No Arabic abstract
Quantum field theory offers physicists a tremendously wide range of application; it is both a language with which a vast variety of physical processes can be discussed and also it provides a model for fundamental physics, the so-called ``standard-model, which thus far has passed every experimental test. No other framework exists in which one can calculate so many phenomena with such ease and accuracy. Nevertheless, today some physicists have doubts about quantum field theory, and here I want to examine these reservations.
We study four-derivative corrections to four-dimensional $mathcal{N}=2$ minimal gauged supergravity and show that they are controlled by two real constants. The solutions of the equations of motion in the two-derivative theory are not modified by the higher-derivative corrections. We use this to derive a general formula for the regularized on-shell action for any asymptotically locally AdS$_4$ solution of the theory and show how the higher-derivative corrections affect black hole thermodynamic quantities in a universal way. We employ our results in the context of holography to derive explicit expressions for the subleading corrections in the large $N$ expansion of supersymmetric partition functions on various compact manifolds for a large class of three-dimensional SCFTs.
We develop a reformulation of the functional integral for bosons in terms of bilocal fields. Correlation functions correspond to quantum probabilities instead of probability amplitudes. Discrete and continuous global symmetries can be treated similar to the usual formalism. Situations where the formalism can be interpreted in terms of a statistical field theory in Minkowski space are characterized by violations of unitarity at very large momentum scales. Renormalization group equations suggest that unitarity can be essentially restored by strong fluctuation effects.
Working with data in table form is usually considered a preparatory and tedious step in the sensemaking pipeline; a way of getting the data ready for more sophisticated visualization and analytical tools. But for many people, spreadsheets -- the quintessential table tool -- remain a critical part of their information ecosystem, allowing them to interact with their data in ways that are hidden or abstracted in more complex tools. This is particularly true for data workers: people who work with data as part of their job but do not identify as professional analysts or data scientists. We report on a qualitative study of how these workers interact with and reason about their data. Our findings show that data tables serve a broader purpose beyond data cleanup at the initial stage of a linear analytic flow: users want to see and get their hands on the underlying data throughout the analytics process, reshaping and augmenting it to support sensemaking. They reorganize, mark up, layer on levels of detail, and spawn alternatives within the context of the base data. These direct interactions and human-readable table representations form a rich and cognitively important part of building understanding of what the data mean and what they can do with it. We argue that interactive tables are an important visualization idiom in their own right; that the direct data interaction they afford offers a fertile design space for visual analytics; and that sense making can be enriched by more flexible human-data interaction than is currently supported in visual analytics tools.
Optimal transport has become part of the standard quantitative economics toolbox. It is the framework of choice to describe models of matching with transfers, but beyond that, it allows to: extend quantile regression; identify discrete choice models; provide new algorithms for computing the random coefficient logit model; and generalize the gravity model in trade. This paper offer a brief review of the basics of the theory, its applications to economics, and some extensions.
Motivated by the increasing connections between information theory and high-energy physics, particularly in the context of the AdS/CFT correspondence, we explore the information geometry associated to a variety of simple systems. By studying their Fisher metrics, we derive some general lessons that may have important implications for the application of information geometry in holography. We begin by demonstrating that the symmetries of the physical theory under study play a strong role in the resulting geometry, and that the appearance of an AdS metric is a relatively general feature. We then investigate what information the Fisher metric retains about the physics of the underlying theory by studying the geometry for both the classical 2d Ising model and the corresponding 1d free fermion theory, and find that the curvature diverges precisely at the phase transition on both sides. We discuss the differences that result from placing a metric on the space of theories vs. states, using the example of coherent free fermion states. We compare the latter to the metric on the space of coherent free boson states and show that in both cases the metric is determined by the symmetries of the corresponding density matrix. We also clarify some misconceptions in the literature pertaining to different notions of flatness associated to metric and non-metric connections, with implications for how one interprets the curvature of the geometry. Our results indicate that in general, caution is needed when connecting the AdS geometry arising from certain models with the AdS/CFT correspondence, and seek to provide a useful collection of guidelines for future progress in this exciting area.