Doctoral Course: ‘AdS/CFT Holography as a Framework for Quantum Gravity’

Lecturer: José Calderón-Infante
(Caltech)

Dates:
📅9, 10, 11, 12, 16, 17, 18 March 2026
🕒 10:00-12:00

Location:
📍Sala Azul, Instituto de Física Teórica (IFT)

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87999278090?pwd=5ghHKxbXBbbXa0AYbT1Di6PfJ6ydJG.1

This course provides an introduction toAdS/CFT holography, with a particular focus on its role as aframework for quantum gravity in asymptotically Anti-de Sitter (AdS) spacetimes.

We will begin by motivating the idea of holography in quantum gravity, reviewing the geometry and physics of AdS, and introducing some basics of conformal field theory (CFT). The course will then move to a more top-down perspective: after presenting the required ingredients of string theory, we will discuss Maldacena’s decoupling argument and the AdS/CFT correspondence it leads to, learning the AdS/CFT dictionary along the way.

The final part of the course will focus on AdS/CFT as a quantum gravity framework, covering topics such as:

The course only requires basic knowledge of differential geometry and quantum field theory. While some elements of string theory will appear, all necessary ingredients will be introduced during the lectures.