
Introduction to Twisted Holography, Part 3
Kasia Budzik, a physicist at Harvard University, continues a three part introduction to twisted holography, delivered as part of the Institute for Advanced Study's Prospects in Theoretical Physics 2026 summer program. This installment builds on the earlier sessions' setup, pushing further into the twisted versions of the AdS/CFT correspondence where supersymmetric theories can be simplified using topological twists, making otherwise intractable holographic dualities exactly solvable. Budzik works through the algebraic structures, including chiral and vertex algebras, that organize the protected sector of these theories, and connects the formal machinery back to the broader goal of testing holography in settings where calculations can be checked rather than merely conjectured. The talk assumes real familiarity with supersymmetric field theory and the earlier parts of the series, and is aimed at researchers and graduate students already working near this corner of theoretical physics rather than newcomers to holography.