Spacetime from matrices

Giorno 20 marzo 2025, con inizio alle ore 12:00, presso l'Aula T, su invito del Prof. Marco Scalisi, il Prof. Dr Edward Mazenc (ETHZ, Switzerland) terrà una master class dal titolo Spacetime from matrices.

Tutte le persone interessate sono invitate a partecipare.

Abstract. One of the most intriguing developments in theoretical physics over the past 30 years has been that spacetime might not be a fundamental property of a physical description of nature. Instead, it can emerge from non-geometric matrix degrees of freedom. These matrices furnish the basic building blocks for what has become known as the spacetime hologram. In this big picture talk, I'll try to explain what this even means, illustrating these ideas with concrete examples such as the AdS/CFT correspondence and the c=1 matrix quantum mechanics. I'll briefly mention ongoing work to understand the underlying mechanism for this surprising realization.

Bio. Dr. Mazenc completed his undergraduate studies in Physics at MIT, before pursuing his Masters at the University of Cambridge. He obtained his PhD at Stanford, under the supervision of Prof. Sean Hartnoll, where he focused on the emergence of spacetime in low-dimensional string theories from a quantum information theoretic perspective. Edward has recently gained enormous visibility and recognition for his work (together with Rajesh Gopakumar) providing the first detailed derivation of the simplest example of the famous gauge/string duality (which includes as a special case the celebrated AdS/CFT duality).