This is the twelfth talk of 2023 in the Western Hemisphere Colloquium on Geometry and Physics. See web.math.ucsb.edu/~drm/WHCGP/ for more information on this series and to sign up to receive Zoom links for future talks.
Abstract: The Celestial Holography program encompasses recent efforts to understand the flat space hologram in terms of a CFT living on the celestial sphere. A key development instigating these efforts came from understanding how soft limits of scattering encode infinite dimensional symmetry enhancements corresponding to the asymptotic symmetry group of the bulk spacetime. Historically, the construction of the bulk-boundary dual pair has followed bottom up approach matching symmetries on both sides. Recently, however, there has been exciting progress in formulating top down descriptions using insights from twisted holography. In this talk we will cover salient aspects of the celestial construction, the status of the dictionary, and active research directions.