Week 12.12.2021 – 18.12.2021

Since time immemorial, mankind has responded to stories. Recently, anthropologists and scientists—from Joseph Campbell to Randy Olsen—have tasked themselves with exploring the fundamental structures of stories, uncovering story types and patterns that repeat across the centuries. Film-makers and novelists have used these to tremendous effect, harnessing the power of the hero's journey to create unforgettable narratives. Yet scientists, by contrast, have been slow on the uptake. In this event, Prof. Alison Woollard talks about the science of storytelling and storytelling in science. A Royal Institution Trustee who gave the iconic Christmas Lectures, she touches on the neuroscience of learning, the role of story in primitive cultures and the structure of story. Moreover, she argues that story is a crucial ingredient in communicating scientific discovery, which we hold as a core belief at the London Institute. The event is in our 2nd-floor seminar room in the Royal Institution. After introductory drinks at 5:00, the talk starts at 5.30, followed by drinks and discussion afterwards. RSVP at smc@lims.ac.uk.

In this talk I will describe holographic properties of near-AdS_2 spacetimes that arise within spherically symmetric configurations of N=2 4D supergravity, for both gauged and ungauged theories. These theories pose a rich space of AdS_2xS^2 backgrounds, and their responses in the near-AdS_2 region are not universal. I will show that the spectrum of operators dual to the matter fields, and their cubic interactions, are sensitive to properties of the background and the theory it is embedded in. The properties that have the most striking effect are whether the background is BPS or non-BPS, and if the theory is gauged or ungauged. The resulting differences will have an imprint on the quantum nature of the microstates of near-extremal black holes, reflecting that not all extremal black holes respond equally when kicked away from extremality.