[Astro] [CAPT] Particle Cosmology and Gravity Seminar this week: Benjamin Muntz

[Elisa Todarello (staff)]

Dear All,

                  We have a seminar this week. The details are provided below.

Kind regards,
Elisa
-----------------------------------------

Speaker: Benjamin Muntz (Nottingham)

Seminar date: November 18th , Tuesday, 1 pm UK time

Venue: Seminar Room A 113 (Cripps North Building, CAPT)

Title: On the Geometry of Gravitational Effective Field Theories

Abstract: Field space geometries — defined via the kinetic sector of an Effective Field Theory (EFT) — have recently become central to questions in swampland, amplitudes, cosmology, and philosophy of physics. When the EFT couples to gravity, however, the status of this geometry becomes ambiguous: the field space metric transforms non-trivially under Weyl transformations, obscuring how geometry behaves covariantly across otherwise equivalent conformal frames.

In this talk I present a new framework to resolve this ambiguity. I will explain how all possible conformal frames arise as different foliations of a particular higher-dimensional geometry. With the help of ADM, statements like frame- and unit transformations, as well as field excursions, receive a clean reinterpretation in differential-geometric language. This perspective also reveals precisely how gravity itself curves field space.

Time permitting, I will illustrate two applications of our formalism:

  *
First, I will prove the Species Scale Distance Conjecture and Sharpened Distance Conjecture, and argue that these are in fact universal statements of scalar-tensor theories rather than having to do with quantum gravity.
  *
Second, I will show how to quickly calculate scattering amplitudes in Higgs inflation. What is otherwise a lengthy derivation now boils down to computing just a single field space Riemann tensor.

--------------------------------------------------

Link to join:

 https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_OGM3OTk5NzQtZWEwZS00ZmUyLTk3MGUtZjFhY2M5OTU2MjI1%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%2267bda7ee-fd80-41ef-ac91-358418290a1e%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%22f3250584-4b5f-48fa-a897-08e77f2246b7%22%7d


List of upcoming Seminars:

Nov 25th: Fraser Cowie (Oxford)
Dec 2nd: Violetta Sagun (Southampton)
Dec 9th: James Alvey (Cambridge)

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.nottingham.ac.uk/pipermail/astro/attachments/20251117/a35a07c0/attachment-0001.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
_______________________________________________
CAPT mailing list
CAPT at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
https://lists.nottingham.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/capt