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Some recent talks (Summer 2024)

My posting frequency has decreased since grad school, since while I'm spending about as much time learning as I always have, much more of my pedagogy these days ends up in papers. But I've given a few pedagogically-oriented talks recently that may be of interest to the people who read this blog.

  1. I gave a mini-course on "the algebraic approach" at Bootstrap 2024. The lecture notes can be found here, and videos are available here. The first lecture covers the basic tools of algebraic quantum field theory; the second describes the Faulkner-Leigh-Parrikar-Wang argument for the averaged null energy condition in Minkowski spacetime; the third describes recent developments on the entropy of semiclassical black holes, including my recent paper with Chris Akers.
  2. Before the paper with Chris was finished, I gave a general overview of the "crossed product" approach to black hole entropy at KITP. The video is available here. The first part of the talk goes back in time to the history of thermodynamics and classical statistical mechanics, and the rest of the talk describes modern developments in a far-view historical context.
  3. At UChicago, I gave a talk (video here) about my paper "Analyticity and the Unruh effect," which is about geometrically local modular flow. The talk includes a gentle introduction to the theory of modular flow, and an exposition of some useful analytical techniques for studying modular flow in quantum field theory.

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