Research
Black Hole Thermodynamics
Can we understand black holes as ordinary thermodynamic systems? General relativity describes black holes not as corporeal objects, but geometric features of spacetime itself. Yet they seem to possess properties like temperature and entropy, which we normally attribute to ordinary objects made of atoms. I am interested in understanding to what extent black holes can be described as thermodynamic systems, and what can be revealed about their microscopic structure as a result.
Holography
Is the Universe a hologram? This possibility arises from a general feature of gauge theories; that symmetries which are trivial in the bulk can become physical in the presence of a boundary. This fact underlies numerous examples of holography---the description of a bulk gravitational system purely in terms of non-gravitating degrees of freedom on an appropriate lower-dimensional boundary. I am trying to understand the role that black holes play in this picture. They are known to be dual to thermal states in the boundary conformal field theory, however the rich landscape of thermodynamic phenomena exhibited by black holes still remains largely unexplored in the dual. Understanding these duals will be important for finding practical applications of holography to condensed matter systems.
Observing Quantum Black Holes
Quantum fields exhibit remarkable properties in the presence of strong gravity. I am working on developing sophisticated new semi-classical models of black holes, and finding new signatures of quantum effects which may alter their structure. Significant advancements in gravitational wave astronomy are rapidly enabling the imaging of black holes at the horizon scale, and understanding how their features manifest in gravitational wave signals will be a crucial part of upcoming observational efforts. I am especially interested in how quasinormal oscillations are affected by semi-classical effects near the horizon, and whether such effects can imprint themselves on gravitational waves.