Holograms in the Sky: Lessons for de Sitter and Flat-space Holography from AdS/CFT

Speaker
Prof. Charlotte Sleight

Date/Time
Date(s) - 13/02/2026
14:00 - 15:30


Announcing the QFT Colloquium on Friday, 13 February, at 14:00, at room 1.221 (CSMB building), Zum Großen Windkanal 2, 12489 Berlin.

Prof. Charlotte Sleight (Napoli Field and String Theory)

Abstract:

The AdS/CFT correspondence is our most successful working example of the holographic principle in quantum gravity, which identifies quantum gravity in anti-de Sitter space with a non-gravitational conformal field theory living on its boundary at infinity. I will discuss how far lessons from AdS/CFT can be pushed toward space-times closer to our universe, using AdS’s maximally symmetric cousins, de Sitter and Minkowski space, as a starting point. A key hurdle for holography in these settings is that the physics involves outgoing radiation. I’ll introduce a Euclidean perspective that nevertheless allows us to recast observables in de Sitter and flat space in terms of boundary correlators familiar from AdS/CFT, providing a concrete bridge between radiative physics and standard AdS tools.