UC Berkeley

In this thesis, we explore the intersection between relativistic quantum gravity and non-equilibrium physics. We demonstrate a scenario where non-equilibrium physics can provideimportant insights into quantum gravity by non-perturbatively proving a weak gravity con-jecture using entropic considerations. We take a different approach to extending stringtheory to describe scenarios where the universe is not assumed to be static and eternal byapplying the Schwinger-Keldysh technique to Large-N gauge theories. We use the correspon-dence between Large-N gauge theories and string theory to derive a universal structure thatworldsheets must follow out of equilibrium.