U.S.-Brazil Cooperative Research on Physical Application of the Infinite Gauge Groups

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

This award supports cooperative research in field theory between Dr. Henrik Aratyn of the University of Illinois at Chicago and Dr. A. H. Zimerman of the Sao Paulo State University (UNESP) in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Important progress in modern field theory is presently being achieved in the case of models possessing huge amounts of symmetry. These models are important for understanding two-dimensional effective gravity as well as related issues of off-critical string theory and conformal field theories. New advances in understanding of such models seems to require application of geometrical methods to investigate models with infinite dimensional symmetry groups. The method is based on a fundamental geometrical idea that the orbits associated to the symmetry groups constitute a physically relevant phase space. In this framework the investigators will study several models which possess the infinite dimensional gauge groups and analyze the consequences of these huge degrees of symmetries in the quantum mechanical setting. The main part of the work will be performed during mutual visits to the University of Illinois at Chicago and to the Instituto de Fisica Teorica-UNESP, Sao Paulo, Brazil.