Mathematics Colloquia and Seminars

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One of the long-standing problems in quantum gravity is how to describe physics in regions that are far from any asymptotic boundary of spacetime. Solving this problem will be a necessary part of finding a complete theory of cosmology, and of black holes. In this talk I will describe recent progress on this question in the relatively well-understood (albeit unrealistic) case where the universe has a negative cosmological constant. I will explain how questions about physics located deep inside the bulk of such a spacetime can be reformulated in the boundary CFT in the language of quantum error correcting codes, which have been developed in the last two decades for the seemingly unrelated task of building a practical quantum computer. We will see that by reformulating things this way, we are able to illuminate various paradoxes and open questions.