In a recent important breakthrough D. Christodoulou has solved a long standing problem of General Relativity of evolutionary formation of trapped surfaces in the Einstein-vacuum space-times. He has identified an open set of regular initial conditions on an outgoing null hypersurface (both finite and at past null infinity) leading to a formation a trapped surface in the corresponding vacuum space-time to the future of the initial outgoing hypersurface and another incoming null hypersurface with the prescribed Minkowskian data. In this paper we give a simpler proof for a finite problem by enlarging the admissible set of initial conditions and, consistent with this, relaxing the corresponding propagation estimates just enough that a trapped surface still forms. We also reduce the number of derivatives needed in the argument from two derivatives of the curvature to just one. More importantly, the proof, which can be easily localized with respect to angular sectors, has the potential for further developments.

In this paper, we prove the mirror symmetry conjecture between the Saito–Givental theory of exceptional unimodular singularities on the Landau–Ginzburg B-side and the Fan–Jarvis– Ruan–Witten theory of their mirror partners on the Landau–Ginzburg A-side. On the B-side, we develop a perturbative method to compute the genus-0 correlation functions associated to the primitive forms. This is applied to the exceptional unimodular singularities, and we show that the numerical invariants match the orbifold-Grothendieck–Riemann–Roch and WDVV calculations in FJRW theory on the A-side. The coincidence of the full data at all genera is established by reconstruction techniques. Our result establishes the first examples of LG-LG mirror symmetry for weighted homogeneous polynomials of central charge greater than one (i.e. which contain negative degree deformation parameters).

A class of strongly interacting many-body fermionic systems in 2+1D non-relativistic conformal field theory is examined via the gauge-gravity duality correspondence. The 5D charged black hole with asymptotic Schrodinger isometry in the bulk gravity side introduces parameters of background density and finite particle number into the boundary field theory. We propose the holographic dictionary, and realize a quantum phase transition of this fermionic liquid with fixed particle number by tuning the background density β at zero temperature. On the larger β side, we find the signal of a sharp quasiparticle pole on the spectral function A(k,w), indicating a well-defined Fermi surface. On the smaller β side, we find only a hump with no sharp peak for A(k,w), indicating the disappearance of Fermi surface. The dynamical exponent z of quasiparticle dispersion goes from being Fermi-liquid-like z≃1 scaling at larger β to a non-Fermi-liquid scaling z≃3/2 at smaller β. By comparing the structure of Green's function with Landau Fermi liquid theory and Senthil's scaling ansatz, we further investigate the behavior of this quantum phase transition.

We derive a universal formula for the asymptotic growth of the mean value of three-point coefficient for Warped Conformal Field Theories (WCFTs), and provide a holographic calculation in BTZ black holes. WCFTs are two dimensional quantum field theories featuring a chiral Virasoro and U(1) Kac-Moody algebra, and are conjectured to be holographically dual to quantum gravity on asymptotically AdS3 spacetime with Compere-Song-Strominger boundary conditions. The WCFT calculation amounts to the calculation of one-point functions on torus, whose high temperature limit can be approximated by using modular covariance of WCFT, similar to the derivation of Cardy formula. The bulk process is given by a tadpole diagram, with a massive spinning particle propagates from the infinity to the horizon, and splits into particle and antiparticle which annihilate after going around the horizon of BTZ black holes. The agreement between the bulk and WCFT calculations indicates that the black hole geometries in asymptotically AdS3 spacetimes can emerge upon coarse-graining over microstates in WCFTs, similar to the results of Kraus and Maloney in the context of AdS/CFT.

We consider N= 2 superconformal field theory with following properties: a) Coulomb branch operators have fractional scaling dimensions, b) there are exact marginal deformations. The weakly coupled gauge theory descriptions are found by decomposing 3d mirror into different components, and different decompositions correspond to different duality frames. The gauge theory is formed by gauging Argyres-Douglas matter, and we write down all duality frames for several classes with infinite sequence of theories.