Video Library

Since 2002 Perimeter Institute has been recording seminars, conference talks, and public outreach events using video cameras installed in our lecture theatres.  Perimeter now has 7 formal presentation spaces for its many scientific conferences, seminars, workshops and educational outreach activities, all with advanced audio-visual technical capabilities.  Recordings of events in these areas are all available On-Demand from this Video Library and on Perimeter Institute Recorded Seminar Archive (PIRSA)PIRSA is a permanent, free, searchable, and citable archive of recorded seminars from relevant bodies in physics. This resource has been partially modelled after Cornell University's arXiv.org.

Tuesday Jun 01, 2010
Speaker(s):

Quantization of string theory on the AdS(3) backgrounds with the RR flux, such as AdS(3)xS(3)xT(4) or AdS(3)xS(3)xS(3)xS(1), is an unsolved problem. Since the sigma model on these backgrounds is classically integrable, one can try to implement powerful methods of integrability similar to those used to solve AdS(5)/CFT(4) and AdS(4)/CFT(3). I will describe the integrability approach to the AdS(3) backgrounds, emphasizing the differences to the better understood cases of AdS(5) and AdS(4).

Collection/Series:
Scientific Areas:

Mode-Coupling, Hydrodynamic Long-time tails from Anti de Sitter Space

Saturday May 29, 2010
Speaker(s):

TBA

An isotropic to anisotropic transition in a fractional quantum Hall state

Saturday May 29, 2010

I describe a novel abelian gauge theory in 2+1 dimensions which has surprising theoretical and phenomenological features. The theory has a vanishing coefficient for the square of the electric field $e_i^2$, characteristic of a quantum critical point with dynamical critical exponent $z=2$, and a level-$k$ Chern-Simons coupling, which is marginal at this critical point. For $k=0$, this theory is dual to a free $z=2$ scalar field theory describing a quantum Lifshitz transition, but $k \neq 0$ renders the scalar description non-local.

Quantum "disordering" magnetic order in insulators, superconductors, and metals

Saturday May 29, 2010
Speaker(s):

tba

A particle physicist's perspective on topological insulators

Saturday May 29, 2010

The theory of topological insulators will be reviewed in terms familiar to particle theorists.

Holographic description of quantum field theory

Saturday May 29, 2010
Speaker(s):

The AdS/CFT correspondence has opened the door to understand a class of strongly coupled quantum field theories. Although the original correspondence has been conjectured based on string theory, it is possible that the underlying principle is more general, and a wider class of quantum field theories can be understood through holographic descriptions. In this talk, I will discuss about a prescription to construct holographic theories for general quantum field theories. As an example, I will present a holographic dual theory for the D-dimensional O(N) vector model.

Quantum Entanglement and Quantum Criticality

Friday May 28, 2010
Speaker(s):

The entanglement entropy of a pure quantum state of a bipartite system is defined as the von Neumann entropy of the reduced density matrix obtained by tracing over one of the two parts. Critical ground states of local Hamiltonians in one dimension have entanglement that diverges logarithmically in the subsystem size, with a universal coefficient that is is related to the central charge of the associated conformal field theory.

Spin Liquid and Topological Insulator in Frustrated Magnets

Friday May 28, 2010
Speaker(s):

Recently several proposals are made for possible spin liquid and topological insulator phases in frustrated magnets. I will review some of these efforts and present some new results. Implications to real materials will also be made.

Impurity entanglement entropy and the Kondo model

Friday May 28, 2010
Speaker(s):

The entanglement entropy in conformal field theory was predicted to include a boundary term which depends on the choice of conformally invariant boundary condition. We have studied this effect in the Kondo model of a magnetic impurity in a metal, which exhibits a renormalization group flow between conformally invariant fixed points.

Strange metal from holography

Friday May 28, 2010
Speaker(s):

This talk is about a class of non-Fermi liquid metals, identified using the AdS/CFT correspondence.

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