RUI: Field Theories and Holography

该RUI奖资助纽约理工学院Sophia Domokos教授的研究活动。当成群的微小粒子非常频繁而有力地相互作用时，就会出现新的现象：电子海洋合谋使电流永远流动；被称为夸克和胶子的基本粒子聚集在一起，形成每个原子中心的质子和中子。预测在这种强相互作用的系统中会出现什么样的结构，仍然是物理学中的一个基本谜团。它的分辨率将提高我们对大量物理系统的理解，从原子核到中子星的核心，再到宇宙早期存在的致密等离子体。在她的研究中，Domokos教授将使用弦理论中出现的一种被称为“全息二象性”的现象来对强相互作用系统中出现的基本粒子团（如质子和中子）进行分类。她的工作不仅有助于更好地理解这些物体，而且还将对我们以前从未见过的新结构做出预测。该领域的研究通过推动我们对强相互作用系统的科学理解的前沿，并通过开发新的数学来描述它们，从而促进了国家利益。该项目还将产生重大的更广泛的影响。Domokos教授将让不同群体的本科生参与她的研究活动，为来自STEM中历史上代表性不足的群体的学生提供关键的研究培训，并帮助他们开展科学事业。Domokos教授还将为本科生和普通观众举办讲座，以促进公众对前沿物理研究的理解，激发新一代学生对物理的迷恋，并招收新学生在本科阶段学习物理。从技术上讲，提出的工作在两个重要方向上扩展了全息对偶性。第一行的工作解决了二元性中至关重要但具有挑战性的非扰动部分。使用超对称的玩具模型将阐明非平凡的经典背景如何增强孤子物体的光谱。它也将导致对最近发现的单极子扩展Bogomolny方程系统的新见解。第二个项目推动了强子物理全息模型的边界，增强了对应于现实世界问题的适用性，并提供了一套有意义的本科项目。它还将产生新的技术来推动全息模型超越常用但严重限制的近似，并将识别新的效应-例如介子和胶球态的混合-出现在这个极限之外。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This RUI award funds the research activities of Professor Sophia Domokos at the New York Institute of Technology. When swarms of tiny particles interact very forcefully and often, new phenomena emerge: electron seas conspire to let currents flow forever; and elementary particles called quarks and gluons clump together into the protons and neutrons at the center of every atom. Predicting what kind of structure emerges in such strongly interacting systems remains a fundamental mystery in physics. Its resolution will advance our understanding of a huge array of physical systems, from atomic nuclei to the cores of neutron stars and to the dense plasma present in the earliest moments of our universe. In her research, Professor Domokos will use a phenomenon which emerges within string theory and which is known as "holographic duality" to categorize and classify clumps of elementary particles (like protons and neutrons) that emerge in strongly interacting systems. Her work will not only help to understand these objects better, but it will also make predictions for new structures we have never seen before. Research in this area advances the national interest by pushing the frontier of our scientific understanding of strongly interacting systems, and by developing new mathematics to describe them. This project will also yield significant broader impacts. Professor Domokos will involve a diverse group of undergraduate students in her research activities, providing key research training for students from groups historically underrepresented in STEM, and helping to launch their scientific careers. Professor Domokos will also give undergraduate and general-audience lectures to foster public understanding of cutting-edge physics research, to spark a fascination with physics in a new generation of students, and to recruit new students to study physics at the undergraduate level.More technically, the proposed work expands holographic duality in two important directions. The first line of work addresses the critically important but challenging non-perturbative sector of the duality. Using a supersymmetric toy model will shed light on how non-trivial classical backgrounds enhance the spectrum of solitonic objects. It will also lead to new insights into recently identified systems of extended Bogomolny equations for monopoles. The second program pushes the boundaries of holographic models for hadron physics, enhancing the applicability of the correspondence to real-world problems, and providing a set of meaningful undergraduate projects. It will also generate novel techniques for pushing holographic models beyond commonly-used but severely limiting approximations, and will identify new effects --- such as the mixing of meson and glueball states --- that appear beyond this limit.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.