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.

Abstract: The properties of the ground-state spin 3/2 baryon decuplet have been studied for many years with limited success. For instance, while the masses, decay aspects, and other physical observables of some of these particles have been ascertained reasonably well, the magnetic moments of most are yet to be determined. In fact, only the magnetic moment of the strangeness S= -3 decuplet member has been accurately determined and that is because it is composed of valence quarks that make its lifetime substantially longer—via weak interaction decay—than any of its decuplet partners which possess strong interaction decay channels. We utilize equal‑time commutation relations involving at most one current density which are valid in broken flavor symmetry and valid even when the Lagrangian is not known or cannot be constructed. We also utilize the infinite‑momentum frame and broken flavor symmetry characterized by the existence of physical on‑mass‑shell hadron annihilation operators and their creation operator counterparts which produce physical states when acting on the vacuum and where physical on‑mass‑shell hadron annihilation operators are related linearly under flavor transformations to representation annihilation operators. This of course has the consequence that physical states—which do not belong to irreducible representations—are linear combinations of representation states which do belong to irreducible representations plus nonlinear corrective terms in the infinite-momentum frame. We note that the particular Lorentz frame that one uses when analyzing current‑algebraic sum rules does not matter when flavor symmetry is exact and is strictly a matter of taste and calculational convenience. When one uses non‑perturbative current-algebraic sum rules in broken flavor symmetry and the infinite‑momentum frame as we do, the choice of frame is paramount since nonlinear corrective terms are best calculated in a frame where mass differences are de‑emphasized.

The B factories, BESIII, and LHCb continue to discover new heavy mesons. The experimental status and possible theoretical interpretations of these states are discussed.

In the first part of this talk, I will discuss the application of non-equilibrium dynamics to a system of 1D bosons in an electric field which has been experimentally realized recently with emphasis on possible experimental signatures of dynamics in this system. In the second part, I shall briefly present a perturbative renormalization group approach to driven quantum field theories, show that a drive may lead to realization of non-gaussian, i.e. interaction driven, regimes for such systems, and discuss the implications of this result for dynamical phase transitions.

We consider quantum quench by a time dependent double trace coupling in a strongly coupled large N field theory which has a gravity dual via the AdS/CFT correspondence. We study the scalar dynamics in the probe approximation in two backgrounds: AdS soliton and AdS black brane. In either case we find that in equilibrium there is a critical phase transition. For a slowly varying homogeneous time dependent coupling crossing the critical point, we show that the dynamics in the critical region is dominated by a single mode of the bulk field. This mode satisfies a Landau-Ginsburg equation with a time dependent mass, and leads to Kibble Zurek type scaling behavior. For the AdS soliton the system is non-dissipative and has z=1, while for the black brane one has dissipative z=2 dynamics. These analytical results are supported by direct numerical solutions.

Abstract: The Minimal Model Holography, relating 3d higher spin gravity on AdS to 2d W_N minimal models will be reviewed in this talk. In particular, explicit black hole solutions carrying higher spin charges are constructed with proper thermodynamics. We compute the free energy of a charged black hole from the holographic dual at large central charge, and find exact match with the bulk thermodynamics. Furthermore, scalar fields propagating on the higher spin black hole backgrounds are studied. Explicitly, the higher spin corrections to the scalar two-point functions are computed from both the AdS side and the CFT side. Again, a perfect match is found, which gives further support to the minimal model holography.