (2022). The Big Bang as a Mirror: a Solution of the Strong CP Problem. doi:10.48550/arxiv.2208.10396
  • Boyle, L., Finn, K., & Turok, N. (2022). The Big Bang, CPT, and neutrino dark matter. Annals of Physics, 438, 168767. doi:10.1016/j.aop.2022.168767
  • Turok, N., & Boyle, L. (2022). Gravitational entropy and the flatness, homogeneity and isotropy puzzles. doi:10.48550/arxiv.2201.07279
  • Boyle, L., & Turok, N. (2021). Cancelling the vacuum energy and Weyl anomaly in the standard model with dimension-zero scalar fields. doi:10.48550/arxiv.2110.06258
  • Boyle, L., & Turok, N. (2021). Two-Sheeted Universe, Analyticity and the Arrow of Time. doi:10.48550/arxiv.2109.06204
  • Panel Discussion: Open Questions in Early Universe, Quantum Simulators of Fundamental Physics, 2023/06/06, PIRSA:23060011
  • What is the simplicity of the early universe trying to tell us?, Quantum Spacetime in the Cosmos: From Conception to Reality, 2023/05/08, PIRSA:23050112
  • Standard Model Lecture - 230206, Standard Model (2022/2023), 2023/02/06, PIRSA:23020012
  • Standard Model Lecture - 230202, Standard Model (2022/2023), 2023/02/02, PIRSA:23020013
  • Standard Model Lecture - 230201, Standard Model (2022/2023), 2023/02/01, PIRSA:23020010
  • Standard Model Lecture - 230130, Standard Model (2022/2023), 2023/01/30, PIRSA:23010042
  • Standard Model Lecture - 230126, Standard Model (2022/2023), 2023/01/26, PIRSA:23010045
  • Standard Model Lecture - 230125, Standard Model (2022/2023), 2023/01/25, PIRSA:23010040
  • Standard Model Lecture - 230123, Standard Model (2022/2023), 2023/01/23, PIRSA:23010039
  • Standard Model Lecture - 230119, Standard Model (2022/2023), 2023/01/19, PIRSA:23010044
  • Standard Model Lecture - 230118, Standard Model (2022/2023), 2023/01/18, PIRSA:23010037
  • Standard Model Lecture - 230116, Standard Model (2022/2023), 2023/01/16, PIRSA:23010036
  • Standard Model Lecture - 230112, Standard Model (2022/2023), 2023/01/12, PIRSA:23010043
  • Standard Model Lecture - 230111, Standard Model (2022/2023), 2023/01/11, PIRSA:23010034
  • Standard Model Lecture - 230109, Standard Model (2022/2023), 2023/01/09, PIRSA:23010033
  • A new picture of the cosmos: A two-sheeted, CPT-symmetric universe, University of British Columbia Physics Colloquium (virtual), University of British Columbia, 2022/02/10
  • Where do the patterns in the standard model come from?, ISSYP 2020, 2022/01/01
  • Cancelling the vacuum energy and Weyl anomaly in the standard model (Why are there three generations?), Harvard, 2022/01/01
  • The Penrose tiling, self-similar quasicrystals, and fundamental physics, University of Edinburgh, Special Seminar, University of Edinburgh, 2022/01/01
  • The Penrose tiling, self-similar quasicrystals, and fundamental physics, Program on Nonsmooth Riemannian and Lorentzian Geometry, Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences, 2022/01/01
  • The Penrose tiling, self-similar quasicrystals, and fundamental physics, Joint Math/Physics Colloquium, University of Alberta, 2022/01/01
  • A new picture of the cosmos: A two-sheeted, CPT-symmetric universe, University of Edinburgh Physics, Special Seminar, University of Edinburgh, 2022/01/01
  • A new picture of the cosmos: A two-sheeted, CPT-symmetric universe, CWRU Particle Physics/Astrophysics Seminar, Case Western Reserve University, 2022/01/01
  • The two-sheeted, CPT-symmetric universe, 1st International Conference of Holography and its Applications (virtual), 2022/01/01
  • A new picture of the cosmos: A two-sheeted, CPT-symmetric universe, Quantum Gravity, Cosmology and Black Holes, Portugal, virtual, 2022/01/01
  • The two-sheeted, CPT-symmetric universe, Beyond the Standard Model Physics Seminar, CERN (virtual), 2022/01/01
  • The two-sheeted, CPT-symmetric universe, Cosmology Seminar, Sharif University (virtual), 2022/01/01
  • The standard model, left/right symmetry, and the "magic square", Octonions and the Standard Model, 2021/05/17, PIRSA:21050005