Interactions of Particles, Fields and Strings

该奖项资助哈佛大学物理系霍华德·格奥尔基教授和卡姆伦·瓦法教授以及博士后和学生的研究活动。这个项目涵盖的研究领域包括两大类：一类是粒子物理，另一类是弦理论。粒子物理学方面将发展一种新的概念来描述粒子的高能散射，使用碰撞的后果涉及从粒子碰撞位置发出的能量壳的想法。这是格奥尔基和他的学生目前正在开发的一个领域。在弦理论中，基本的物体是弦，而不是粒子。所有弦理论都存在于更多的维度中，而将这些维度降低到四个维度的方法可以得出可以与实验相比较的理论。VAFA将继续他的工作，更好地理解这些理论，包括减少维度数量的各种方法。格奥尔基在粒子物理方面的工作将涉及光壳有效理论的发展。希望这种方法将给出一种与大型强子对撞机(LHC)遇到的类型不同的涉及高能散射的有效理论，补充目前使用的软共线有效理论方法，并可能导致分析在这些碰撞中产生的大量粒子的新方法。在弦理论方面，瓦法将继续他的工作，更好地理解超共形理论，这些理论已经被发现存在于5维和6维空间。这些理论涉及到无张力的弦。配分函数的计算是最近发展起来的，而配分函数与(扭转)拓扑弦的关系是这一工作的主要焦点。

This award funds the research activities of Professors Howard Georgi and Cumrun Vafa at the Physics Department of Harvard University, along with post-docs and students. The area of research covered by this project includes two broad classes: One in particle physics and the other in string theory. The particle physics side will involve the development of a new idea in describing the high energy scattering of particles using the idea that the aftermath of collisions involves a shell of energy which emanates from the collision site of the particles. This is an area which is currently being developed by Georgi and his students. In string theory, the fundamental objects are strings, not particles. All string theories exist in a higher number of dimensions, and the method of reducing these to four dimensions can lead to theories that can be compared with experiments. Vafa will be continuing his work on better understanding of these theories, including the various methods of reducing the numbers of dimensions. Georgi's work in particle physics will involve the development of LSET (Light-Shell effective theory). The hope is that this approach will give a different effective theory involving high energy scatterings, of the type encountered at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), complementary to the Soft Collinear Effective Theory approach currently used, and may lead to new methods of analyzing the large number of particles produced in these collisions. On the string theory front Vafa will be continuing his work on better understanding of superconformal theories which have been discovered to exist in 5 and 6 dimensions. These theories involve tensionless strings. Computation of their partition functions have been developed recently and their relation to (twistorial) topological string is the major focus of this effort.