25 Years of RS Conference
It's been more than 25 years since RS geometries were introduced and it's high time to reflect on where we are and where we are going. RS (aka warped geometry) and KR (aka double holography) has infiltrated into many aspects of theoretical physics including model building, phenomenology, cosmology, and quantum gravity and this conference will bring them together--hopefully for fruitful interactions. Past, current, and future ideas all welcome.
Date and Location
December 8 - 10, 2025
Harvard University, Department of Physics
Jefferson Lab, 17 Oxford Street, Cambridge MA 02138
All speaking engagement will take place in Jefferson 250, please refer to the schedule for all other room locations.
Zoom for anyone joining us remotely: https://harvard.zoom.us/j/95482194460?pwd=nRIbK7CoR2IpPIhWJ5z4u5sBZGhb49.1 Password: 531281
Registration
Please register at your earliest convenience.
For assistance with any conference details please reach out to the GRASP Program Manager, William Farrell, at william_farrell@fas.harvard.edu or profrandallstaffsupport@fas.harvard.edu.
Andreas Karch
Lisa Randall
Raman Sundrum
Hao Geng
Akshay Ghalsasi
Rashmish Mishra
Michael Nee
Marcos Riojas
William Farrell
Monday, December 8
Morning sessions will be chaired by John Terning.
Afternoon sessions will be chaired by Ami Katz and Marcos Riojas.
| Time | Name | Title/Description | Location |
|---|---|---|---|
9:00am | Lisa Randall | Intro | J-250 |
10:00am | Michael Nee | Sequestered Conformal Anomaly Mediation (SCAM) | J-250 |
11:00am | Rashmish Mishra | Early Universe Cosmology in RS | J-250 |
12:00pm | Lunch | Catered by Saloniki Greek | J-450 |
1:30pm | Juan Maldacena | A RS model with humanly traversable wormholes | J-250 |
2:30pm | Andreas Karch | Applications of RS to Formal Theory | J-250 |
3:30pm | Afternoon Break | Ice cream, coffee, tea, seltzer provided | J-368 |
4:00pm | Hao Geng | Wet Hair: Global Symmetries in Entanglement Islands | J-250 |
5:00pm | Massimo Porrati | Spontaneous Breaking of Conformal Symmetry, the Riegert Action, and its UV completion in RS1 | J-250 |
Tuesday, December 9
Tuesday morning sessions will be chaired by Sonia Paban.
Tuesday afternoon session will be chaired by Martin Schmaltz
| Time | Name | Title/Description | Location |
|---|---|---|---|
9:00am | Tony Gherghetta | A Warped View of the QCD Axion | J-250 |
10:00am | Soubhik Kumar | Probing Warped Extra Dimensions in the Cosmological Collider | J-250 |
11:00am | Kaustubh Agashe | SUSY “Unifies” with Composite Higgs/Top Quark | J-250 |
12:00pm | Lunch | Please take this time as you would like | |
1:30pm | Prateek Agrawal | Supercooling and Confinement | J-250 |
2:30pm | Alex Pomarol | Bootstrapping RS | J-250 |
3:30pm | Afternoon Break | Join Dept. of Physics break | J-450 |
4:00pm | Severin Lüst | More Effective RS Field Theory | J-250 |
4:30pm | Panel | Cosmology Panel and Open Mic Chaired by Lisa Randall - Raman Sundrum, Rashmish Mishra, Prateek Agrawal, Soubhik Kumar | J-250 |
6:00pm | Banquet |
Wednesday, December 10
Wednesday morning sessions will be chaired by Shufang Su.
Wednesday afternoon sessions will be chaired by Andreas Weiler.
| Time | Name | Title/Description | Location |
|---|---|---|---|
9:00am | Gilad Perez | RS perspective on flavor & CP 25 yrs ago & today | J-250 |
10:00am | Matthias Neubert | Dynamical fermion localization in RS | J-250 |
11:00am | Gregory Gabadadze | Trace Anomaly Action and RS | J-250 |
12:00pm | Lunch | Catered by Cafe Vanak Persian | J-450 |
1:30pm | Panel | Review Panel and Open Mic - Lisa Randall, Raman Sundrum, and Andreas Karch | J-250 |
2:30pm | Lorenzo Ricci | Energy Correlators in Warped Geometries | J-250 |
3:30pm | Afternoon Break | Ice cream, coffee, tea, seltzer provided | J-368 |
4:00pm | Csaba Csaki | Theta angle, anomalies and axions in holographic QCD models | J-250 |
- Kaustubh Agashe, University of Maryland - Title: SUSY “Unifies” with Composite Higgs/Top Quark
- Abstract: I will demonstrate how the grand paradigms of SUSY and Composite Higgs (CH) can reinforce each other. To begin with, the framework of gauge-mediated SUSY breaking (GMSB) solves the SUSY flavor problem, but is plagued by the mu-Bmu problem: Higgs compositeness at a scale within an order-of-magnitude above the messenger scale of GMSB can generate suitable mu, Bmu terms, while also providing large A-terms as needed for obtaining the observed Higgs mass with TeV-scale (natural) stops. CH also resolves the SUSY-CP problem and cures the Landau pole of NSSM invoked (as an alternative to A-terms) for fixing-up the Higgs mass. CH with partial compositeness of the SM fermions nicely explains the flavor hierarchies of the SM, which of course remains a puzzle even with usual SUSY-ic SM. Conversely, SUSY ameliorates the little hierarchy problem of CH and relaxes dipole operator constraints on it. Remarkably, SUSY and compositeness work in-tandem to give a novel form of gauge coupling unification. Finally, a WIMP-ish dark matter candidate can also arise as a spin-off of proton stability in this Super-Composite grand unified framework.
- Slides
- Prateek Agrawal, Oxford University - Title: Supercooling and Confinement
- Csaba Csaki, Cornell University - Title: Theta angle, anomalies and axions in holographic QCD models
- Abstract: I present the construction of a simple 5D RS-type model for QCD that reproduces the theta dependence of the energy both without and with fermions. Anomalies are reproduced by a 5D Stuckelberg term which is the dual of a Chern-Simons term. A Peccei-Quinn axion is introduced by adding an intermediate brane, and its quality will depend on how strongly the bulk scalar is peaked there. For the case of high quality axions they will automatically be originating predominantly from the higher dimensional PQ gauge field.
- Slides
- Gregory Gabadadze, New York University - Title: Trace Anomaly Action and RS
- Hao Geng, Harvard University - Title: Wet Hair: Global Symmetries in Entanglement Islands
- A central conjecture in quantum gravity is the non-existence of global symmetries. As a fully unitary theory, there is no information loss in a UV complete quantum gravity theory. We see both these concepts reflected in the AdS/CFT correspondence, which tells us that dynamical processes in AdS are fully captured by a manifestly unitary CFT with no information loss. Furthermore, global symmetries of the CFT are dual to gauge symmetries in the AdS, which implies no global symmetry in the AdS. In this work, we provide concrete evidence for the connection between the non-existence of global symmetries and the absence of information loss in quantum gravity. We study the \textit{island setups} in which a gravitational AdS is coupled with a nongravitational bath on its boundary. In such theories, the information in the AdS can be lost to the bath. We provide concrete examples with global symmetries in the island setup, from both the bottom-up and the top-down perspectives. We argue that these global symmetries are consistent due to \textit{entanglement islands}.The global symmetries we construct are all mixed with spontaneously broken gauge symmetries. We will show that this fact has two implications: \textbf{1)} The black hole hair is detectable in the bath (``wet hair"); \textbf{2)} a resolution of a puzzle proposed by Harlow and Shagoulian.
- Slides
- Tony Gherghetta, University of Minnesota - Title: A Warped View of the QCD Axion
- Andreas Karch, The University of Texas at Austin - Title: Applications of RS to Formal Theory
- Soubhik Kumar, Tufts University - Title: Probing Warped Extra Dimensions in the Cosmological Collider
- Abstract: Various well-motivated scenarios beyond the Standard Model predict states/particles with extremely heavy masses. However, those are often too heavy to be produced in terrestrial or astrophysical environments. The energetic early Universe provides an exciting opportunity to overcome this challenge. I will focus on a warped extra-dimensional scenario, with a large KK scale, to illustrate how the radion and the KK graviton can produce observable primordial non-Gaussianity. I will also discuss how these types of signatures can be searched for in Planck data.
- Slides
- Severin Lüst, Sorbonne University / CNRS - Title: More Effective RS Field Theory
- Juan Maldacena, Princeton University - Title: A Randall Sundrum model with humanly traversable wormholes.
- Abstract: We discuss wormholes in general relativity. Starting with the simplest non-traversable kind, we discuss the possibility of traversable wormholes. In the Standard Model, we can have microscopic traversable wormholes. In the Randall Sundrum model, we could have wormholes that allow a person to travel through them. In both cases, we preserve causality.
- Slides
- Rashmish Mishra, Harvard University - Title: Early Universe Cosmology in RS
- Michael Nee, Harvard University - Title: Sequestered Conformal Anomaly Mediation (SCAM)
- Supersymmetry and extra dimensions are prominent features of many interesting models, including those derived from string theory. However, most phenomenological studies to date have worked in a 4d EFT. Anomaly mediation, in particular, is an attractive mechanism for mediating SUSY-breaking, which is most naturally relevant in extra dimensional models — but most analyses have been performed in the 4d effective theory. We fill this gap in the literature by constructing stabilised 5d SUGRA theories and highlight many interesting features which are not obvious from a 4d EFT analysis — including the role of boundary superpotentials, the radion and the predicted universality of soft masses. In many cases supersymmetry is necessarily broken at the 5D level. We clarify when the 5D results reduce to 4D expectations, and discuss implications for anomaly mediation, moduli stabilisation and SUSY-breaking.
- Matthias Neubert, Cornell University - Title: Dynamical fermion localization in RS
- After a brief review of the RS explanation of the flavor puzzle and constraints on RS models form precision measurements in the Higgs sector, I will present a dynamical mechanism for realizing the Z2-odd bulk mass parameters of fermions in RS through the vacuum expectation value of a bulk scalar field. The model predicts heavy pseudoscalar resonances with masses at the KK scale and might have relevance for dark matter model building.
- Slides
- Gilad Perez, Weizmann Institute - Title: RS perspective on flavor & CP 25 yrs ago & today
- Alex Pomarol, IFAE - Title: Bootstrapping RS
- Massimo Porrati, New York University - Title: Spontaneous Breaking of Conformal Symmetry, the Riegert Action, and its UV completion in RS1
- The holographic interpretation of the RS1 model is an example of spontaneously broken CFT coupled to gravity. The Goldstone boson of scale (Weyl)
symmetry is the radion and its effective action is in principle valid only up to the symmetry breaking scale, which in this case is the interbrane distance. The RS1 5D action completes the effective action of the dilaton coupled to gravity up to a UV cutoff of order of the 5D Planck scale. - Slides
- The holographic interpretation of the RS1 model is an example of spontaneously broken CFT coupled to gravity. The Goldstone boson of scale (Weyl)
- Lorenzo Ricci, University of Maryland - Title: Energy Correlators in Warped Geometries
- Energy correlators have emerged as powerful and versatile probes of QCD dynamics at colliders, with rapidly growing interest from both the phenomenological and theoretical communities. In this talk, I will highlight their potential applications to New Physics searches. I will discuss the main theoretical challenges and present basic results in “nearly” conformal field theories dual to warped geometries, including the RS scenario.
- Slides
- Akshay Ghalsasi
- Alex Pomarol
- Alexander Cassem
- Alize Sucsuzer
- Andreas Karch
- Andreas Weiler
- Csaba Csaki
- Dawson Thomas
- Emanuel Katz
- Evangelos Sfakianakis
- Gilad Perez
- Grace Bramlage
- Gregory Gabadadze
- Guglielmo Grimaldi
- Hao Geng
- Huangyu Xiao
- Huy Tran
- Jackie Lodman
- John Terning
- Juan Maldacena
- Kaustubh Agashe
- Lisa Randall
- Lorenzo Ricci
- Luis Anchordoqui
- Mahdi Torabian
- Marcos Riojas
- Martin Schmaltz
- Massimo Porrati
- Matt Reece
- Matt Strassler
- Matthew Schwartz
- Matthias Neubert
- Michael Nee
- Moritz Merz
- Neal Weiner
- Neeraj Tata
- Nicholas DePorzio
- Prateek Agrawal
- Raman Sundrum
- Rashmish K. Mishra
- Serdar Aslan
- Severin Lüst
- Shufang Su
- Sonia Paban
- Soubhik Kumar
- Subham Chakraborty
- Tony Gherghetta
- Victor Breso Pla
- Vincent Lee
- Xingang Chen
- Zixia Wei
We have negotiated reduced rates at the following hotels.
Sheraton Commander - $249 (need to book by November 21)
DoubleTree Boston - Cambridge - variable rate per night $162-174 (if link is not populating please use the corporate account number: 550000310)
Harvard Square Hotel - $229 (need to book by November 16 - you can reach out to Niamh Dwyer - ndwyer@harvardsquarehotel.com - directly and she can assist after this deadline pending availability)
Hotel Studio Allston - $184 (need to book by November 14 you can reach out to Vanessa Eusse - veusse@HotelStudioAllston.com - directly and she can assist after the deadline pending availability)