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SUMMARY:A Chern-Simons pandemic
DTSTART:20170424T140000
DTSTAMP:20260504T041932Z
UID:5eb4b788720d60fe730374873949b8527856fce51d5cd5c12897c80a
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:Miguel Montero (Institute for Theoretical Physics and Center f
 or Extreme Matter and Emergent Phenomena\, Utrecht University)\nTriple Che
 rn-Simons terms are a generic feature of stringy compactifications\, where
  they are usually responsible for topological masses\, or branes ending in
  branes. Another piece of common lore says that one should not expect exac
 t global symmetries in quantum gravity\, and in fact this is the case in e
 very known stringy compactification. In this talk I will argue that these 
 two seemingly disconnected observations are in fact related: Black holes c
 an acquire charge under a seemingly exact global two-form symmetry\, which
  can be broken by appropriate triple Chern-Simons terms. A significant amo
 unt of stringy examples leads us to conjecture that consistent theories of
  quantum gravity must always have these Chern-Simons terms. This in turn m
 eans that a number of seemingly consistent four-dimensional effective fiel
 d theories\, such as pure gravity or four-dimensional Maxwell+gravity+WGC 
 particles\, cannot be consistent theories of quantum gravity by themselves
 .
LOCATION:BSP 727 https://plan.epfl.ch/?room==BSP%20727
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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