Upamanyu Moitra - Research

Featured Research

Newton vs Coulomb in AdS/CFT and the Weak Gravity Conjecture

Published in Physical Review D as a Letter (Published by the American Physical Society)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.109.L041903

arXiv Link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.08907

This work of mine combined some seemingly disparate exciting developments in current research. It was the first work to consider the question of light-cone bootstrap for charged operators in the holographic context, with a specific prediction in the appropriate regime. Furthermore, the exciting arena of the Weak Gravity Conjecture for large charged AdS black holes had remained largely unexplored – this work opened up a new avenue for exploring such questions, and established a clear connection between WGC and bulk orbit states, with AdS/CFT playing a crucial role.

You can find here (and here) the proposals I drafted for a Marie Curie Fellowship.

If you are interested in my publications, please visit Google Scholar or INSPIRE-HEP.

My research interests are broad. I have attempted to gain a better understanding of a number of topics in theoretical physics through my published work. These include·

String theory and its various applications - including its relevance in calculatiing the entanglement entropy
Bootstrap approach to understand quantum gravity problems via holography and the Weak Gravity Conjecture
Black holes, especially those which are at small temperatures
The Jackiw-Teitelboim model – a two-dimensional model of gravity - and its quantisation.
Fluid dynamics of strongly coupled quantum field theories at low temperatures via holography·
Quantum entanglement in gauge field theories

As a generally principle in theoretical physics, these topics are not always mutually exclusive!

Previously Featured Research

Self-Similar Gravitational Dynamics, Singularities and Criticality in 2D

Published in the Journal of High Energy Physics (JHEP): JHEP 06 (2023) 194

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP06(2023)194

arXiv Link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.01394

This work of mine, motivated by critical phenomena in higher-dimensional gravity, initiated a systematic study of continuous self-similar gravitational dynamics in 1+1 dimensions. For a general two-dimensional gravitational theory coupled to a dilaton field and Maxwell field, I foundthat the assumption of continuous self-similarity is so restrictive that it determines the form of the dilaton coupling to the curvature. Certain limits produce two important classes of models, one of which is closely related to two-dimensional string theory and the other being Liouville gravity. I found spacetimes with uncommon asymptotic behaviour. I explored addition of matter fields consistent with self-similarity (including a certain model of semi-classical gravity). Based on the phenomenon of finite-time blow-up in ODEs, I argued that spacetime singularities are generic in these models. I found qualitatively diverse results from analytical and numerical investigations regarding matter field collapse and singularities. There were interesting hints of a Choptuik-like scaling law.

Strong Cosmic Censorship in Two Dimensions

Phys. Rev. D 103, L081502 (2021) (published as a letter)

arXiv Link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.03499

This work of mine was motivated by some recent works that found violations of the strong cosmic censorship conjecture – a conjecture that was formulated to save the deterministic nature of general relativity. Working with a black hole in a negatively curved two-dimensional spacetime (which is intimately related to the higher dimensional examples that seemed to violate the conjecture), I found a strong violation of the conjecture. My work gives an explanation for the violation observed in the higher dimensional black holes.

Some of my research experiences at school and undergraduate levels include:

Undergraduate Associateship at the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics
JBNSTS Project
A project on rainwater harvesting for the National Children's Science Congress

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