Time Dependent Holography
Seminars are at 2pm in Room 179 CP Building unless otherwise indicated.
It is often said that soliton contributions to perturbative processes in QFT are exponentially suppressed by a form-factor. We will provide a derivation of this form-factor by studying the soliton-antisoliton pair-production amplitude. This reduces to the calculation of a matrix element in the quantum mechanics on the soliton moduli space. We will investigate the conditions under which the latter leads to exponential suppression. We will also discuss how it suggests that the instanton-solitons of N = 2 SYM in 5D will not be suppressed and the implications for its relation to the (2,0) theory in 6D.
The introduction of a thin conducting shell into vacuum changes the electromagnetic mode structure. This modifies the zero point energy of space, so that there is an energy associated with the shape and size of the object. The value of this Casimir self-energy has hitherto been known only for the sphere and the infinite cylinder. However, Balian and Duplantier have given a route to its calculation for an arbitrary shape. I will explain their method and my implementation of it, and give some examples: ellipsoid, doughnut, pancake, cucumber, and cube with rounded edges.