Physical Society Colloquium

CANCELLED

Interview for Faculty Position

Adventures in String Theory: From Black Holes to QCD

Marcus Spradlin

UCSB

String theory was originally invented to explain quark confinement and the spectrum of hadrons in QCD, although we now understand it as a theory of quantum gravity. However, recent developments show that quantum gravity in certain curved spacetimes is actually equivalent to a strongly-coupled gauge theory. I will introduce this equivalence with three simple examples: I will show how to see quantum string theory emerging from gauge theory, explain the relation between the deconfinement phase transition and black hole formation, and discuss string theory implications for gluon scattering amplitudes.