Title: From Gluon Scattering to Black Hole Orbits

Speaker: Clifford Cheung (Caltech)

Time: 2:00 pm, Aug 21 (Monday) 2023

Location: 理科楼C302

Abstract: The study of scattering amplitudes has uncovered extraordinary dualities linking real-world particles such as gravitons, gluons, and pions. We describe these developments and how they have been recently repurposed to derive new results relevant to gravitational wave physics. This approach has produced what is now the state-of-the-art Hamiltonian for the conservative orbital dynamics of binary black holes in the post-Minkowskian expansion. We also comment briefly on extensions of this framework to include tidal effects and spin.

Bio: Clifford Cheung is a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology. He received his B.S. from Yale University in 2004 and his Ph.D. in physics from Harvard University in 2009 before joining the faculty at Caltech. Prof. Cheung’s research explores fundamental puzzles in particle physics, cosmology, and quantum field theory. Prof. Cheung is also interested in the study of scattering amplitudes, which are fundamental observables encoding the dynamics of interacting particles.