MS Seminar (Mathematics - String Theory)

Speaker: Simeon Hellerman (IPMU)
Title: The Strong Gravity Theorem
Date (JST): Thu, Mar 26, 2009, 15:30 - 17:00
Place: Seminar Room at IPMU Prefab. B
Abstract: In this talk I will derive of a universal upper bound for the weight of the lowest nontrivial primary operator for a completely general CFT in two dimensions. We make no assumption of holomorphic factorization, supersymmetry, or any other special property.
Translated into gravitational language via the AdS/CFT dictionary, the bound proves that any theory of 3D gravity with an AdS ground state, must contain a massive state in its spectrum with energy no higher than 1 / (4 G) + o(1/L), where G is Newton's constant and L is the AdS radius. This provides the first rigorous demonstration of a universal energy scale beyond which a theory of "pure" quantum gravity can never conistently be extended.