This series of meetings have been held on a quasi-regular basis at Brown since 2006 and serve the regional formal high energy theory physics community.  The meetings consistently attract around 80 external participants for a day of enjoyable and informative lectures and plenty of time for discussion during breaks.  Attendance, and anticipation, were high for this year’s meeting due to pent-up demand as it was the first one held in person since 2019. 

The Tenth Meeting featured talks by Hong Liu (MIT) on "Emergence of space and time in holography," Leonardo Rastelli (Stony Brook) on “Carving out the space of large N confining gauge theories," Andy Strominger (Harvard) on “Cosmic ER=EPR,” Kevin Costello (Perimeter Institute) on “Burns space and top-down celestial holography," Geoff Penington (UC Berkeley) on “Algebras and states in JT gravity,” and Brian Swingle (Brandeis) on “A holographic model of an accelerating universe.” 

A group from the Perimeter Institute gathered at a table to enjoy their lunch and said they were drawn by the quality of the speakers and were eagerly anticipating the talks. While they did mention a keen interest in Kevin Costello (Perimeter Institute) and Andrew Strominger (Harvard), all of the attendees at the table overwhelmingly agreed that, without exception, all of the talks looked very compelling.

Richard Nally, a 2015 Brown graduate who went on to get a PhD from Stanford, tries to come back at least once a year to visit his cousin, a Brown undergrad, and to fit in the conference while he is here. “I have more of a reason to come to Providence!” Richard enjoyed his lunch while eagerly awaiting a talk by Brian Swingle (Brandeis). “It’s the last one of the day, but worth waiting for,” he said.

Support for the meeting is provided by Anastasia Volovich's Simons Investigator Award.

Access slides and videos of the talks.