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NITheCS Focus Area Workshop: “Decoding the Universe: Quantum Gravity and Quantum Fields”

16–18 Jul 2025
Africa/Johannesburg timezone

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Contribution List

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6. Welcome and opening of Workshop
Francesco Petruccione (NITheCS)
16/07/2025, 10:00
1. Complexity measures in holography
Jaco van Zyl
16/07/2025, 10:20

Complexity measures such as Nielsen and Krylov complexity have received much attention in recent years especially in the context of many-body quantum systems. One of the main reasons for its rise in popularity, however, is in the context of the holographic description of black holes. By using collective field theory, which provides a constructive way to map quantum theories to their...
2. Quantum applications in material design and discovery
David Tshwane
16/07/2025, 10:40

Quantum computing is an emerging technology that has the potential to speed various computer operations required in material science and characterization. The application of quantum computing in computational chemistry and material science allows us to solve issues that are unsolvable with classical computers.The session will provide insight into how quantum-centric supercomputing might assist...
3. Quantum phases beyond classical shadows: A new framework for gravitational wave effects
Partha Nandi
16/07/2025, 11:30

This talk presents a theoretical paradigm exploring how low-frequency gravitational waves can induce uniquely quantum geometric phases—without classical counterparts—in mesoscopic optomechanical systems. Moving beyond usual Berry-type geometric phase analyses, we introduce a framework where an Aharonov–Bohm–like
phase arises from cyclic evolution in the quantum Hamiltonian’s parameter space....
4. Integrable structures (and beyond) in supersymmetric gauge theory
Costas Zoubos (University of Pretoria)
16/07/2025, 11:50

The link between the planar spectrum of 4d conformal field theories and integrable systems (both classical and quantum) has had far-reaching implications for the understanding of gauge theory more generally. However, much of this intuition has come from the study of the most supersymmetric case, which is therefore highly unrealistic. I will argue that there is a lot to be learnt by looking at...
5. The future of mathematical discovery
Vishnu Jejjala
16/07/2025, 12:10

I speculate on how we will be doing mathematics and formal theory in the next 10–20 years and discuss what we should do in the near term to prepare
7. Structured Discussions
All morning Speakers
16/07/2025, 14:30
8. Quantum corrections to the density of states of near-extremal black holes
Suman Das
17/07/2025, 10:00

Recent work by Turiaci, Iliesiu, and others has identified quantum corrections to the density of states of near-extremal black holes. These corrections have significant implications for our understanding of black-hole physics (and physics of strongly interacting QFT) in the very-low-temperature regime. In this talk, I will present the latest findings and outline some directions for future research.
9. Holography from the lattice
Anosh Joseph
17/07/2025, 10:20

I will discuss how lattice techniques can be used to explore simple quantum field theories that are relevant to holography. By focusing on lower-dimensional models with strong coupling and large N limits, such as matrix quantum mechanics, supersymmetric gauge theories, and scalar models with emergent geometry, we can probe aspects of holography from first principles. The aim is to identify...
10. Centres of symmetric group algebras in gauge string duality
Garry Kemp
17/07/2025, 10:40

The study of half-BPS states of dimension n in N = 4 super-Yang Mills theory with U (N ) gauge group has motivated the study of interesting subsets of conjugacy classes of the symmetric group which multiplicatively generate the centre of the symmetric group algebra. In this talk, I will outline some current and future developments in the study of structural properties of this algebra.
11. Quantum field theory in small systems
Will Horowitz
17/07/2025, 11:30

Recent advances in results from high-energy QCD and AMO suggest that non-trivial, many-body dynamics emerge at astonishingly low numbers of particles and in systems of shockingly small size. My group has been and will continue to think about the theoretical predictions for such systems nominally so far away from the thermodynamic limit.
12. AdS/CFT, string theory, and black holes”
Kevin Goldstein
17/07/2025, 11:50

Currently I am looking at what we can learn about QFT in de Sitter space by embedding it as a boundary CFT in AdS, features of black hole attractors that have been heated up and Spindle solutions in SUGRA and their holography.
16. Structured Discussions
All morning Speakers
17/07/2025, 14:30
13. Public Talk 1: The Physics of a Trillion Degrees
Will Horowitz
17/07/2025, 16:00

A microsecond after the Big Bang, all of space existed at a trillion degrees, one hundred thousand times hotter than the center of the sun. 13.8 billion years later, massive collaborations of thousands of scientists recreate these conditions of the early universe thousands of times a second in one of the most expensive and complicated science experiments ever attempted. In this talk I provide...
14. Public Talk 2: The centenary of the Schrödinger equation and quantum theory.
Kevin Goldstein
17/07/2025, 16:30
15. Q & A
17/07/2025, 17:00
17. Jet energy-loss in the OO-era
Isobel Kolbé
18/07/2025, 10:00

As I write this, the LHC is running proton-Oxygen and Oxygen-Oxygen collisions for the first time. These experiments will give unprecedented control over small droplets of QGP that are notoriously plagued by biases in heavy-ion collisions. In the near future we will be extending our analytical studies of jet quenching in small systems, as well as producing predictions for quenching in OO using...
18. Holography, chaos, and quantum information
Pallab Basu
18/07/2025, 10:20

A quick overview of some ideas I plan to explore around holography, quantum information, and maybe a bit of machine learning.
19. Renyi refined quantum null energy condition and its holographic implications
Tanay Kibe
18/07/2025, 10:40

The quantum null energy condition (QNEC) is a quantum field theoretic realization of Landauer’s proclamation that information is physical. QNEC imposes a lower bound on the energy in a region in terms of the information contained in the complement of that region. In this talk I will describe ongoing attempts to rigorously prove a Renyi refinement of the QNEC and understand its implications on...
20. de Sitter physics via AdS/(B)CFT
Adwait Gaikwad
18/07/2025, 11:30

Expectation value of simple massive fields on a de Sitter spacetime can be computed using a) embedding of codimension one de Sitter spacetime in a Anti de-Sitter spacetime and b) the AdS/CFT dictionary. I will talk about connections of these techniques with boundary conformal field theory with a spacelike boundary
21. Integrability of open strings ending on D7 branes
Laila Tribelhorn
18/07/2025, 11:50

Integrability of open strings ending on D7 branes is an interesting problem because one can consider two distinct embeddings, S2 ×S2 or S4. The more symmetric case has been shown to be suggestive of integrability in previous works in the gauge theory, whilst the opposite is true for the S2s. For simple solutions, analytic non-integrability techniques have been applied to both cases, but have...
22. Structured discussions
All morning Speakers
18/07/2025, 14:30
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