It is known that thermalization in a CFT corresponds to black hole formation in AdS space. For a system to thermalize it must interact. To address black hole formation in string theory we look for thermalization in the D1D5 CFT which has an AdS dual. Thermalization should occur through interactions caused by twist operators which deform the theory off of its free point. The twist operators can join and unjoin ‘strings’ in the CFT. No clear evidence of thermalization was identified at first order in the twist deformation. We therefore compute interactions at second order in the twist deformation with an initial excitation propagating on one of the strings. We consider transitions of the initial excitation to three lower energy excitations in the final state. This yields preliminary evidence for thermalization.

Systems with time dependent couplings which interpolate between constant values and involve critical points are expected to display universal features. Recently, holographic methods have been used to understand some key aspects of such quantum quenches, which have applications to many areas of physics. This has led to insight into key aspects of well known scaling behavior for slow quenches which cross or approach critical points, viz. Kibble-Zurek scaling. In the opposite regime of fast quench, holographic methods have uncovered new scaling laws which have been subsequently shown to hold in general quantum field theories. This talk will review some of these exciting developments.

After the discovery of the Higgs boson, physicists keep searching for New Physics in cosmic, energy and intensity frontiers. In the intensity frontier, a key stone is to provide precise Standard Model prediction by controlling the uncertainty from low energy QCD.

Lattice QCD has been developed to tackle the nonperturbative problems in low energy QCD. It has been demonstrated to be a powerful tool in dealing with the ''gold-plated'' observables such as the hadron spectra and decay constants. To meet the requirement of future experiments in the intensity frontier, we need to study more complicated system beyond gold-plated.

Rare kaon decay is such an example. The cleanliness of the Standard Model predication of the branching ratio for the rare kaon decays K^+ -> pi^+ nu nu-bar and K_L -> pi^0 nu nu-bar make them an ideal place to search for New Physics. The CERN NA62 experiment aims for an observation of O(100) events of K^+ -> pi^+ nu nu-bar decay and a 10%-precision measurement of the branching ratio. The KOTO experiment at J-PARC in Japan aims for first observation of the CP-violating decay K_L -> pi^0 nu nu-bar.

In this talk I will present an exploratory study of the long-distance contributions to the K+ -> pi+ nu nu-bar decay amplitude from first principles using lattice QCD. Such study is necessary to interpret future experiments at a 10% precision or better.