Pulling yourself up by your bootstraps in quantum gravity

Abstract
The bootstrap program leverages symmetry and mathematical consistency to study strongly coupled quantum systems. Its flagship result has been the solution of the 3D critical Ising model from abstract principles alone. In this talk I will outline how universal properties of quantum gravity can also be studied from a bootstrap perspective. A surprising discovery has been a connection between black hole thermodynamics and the sphere packing problem, a venerable question in pure mathematics.
BIO
LR got his PhD at MIT in 2000. He was a Dicke Fellow and then a faculty member at Princeton University. Since 2006 he has been at the Yang Institute, Stony Brook, where he currently holds the Renaissance Chair in Physics. He is the director of the Simons Collaboration on the Non-perturbative Bootstrap. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and and has been named a Simons Investigator.