Some big-pictures questions which concern our understanding of space, time, and matter are at the focus of current research in the Kadanoff Center for Theoretical Physics:
- What do black holes teach us about quantum information?
- What can holography teach us about strongly-coupled systems?
- Can we understand all the implications of symmetries and anomalies for physical systems?
- How do we classify topological phases of matter?
- What theoretical structures exist beyond local quantum field theory?
- What new physical phenomena do we find in systems far from equilibrium?
These and many related questions of this sort involve ideas and techniques used in condensed matter physics, statistical mechanics, general relativity, quantum field theory and string theory. Much of our research is at the interface of these fields.