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SUMMARY:Descending into the Modular Bootstrap - Professor Jesse Thaler (MI
 T / IAIFI)
DTSTART:20260429T150000Z
DTEND:20260429T160000Z
UID:TALK246694@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Amanda Stagg
DESCRIPTION:The modular bootstrap has been a powerful tool for carving out
  the landscape of allowed two-dimensional conformal field theories (CFTs).
   In this colloquium\, I describe a complementary approach to standard mo
 dular bootstrap bounds: using modern machine learning strategies to active
 ly search for CFT spectra that yield a valid torus partition function.  U
 sing insights from statistical inference and a custom singular-value-based
  optimizer\, I present evidence for an obstruction to finding CFTs with sm
 all central charge and large spectral gaps\, and I speculate on what this 
 might imply for the structure of the CFT landscape.  Along the way\, I re
 flect on "centaur" approaches to theoretical physics\, where human physici
 sts and artificial intelligence collaborate to explore spaces of theories 
 that would be difficult to navigate alone.
LOCATION:MR3
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