HUMBLE: Holography and Quantum Black Holes

Understanding the structure of gravity at small distances has remained a lasting challenge in physics. In the absence of colliders able to directly probe the Planck scale, the theoretical study of black holes can offer essential clues about quantum gravity. The aim of this project is to provide a deep and quantitative understanding of the quantum nature of black holes by incorporating holography, supersymmetric localization and techniques from analytic number theory, alongside constructing new anti de Sitter (AdS) black holes in string and M-theory. In particular, it will provide a precision counting of the microstates responsible for the huge entropy of black holes in AdS spacetimes, where we have a non-perturbative definition of quantum gravity through holography. At completion, this action will contribute towards resolving long standing puzzles surrounding black holes (such as the information paradox) via a unitary quantum field theory, and uncover hidden features of a consistent theory of quantum gravity. The project is multidisciplinary, at the frontier between high energy theoretical physics, general relativity and mathematics. As such, it could also have an important impact on mathematics, including enumerative geometry and the theory of mock modular forms.