HOLOGRAMS, QUANTUM QUENCH AND COSMOLOGY

Over the last couple of decades it has become clear that in many situations gravity can be thought of as an emergent, "dual" description of non-gravitational gauge theories in lower number of dimensions. This realization is a key ingredient in our current understanding of the quantum physics of black holes in terms of the properties of the underlying gauge theory. In the other direction, this duality has been used to address difficult issues in strongly coupled field theories, by mapping them to classical problems in gravity. This talk will discuss the physical origins of this duality and its modern applications to the understanding of far from equilibrium properties of strongly coupled systems, and attempts to uncover the mysteries of big-bang like singularities.