Faculty Profile
Thomas Faulkner
- HEPG Faculty
Affiliation
- HEPG Faculty
Primary Research Area
- High Energy Physics - High Energy Physics (theoretical)
Profile Sections
Education
- PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2009
- BSc, Physics, University of Melbourne, 2004
Biography
Thomas Faulkner received his bachelors degree in Physics from the University of Melbourne in 2003. He went on to obtain his Ph.D. from MIT in 2009 working under the guidance of Hong Liu and Krishna Rajagopal. His thesis involved using string theory techniques to study QCD under extreme conditions. From 2009-2012 Thomas held a postdoctoral position at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics in UCSB where he continued to make interesting connections between problems in strongly correlated many body physics and string theory. Thomas also held a postdoctoral position at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton from 2012-2013 where he became interested in Entanglement Entropy and the role it plays in fundamental aspects of quantum gravity. Thomas joined the department in 2014.
Research Statement
Broadly speaking my research interests lie at the intersection of exotic phases of quantum matter and string theory. These two subjects are connected via the celebrated holographic duality or AdS/CFT, which asserts that certain string theories are dual to quantum phases of matter. That is there can be two different ways of looking at the same system. By using tools developed in both the condensed matter and string communities I hope to gain insight into fundamental questions on both sides of the duality.
More specifically I am interested in:
1. Entanglement Entropy in quantum many body systems. As a tool to study quantum phases of matter, quantum gravity and black holes.
2. String inspired models of strongly correlated phenomena. Ranging from Non-Fermi Liquids and Quantum Criticality to transport and disorder.
3. Holographic models of QCD under extreme conditions. Signatures of strongly coupled physics in the quark-gluon plasma produced at heavy ion colliders.
Selected Articles in Journals
- Thomas Faulkner , Felix M. Haehl , Eliot Hijano , Onkar Parrikar , Charles Rabideau, Mark Van Raamsdonk, ``Nonlinear Gravity from Entanglement in Conformal Field Theories'', JHEP 1708 (2017) 057, arXiv:1705.03026
- Thomas Faulkner, Aitor Lewkowycz, ``Bulk locality from modular flow'', JHEP 1707 (2017) 151 , arXiv:1704.05464
- S. Balakrishnan, S. Dutta, T. Faulkner, ``Gravitational dual of the Renyi twist displacement operator'', Phys.Rev. D96 (2017) no.4, 046019, arXiv:1607.06155
- T. Faulkner, R. Leigh, O. Parrikar, H. Wang, ``Modular Hamiltonians for Deformed Half-Spaces and the Averaged Null Energy Condition'', JHEP 1609 (2016) 038, arXiv: 1605.08072
- T. Faulkner, R. Leigh, O. Parrikar, ``Shape dependence of entanglement entropy in conformal field theories'',JHEP 1604 (2016) 088
- T. Faulkner, Bulk Emergence and the RG Flow of Entanglement Entropy, JHEP 1505 (2015) 033
- T. Faulkner, A. Lewkowycz and J. Maldacena, Quantum corrections to holographic entanglement entropy, JHEP 1311 (2013) 074
- T. Faulkner, N. Iqbal, H. Liu, J. McGreevy, D. Vegh, Strange Metal Transport Realized by Gauge/Gravity Duality, Science 329 (2010) 1043.
- T. Faulkner, H. Liu, J. McGreevy, D. Vegh, Emergent quantum criticality, Fermi surfaces, and AdS(2), Phys. Rev. D 83, 125002 (2011)
Research Honors
- DARPA - Young Faculty Award (Sep 2015)