Please note that the list below only shows forthcoming events, which may not include regular events that have not yet been entered for the forthcoming term. Please see the past events page for a list of all seminar series that the department has on offer.

 

Past events in this series


Thu, 20 Nov 2025
14:00
L6

Renormalization from Unitarity

Clément Virally
Abstract

Renormalization group (RG) flow is a central aspect of our modern understanding of QFT. We may wonder about the relationship of renormalization to some of the other properties of a QFT, and if we can reconstruct RG flow from these properties. It has recently been proposed by Chavda, McLoughlin, Mizera and Staunton in [2510.25822] and [2511.10613] that unitarity can give us at least a part of RG flow, which is known as the Unitarity Flow Conjecture. In this talk, I will summarize the central ideas of this conjecture, and provide some evidence for it.

Thu, 27 Nov 2025
14:00
L4

Super-(conformal) monodromy defects

Andrea Conti (University of Aviedo)
Abstract
Recently, there has been an increasing interest in the study of defects in quantum field theories, with holography providing a powerful framework to explore various aspects of these super-(conformal) gauge theories.
In this talk, I will discuss supergravity solutions that are dual to codimension-2 superconformal monodromy defects. These solutions are obtained using gauged supergravities in D=4,5,6 and 7 dimensions. I will present a prescription to compute the defect entanglement entropy, outlining the renormalization procedure needed to regularise its divergencies, which I will discuss in detail. In some cases, we are also able to express this quantity in terms of the free energy/Weyl anomaly  and the conformal weight of the defect. In addition, we examine whether the defect entanglement entropy obeys a monotonicity theorem under RG flows.
If time allows, I will also discuss some new results for non-conformal monodromy defects.