Invitation to the ICTP 2019 Salam Distinguished Lecture Series

ICTP is pleased to announce that Professor Juan Maldacena from the School of Natural Sciences at IAS, Princeton, USA, will deliver this year’s Salam Distinguished Lecture Series on 28, 29 and 30 January 2019 in the Budinich Lecture Hall, ICTP.

Professor Maldacena’s work focuses on quantum gravity, string theory, and quantum field theory. He has proposed a relationship between quantum gravity and quantum field theories that elucidates various aspects of both theories. He is studying this relationship further in order to understand the deep connection between black holes and quantum field theories, and he is also exploring the connection between string theory and cosmology.

There will be three lectures as follows:

Monday 28 January 2019 at 16.30 hrs
Lecture 1: "Quantum mechanics and the geometry of spacetime"
Abstract: Black holes are fascinating objects which pose interesting puzzles for quantum physics. Studying these puzzles we are led to quantum mechanical models that describe special black holes as seen from the outside. Extrapolating from these descriptions we are lead to the idea that entanglement can create geometric connections or wormholes. Moreover, quantum teleportation can be interpreted as travelling through the wormhole.

Tuesday 29 January 2019 at 16.30 hrs
Lecture 2: "Toy models for black holes"
Abstract: Prof. Maldacena will review the Sachdev Ye Kitaev model and describe how it shares some features with nearly extremal black holes. He will also describe the dynamics of nearly extremal black holes. He will go over different physical phenomena, including chaos, quantum teleportation, etc, and their common manifestation in these two systems.

Wednesday 30 January 2019 at 11.00 hrs
Lecture 3: "Toy models for black holes". This will be a more technical talk based on lecture 2 above.

All lectures  will take place in the Budinich Lecture Hall and will be livestreamed from the ICTP website: www.ictp.it/livestream

The ICTP Salam Distinguished Lecture Series is sponsored by the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences.

More details at: http://indico.ictp.it/event/8741/

Light refreshments will be served after the talks.

You are all most welcome to attend.

Office of the Director, ICTP