This award funds the research activities of Professor Vatche Sahakian at Harvey Mudd College. The project addresses fundamental questions at the boundary of our knowledge involving general relativity and quantum mechanics, in short, quantum gravity. The proposal explores several keys ideas in string theory and quantum gravity: the accounting of information in black holes, and the understanding of black hole surface dynamics. The accounting of information in black holes has been a topic of great discussion recently, since black hole dynamics seem to violate some basic principles of quantum mechanics involving the destruction of information, and black hole surface dynamics have recently shed light on possible resolutions of this conundrum. Hence, the research addresses fundamental questions in two general areas of theoretical physics: scrambling of information in quantum information theory, and black hole physics in quantum gravity.
The accomplishments expected from the project are: A better understanding of the mechanics of information scrambling in black holes; A better understanding of black hole evaporation and the details of entanglement evolution in the process of transferring information from a black hole to the outside; A better understanding of the nature of the black hole horizon; The development of new highly multi-threaded algorithms in computational physics as applied to understanding black hole dynamics in string theory. An extensive undergraduate research program is part of the proposal, including: a course development component for an undergraduate course on modern topics in theoretical physics, providing students with solid foundations for graduate school; and the associated preparation of an undergraduate textbook on classical field theory.
