Session A4: Quantum Black Holes: Theory and Applications

Astrophysical Black Holes in String Theory?

String theory has by now achieved a very detailed quantum description of some black holes. However, the methods have mostly been applied in settings that have very little resemblance to the real world. Fortunately many aspects of the string theory description apply to all near extremal black holes, including near-extreme Kerr black holes (rapidly spinning black holes that are common in astrophysics). The talk reviews Kerr/CFT, the theory proposed specifically for these objects.   

Realistic (?) Quantum Black Holes at the LHC

If the fundamental scale of gravity is low enough, we may start probing quantum gravitational physics at the LHC, perhaps even through the creation of microscopic black holes. Since such black holes will be created in the collisions of partons, they are likely to be charged, colored, rotating, and moving. How do they evolve? Will we know when we make one?   

Holographic approach to condensed matter physics

The holographic correspondence provides, among other things, a framework for studying certain strongly interacting field theories using a `dual' classical theory of gravity in one higher dimension. The last couple of years has seen an explosion of interest in applying the techniques of this correspondence to strongly correlated electron systems in condensed matter physics. The hope of this research program is that specific behaviors of exotic electronic states, that defy conventional treatment, can be usefully tackled via this holographic approach. In this talk I will briefly outline the holographic methodology and emphasize the ease with which finite temperature and finite density response functions may be computed from black hole physics. I will discuss the onset of superconductivity within this framework as well as the appearance of theoretically controlled `non-Fermi' liquids. A short introduction to this material can be found at http://arXiv.org/abs/0909.3553 while a longer and slightly older discussion is http://arXiv.org/abs/0903.3246.