An update is given on the exoplanet research collaboration between Nielsen (a marketing research company), Brigham Young University, and NZ universities with the National University of Singapore, which has been expanded to include a community college
in the US. Key achievements from the past year are outlined, including density estimates for HD 209458 and Kepler 1 from radial velocity and transit fits. A comparison between the WinFitter optimizer and other techniques is outlined, showing that WinFitter estimated statistical errors are essentially in line (bar a scaling proportion) with those estimated via Markov Chain Monte Carlo techniques.
We reanalyze and expand upon models proposed in 2015 for linear dilaton black holes, and use them to test several speculative ideas about black hole physics. We examine ideas based on the definition of quantum extremal surfaces in quantum field theor
y in curved space-time. The low energy effective field theory of our model is the large N CGHS model, which includes the one loop effects that are taken into account in the island proposal for understanding the Page curve. Contrary to the results of the island analysis, that solution leads to a singular geometry for the evaporated black hole. If the singularity obeys Cosmic Censorship then Hawking evaporation leaves behind a remnant object with a finite fraction of the black hole entropy. If the singularity becomes naked at some point, boundary conditions on a time-like line emanating from that point can produce a sensible model where we expect a Page curve. We show that the fully UV complete model gives a correct Page curve, as it must since the model is manifestly unitary. Recent result on replicawormholes suggest that the island formula, which appears to involve only one loop computations, in fact encodes non-perturbative contributions to the gravitational path integral. The question of why Euclidean gravity computations can capture information about microscopic states of quantum gravity remains mysterious. In a speculative coda to the paper we suggest that the proper way of understanding the relation between Euclidean gravity path integrals and quantum spectra is via a statistical approach to Jacobsons interpretation of general relativistic field equations as the hydrodynamic equations of the area law for the maximal entropy of causal diamonds.
We discuss methods for {em a priori} selection of parameters to be estimated in inverse problem formulations (such as Maximum Likelihood, Ordinary and Generalized Least Squares) for dynamical systems with numerous state variables and an even larger n
umber of parameters. We illustrate the ideas with an in-host model for HIV dynamics which has been successfully validated with clinical data and used for prediction.
We propose an algorithm to select parameter subset combinations that can be estimated using an ordinary least-squares (OLS) inverse problem formulation with a given data set. First, the algorithm selects the parameter combinations that correspond to
sensitivity matrices with full rank. Second, the algorithm involves uncertainty quantification by using the inverse of the Fisher Information Matrix. Nominal values of parameters are used to construct synthetic data sets, and explore the effects of removing certain parameters from those to be estimated using OLS procedures. We quantify these effects in a score for a vector parameter defined using the norm of the vector of standard errors for components of estimates divided by the estimates. In some cases the method leads to reduction of the standard error for a parameter to less than 1% of the estimate.
The formalism of Holographic Space-time (HST) is a translation of the principles of Lorentzian geometry into the language of quantum information. Intervals along time-like trajectories, and their associated causal diamonds, completely characterize a
Lorentzian geometry. The Bekenstein-Hawking-Gibbons-t Hooft-Jacobson-Fischler-Susskind-Bousso Covariant Entropy Principle, equates the logarithm of the dimension of the Hilbert space associated with a diamond to one quarter of the area of the diamonds holographic screen, measured in Planck units. The most convincing argument for this principle is Jacobsons derivation of Einsteins equations as the hydrodynamic expression of this entropy law. In that context, the null energy condition (NEC) is seen to be the analog of the local law of entropy increase. The quantum version of Einsteins relativity principle is a set of constraints on the mutual quantum information shared by causal diamonds along different time-like trajectories. The implementation of this constraint for trajectories in relative motion is the greatest unsolved problem in HST. The other key feature of HST is its claim that, for non-negative cosmological constant or causal diamonds much smaller than the asymptotic radius of curvature for negative c.c., the degrees of freedom localized in the bulk of a diamond are constrained states of variables defined on the holographic screen. This principle gives a simple explanation of otherwise puzzling features of BH entropy formulae, and resolves the firewall problem for black holes in Minkowski space. It motivates a covariant version of the CKNcite{ckn} bound on the regime of validity of quantum field theory (QFT) and a detailed picture of the way in which QFT emerges as an approximation to the exact theory.
We investigate modifications of quantum mechanics (QM) that replace the unitary group in a finite dimensional Hilbert space with a finite group and determine the minimal sequence of subgroups necessary to approximate QM arbitrarily closely for genera
l choices of Hamiltonian. This mathematical study reveals novel insights about t Hoofts Ontological Quantum Mechanics, and the derivation of statistical mechanics from quantum mechanics. We show that Kornyaks proposal to understand QM as classical dynamics on a Hilbert space of one dimension higher than that describing the universe, supplemented by a choice of the value of a naturally conserved quantum operator in that classical evolution can probably be a model of the world we observe.
We recapitulate multiple arguments that Eternal Inflation, and the String Landscape are actually part of the Swampland: ideas in Effective Quantum Field Theory that do not have a counterpart in genuine models of Quantum Gravity.
We construct Holographic Space-time models that reproduce the dynamics of $1 + 1$ dimensional string theory. The necessity for a dilaton field in the $1 + 1$ effective Lagrangian for classical geometry, the appearance of fermions, and even the form o
f the universal potential in the canonical $1$ matrix model, follow from general HST considerations. We note that t Hoofts ansatz for the leading contribution to the black hole S-matrix, accounts for the entire S-matrix in these models in the limit that the string scale coincides with the Planck scale, up to transformations between near horizon and asymptotic coordinates. These $1 + 1$ dimensional models are describable as decoupling limits of the near horizon geometry of higher dimensional extremal black holes or black branes, and this suggests that deformations of the simplest model are equally physical. After proposing a notion of relevant deformations, we describe deformations, which contain excitations corresponding to linear dilaton black holes, some of which can be considered as UV completions of the CGHS model. We study the question of whether the AMPS paradox can be formulated in those models. It cannot, because the classical in-fall time to the singularity of linear dilaton black holes, is independent of the black hole mass. This result is reproduced by our HST models. We argue that it is related to the absence of quasi-normal modes of these black hole solutions, which is itself related to the fact that the horizon has zero area. This is compatible with the resolution of the AMPS paradox proposed in previous work with Fischler, according to which the compatibility conditions of HST identify the long non-singular sojourn of observers behind the horizon, with the dynamics of equilibration on the horizon as seen by a detector which has not yet fallen through the horizon.
I summarize Density Functional Theory (DFT) in a language familiar to quantum field theorists, and introduce several apparently novel ideas for constructing {it systematic} approximations for the density functional. I also note that, at least within
the large $K$ approximation ($K$ is the number of electron spin components), it is easier to compute the quantum effective action of the Coulomb photon field, which is related to the density functional by algebraic manipulations in momentum space.
The Coulomb phase, with its dipolar correlations and pinch-point-scattering patterns, is central to discussions of geometrically frustrated systems, from water ice to binary and mixed-valence alloys, as well as numerous examples of frustrated magnets
. The emergent Coulomb phase of lattice-based systems has been associated with divergence-free fields and the absence of long-range order. Here, we go beyond this paradigm, demonstrating that a Coulomb phase can emerge naturally as a persistent fluctuating background in an otherwise ordered system. To explain this behavior, we introduce the concept of the fragmentation of the field of magnetic moments into two parts, one giving rise to a magnetic monopole crystal, the other a magnetic fluid with all the characteristics of an emergent Coulomb phase. Our theory is backed up by numerical simulations, and we discuss its importance with regard to the interpretation of a number of experimental results.
