CAP Canadian Association of Physicists: Juan Maldacena

We think that black holes are ordinary quantum systems with a finite number of microstates, when we view them from the outside. A pair of black holes can then be entangled with each other. A special entangled state of this kind can be described by a geometry similar to the maximally extended Schwarzschild black hole. This geometry is a non-traversable wormhole. We will discuss how to make the wormhole traversable, viewing the process as an example of quantum teleportation.

Bio:Juan Maldacena is a professor at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, NJ.

He works on quantum field theory, quantum gravity and string theory. He is particularly known for proposing a duality between quantum field theory and gravity, which relates gauge fields, strings and quantum gravity.  Maldacena was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1968. He graduated from  the Instituto Balseiro in Argentina in 1991 and then received a doctorate from Princeton University in 1996. He was a professor at Harvard before joining the Institute in 2001.

Maldacena is mainly interested in the development of a theory of quantum gravity. He has investigated the properties of black holes using string theory, which is the leading candidate for a theory of quantum gravity. He has studied various aspects of the gauge/gravity duality, both from the gravity and the field theory point of view. He has worked on trying to understand more precisely the connection between strings and quantum fields. He has also studied the application of  string theory ideas to cosmology.