High Energy Theory Seminar

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https://caltech.zoom.us/j/92402472179

Meeting ID: 924 0247 2179\

I will explore the idea that certain theories of gravity in Anti-de itter space are dual to an average over an ensemble of quantum theories, rather than to a specific quantum theory.  I will describe an average over Narain's family of two-dimensional conformal field theories which describe free bosons on a torus, and compute the partition function using the Siegel-Weil formula.  The result takes the form of a sum over geometries as one would expect in a theory of gravity.  But the  gravitational theory looks more like a Chern-Simons theory than like Einstein gravity.