New Faculty: Yiming Chen

2026 New Faculty

8/26/2026

Yiming Chen

Assistant Professor, Physics

Academic focus:

My research area is quantum gravity, which studies how macroscopic spacetime phenomena such as black hole horizons and expanding universes emerge from a more fundamental microscopic description. I am also broadly interested in related problems in quantum field theory and string theory, as well as unexpected connections between gravity, quantum chaos and quantum information.

Current research project:

My current research focuses on two main directions. The first concerns the microscopic description of de Sitter spacetime, an idealization of the expanding universe that we live in. In particular, my recent work has involved gravitational path integral computations in de Sitter space in the presence of an observer. These computations placed strong constraints on the putative microscopic description, and I am continuing to explore their implications.

The second direction aims to develop a precise understanding of black hole microstates in the context of holographic duality. Progress over the past two years has sharpened our understanding of their properties through ideas from quantum chaos and a novel feature known as the “fortuitous” property. I am currently exploring the application of a novel numerical technique known as the matrix bootstrap to this problem.

Previous positions: