My goal is to understand the fundamental laws of our Universe better. My current research is centered around realizing a theory of Quantum Gravity. Towards this, I use and study holographic dualities (duality relating gravitational theories to theories without gravity in one lower dimension), and quantum information tools. Black holes, asymptotic observables, holography, foundations... have been on my mind for sometime recently.
My recent focus is on:
Black holes are rich grounds for understanding gravity better since it is strong enough. Quantum mechanical effects allow black holes to radiate via Hawking radiation but the resulting process is non-unitary i.e., we lose information. A diagnostic for testing the non unitarity is to calculate the Entanglement entropy (EE) of the black hole as it radiates. Recent progress has been made to include enough quantum corrections to restore unitarity but the proposal has only been tested in lower dimensions due to how difficult it is to calculate EE in higher dimensions. The quantity itself is also of interest for example in condensed matter systems to characterize phase transitions, thermalization, etc... beyond its use in black holes. I have been working on how to calculate this analytically on curved backgrounds in higher dimensions. We then use the result to find constraints on the spectrum of the theory describing the radiation if unitarity is preserved.
I am also exploring aspects aimed at understanding a flat holography. One can take a systematic flat limit of CFT correlators in AdS to obtain S matrices, Carrollian correlators. One can also foliate flat space in AdS and dS slices and use AdS/CFT on these foliations. Understanding Carrollian Correlators from a bulk holographic calculation in flat space is necessary. I have been exploring these aspects.
Of recent interest to me are asymptotic observables: scattering amplitudes, OTOC, and Expectation values.
I have also been exploring aspects of CFT conformal blocks - specifically, how to efficiently compute these blocks, including all quantum corrections.
For more details on my research interest, have a look at my research statement.
My iNSPIREHEP profile: Arvind Shekar
With Collaborators: Prof. Raffaele Marotta, Prof. Mritunjay Verma
1. Carrollian CFT Correlators in Momentum Space - Preprint Expected: October 2025.
2. Carrollian CFT correlators from bulk flat holography - Preprint Expected: October 2025.
3. Massive Spin 2 flat space amplitudes from AdS/CFT - Preprint Expected: October 2025.
4. Dual of massive flat scattering amplitudes from AdS/CFT - Work in progress.
5. Carrollian BCFW recursions - Work in progress.
With Collaborators: Prof. Felix Haehl, Dr. Kuo-Wei Huang.
6. Reparametrization mode formalism and quantum correction to the Virasoro Identity block - Preprint
Expected: November 2025.
With Collaborators: Prof. Marika Taylor
7. Soft theorem, Carrollian correlators for Generalised Asymptotic Observables - Work in Progress.