Twisted supergravity is supergravity in a background where the bosonic ghost field takes a non-zero value. This is the supergravity counterpart of the familiar concept of twisting supersymmetric field theories. In this paper, we give conjectural descriptions of type IIA and IIB supergravity in 10 dimensions. Our conjectural descriptions are in terms of the closed-string field theories associated to certain topological string theories, and we conjecture that these topological string theories are twists of the physical string theories. For type IIB, the results of [CL15] show that our candidate twisted supergravity theory admits a unique quantization in perturbation theory. This is despite the fact that the theories, like the original physical theories, are non-renormalizable. Although we do not prove our conjectures, we amass considerable evidence. We find that our candidates for the twisted supergravity theories contain the residual supersymmetry one would expect. We also prove (using heavily a result of Baulieu [Bau10]) the open string version of our conjecture: the theory living on a brane in the topological string theory is a twist of the maximally supersymmetric gauge theory liv- ing on the brane in the physical string theory.

The classical de Finetti theorem in probability theory relates symmetry under the permutation group with the independence of random variables. This result has application in quantum information. Here we study states that are invariant with respect to a natural action of the braid group, and we emphasize the pictorial formulation and interpretation of our results. We prove a new type of de Finetti theorem for the four-string, double-braid group acting on the parafermion algebra to braid qudits, a natural symmetry in the quon language for quantum information. We prove that a braid-invariant state is extremal if and only if it is a product state. Furthermore, we provide an explicit characterization of braid-invariant states on the parafermion algebra, including finding a distinction that depends on whether the order of the parafermion algebra is square free. We characterize the extremal nature of product states (an inverse de Finetti theorem).

We study a robust and efficient eigensolver for computing the positive dense spectrum of the two-dimensional transmission eigenvalue problem (TEP) which is derived from the Maxwell’s equation with complex media in pseudo-chiral model and the transverse magnetic mode. The discretized governing equations by the N ́ed ́elec edge element result in a large-scale quadratic eigenvalue problem (QEP). We estimate half of the positive eigenvalues of the QEP are on some interval which forms a dense spectrum of the QEP. The quadratic Jacobi-Davidson method with a so-called non-equivalence deflation technique is proposed to compute the dense spectrum of the QEP. Intensive numerical experiments show that our proposed method makes the convergence efficiently and robustly even it needs to compute more than 5000 desired eigenpairs. Numerical results also illustrate that the computed eigenvalue curves can be approximated by the non- linear functions which can be applied to estimate the density of the eigenvalues for the TEP.

Three dimensional Einstein gravity with negative cosmological constant -1/\ell^2 deformed by a gravitational Chern-Simons action with coefficient 1/\mu is studied in an asymptotically AdS_3 spacetime. It is argued to violate unitary or positivity for generic \mu due to negative-energy massive gravitons. However at the critical value \mu\ell=1, the massive gravitons disappear and BTZ black holes all have mass and angular momentum related by \ell M=J. The corresponding chiral quantum theory of gravity is conjectured to exist and be dual to a purely right-moving boundary CFT with central charges (c_L,c_R)=(0,3\ell /G).

We quantize the interaction of gravity with Yang-Mills and spinor fields, hence offering a quantum theory incorporating all four fundamental forces of nature. Let as abbreviate the spatial Hamilton functions of the Standard Model by $H_{SM}$ and the Hamilton function of gravity by $H_G$. Working in a fiber bundle $E$ with base space $\socc=\R[n]$, where the fiber elements are Riemannian metrics, we can express the Hamilton functions in the form $H_G+H_{SM}=H_G+t^{-\frac23}\tilde H_{SM}$ if $n=3$, where $\tilde H_{SM}$ depends on metrics $\s_{ij}$ satisfying $\det{\s_{ij}}=1$. In the quantization process, we quantize $H_G$ for general $\s_{ij}$ but $\tilde H_{SM}$ only for $\s_{ij}=\de_{ij}$ by the usual methods of QFT. Let $v$ \resp $\psi$ be the spatial eigendistributions of the respective Hamilton operators, then, the solutions $u$ of the Wheeler-DeWitt equation are given by $u=wv\psi$, where $w$ satisfies an ODE and $u$ is evaluated at $(t,\de_{ij})$ in the fibers.