20th Anniversary Public Lecture: The meaning of spacetime: Black holes, wormholes and quantum entanglement

Abstract

We start by describing the geometrical notions central to Einstein's theory of gravity. We then discuss current ideas for how spacetime geometry could emerge in a quantum theory of gravity. We will see that quantum entanglement plays a crucial role.

Short Biography

Juan Maldacena is a leading theoretical physicist whose work has profoundly influenced the fields of string theory and quantum gravity. He is best known for formulating the AdS/CFT correspondence, a groundbreaking realization of the holographic principle, which posits a duality between gravity in anti-de Sitter space and a conformal field theory defined on its boundary. This correspondence has become a cornerstone of modern theoretical physics, offering deep insights into the quantum structure of spacetime and strongly interacting quantum systems. His research also extends to the quantum properties of black holes and cosmological perturbations in the theory of inflation.

Maldacena studied physics at the Universities of Buenos Aires and Bariloche in Argentina and obtained his Ph.D. at Princeton University in 1996 under the supervision of Curtis Callan. Following a postdoctoral position at Rutgers University, he joined Harvard University in 1997, becoming a full professor by 1999. In 2001, he joined the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, where he currently serves as the Carl P. Feinberg Professor in the School of Natural Sciences. Moreover, he holds honorary doctorates from institutions such as the University of Buenos Aires and KU Leuven.

Throughout his career, Maldacena has received a wide array of prestigious awards recognizing his contributions to fundamental physics. These include the MacArthur Fellowship (1999), the Sackler Prize in Physics (2000), the Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics (2007), the Dirac Medal of the ICTP (2008), the Pomeranchuk Prize (2012), the Lorentz Medal (2018), the Albert Einstein Medal (2018), and the Galileo Galilei Medal (2019). He was also awarded the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics in 2012 and has been elected to both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences.