RUI: Supersymmetric Gauge Theory and Dirichlet-Branes

该项目的主要目的是探索描述两种不同基本力的理论之间的联系，即核力和重力。强核力和弱核力是由规范理论描述的，而量子引力被认为是由弦理论描述的。然而，弦理论不仅包含弦，还包含d膜，这是一种扩展的物体，其性质涉及超对称规范理论，从而提供了两种理论之间的联系。具体而言，该项目侧重于包含d膜和定向平面的特定弦理论的性质；在这些理论中，描述d膜的超对称规范理论包括夸克的类似物。这条研究路线的兴趣在于，用一种理论无法回答的问题可能很容易用另一种理论回答，反之亦然，允许在两种理论中都取得进展。例如，充分理解规范理论的性质可以更好地理解弦理论，从而更好地理解量子引力，这是一个长期未解决的问题。相反，弦理论可以用来探索在人们知之甚少的强耦合状态下的规范理论。最终，这可以解释夸克约束现象（即无法观察到自由夸克的事实），并根据其组成夸克的性质，对质子、原子核等的结构进行定量理解。

The primary aim of the project is to explore connections between theories describing two different fundamental forces, namely, the nuclear force and gravity. The strong and weak nuclear forces are described by gauge theories, whereas quantum gravity is thought to be described by string theory. String theory, however, contains not only strings but also D-branes, extended objects whose properties involve supersymmetric gauge theories, thus providing the connection between the two types of theory. Specifically, the project focuses on the properties of particular string theories containing D-branes and orientifold planes; in these theories, the supersymmetric gauge theories describing the D-branes include the analogs of quarks.The interest of this line of research is that questions impossible to answer in one theory may be easy to answer using the other theory, and vice versa, allowing progress to be made in both. For example, well-understood properties of gauge theory could lead to a better understanding of string theory, and thus quantum gravity, which has long been an unsolved problem. Conversely, string theory could be used to probe gauge theories in the poorly understood strong-coupling regime. Ultimately, this could explain the phenomenon of quark confinement (that is, the fact that free quarks cannot be observed) and yield a quantitative understanding of the structure of protons, nuclei, etc., in terms of the properties of their constituent quarks.