Bulk-Boundary Duality, Gauge Invariance, and Quantum Error Corrections.

Recently, Almheiri, Dong, and Harlow have argued that the localization of bulk information in a boundary dual should be understood in terms of quantum error correction. We show that this structure appears naturally when the gauge invariance of the boundary theory is incorporated. This provides a new understanding of the nonuniqueness of the bulk fields (precursors).

Gauge-gravity duality and the black hole interior.

We present a further argument that typical black holes with field theory duals have firewalls at the horizon. This argument makes no reference to entanglement between the black hole and any distant system, and so is not evaded by identifying degrees of freedom inside the black hole with those outside. We also address the Einstein-Rosen=Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen conjecture of Maldacena and Susskind, arguing that the correlations in generic highly entangled states cannot be geometrized as a smooth wormhole.

Small-scale behaviour of cosmic string networks.

The evolution of cosmic string networks is an interesting dynamical problem. The equations governing these networks are classical and fully specified, but the length scale at which cosmic string loops form has been uncertain to tens of orders of magnitude. Numerical simulations are limited in the range of length and time scales they can reach, while analytic methods have been limited by the nonlinearities of the problem.

Hard scattering and gauge/string duality.

We consider high-energy fixed-angle scattering of glueballs in confining gauge theories that have supergravity duals. Although the effective description is in terms of the scattering of strings, we find that the amplitudes are hard (power law). This is a consequence of the warped geometry of the dual theory, which has the effect that in an inertial frame the string process is never in the soft regime.