Blagoje OBLAK

Post Doctoral Fellow

Research group: String Theory 

Research interests :

My work concerns infinite-dimensional symmetries (and more generally group actions) that appear in various domains of physics. This includes asymptotic symmetries in gravitation and gauge theory, but also condensed matter physics (e.g. the quantum Hall effect) and fluid mechanics. Indeed, all these systems admit rich underlying group structures, with typically striking implications, whose study is often hampered by the complexity of infinite-dimensional manifolds. My goal is to unveil the physical, possibly observable, effects of these groups, for instance through certain Berry phases that are associated with them.

"It is only slightly overstating the case to say that physics is the study of symmetry."
[Philip W. Anderson, "More is different", Science, 1972]

Thesis:

"BMS Particles in Three Dimensions", Université Libre de Bruxelles, 2016.
arXiv:1610.08526
Published in Springer Theses:  https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319618777

Publications:

List of publications can be found on Inspire : https://inspirehep.net/authors/1626583

Selection of publications:

- B. Oblak and G. Kozyreff, “Berry Phases in the Reconstructed KdV Equation,” arXiv:2002.01780.

- B. Oblak, “Berry Phases on Virasoro Orbits,” JHEP 10 (2017) 114, arXiv:1703.06142.

- G. Barnich, H. A. Gonzalez, A. Maloney, and B. Oblak, “One loop partition function of three- dimensional flat gravity,” JHEP 2015 (2015), no. 4, arXiv:1502.06185.

- B. Oblak, “Characters of the BMS Group in Three Dimensions,” Commun. Math. Phys. 340 (2015), no. 1, 413-432, arXiv:1502.03108.

- G. Barnich and B. Oblak, “Notes on the BMS group in three dimensions: I. Induced representations,” JHEP 2014 (2014), no. 6, arXiv:1403.5803.