Alex Lupsasca- Vanderbilt University

What does a black hole look like? The first images of the supermassive black hole M87* display a bright ring encircling the event horizon, which appears as a dark patch in its surrounding emission. But Einstein’s theory of general relativity predicts that within this image there also lies a thin “photon ring” consisting of multiple mirror images of the main emission. These images arise from photons that orbited around the black hole multiple times, probing the warped space-time geometry just outside its horizon. The photon ring carries an imprint of the strong gravity in this region and encodes fundamental properties of the black hole. A measurement of this predicted (but not yet observed) ring could provide a precise test of general relativity and will be one of the main targets of a NASA mission proposed to fly within the next decade: the Black Hole Explorer (BHEX).

David Penneys- The Ohio State

Quantum information is encoded in a state vector of a tensor product of Hilbert spaces. Quantum error correction codes are useful for correcting errors when transporting quantum information through a noisy channel. In this talk, we will discuss a family of 2D ‘‘local topological’’ quantum error correction codes which use the robustness of topology to deformation to protect quantum information. We will then explain how operator algebra and subfactor techniques can be used to analyze quasi-particle excitations called anyons.