Particles, Fields and Strings

被称为标准模型的量子场论让我们对基本粒子物理学有了非常成功的理解。弦理论是一种在最小可能距离尺度下的物理推测模型，也是一种迷人的动力系统，已被发现具有某些规范场理论的双重解。*拟议的研究探索了量子场论和弦理论的结构，目的是提高对这两个学科的理解。它集中在弦理论和某些超对称规范场理论的某些解之间的ADS/CFT对偶，目的是为了更好地理解规范理论在自由度强耦合时的行为。这项研究的潜在应用范围从理解标准模型内外基本粒子物理的潜在新结构，到研究凝聚态物理中强关联系统的行为模式。第二个研究方向是探索不同环境下量子场论中的拓扑特征的作用，以及它们在决定系统物理性质方面的可能作用。这项工作应该在凝聚态物理中有最直接的应用，在凝聚态物理中，对拓扑绝缘体等材料的理解已经取得了迅速的进展，并且拓扑数据已经被用来表征物质的其他奇异相。它在粒子物理中也有潜在的应用，在粒子物理中，标准模型的希格斯凝聚体的各种拓扑构型提出了有趣的问题。我是欧洲核子研究中心大型强子对撞机MOEDAL实验合作的成员。MOEDAL实验旨在寻找高能质子和反质子束碰撞产生的单极。它还可以寻找其他奇异的物质，例如，如果超对称性与TEV能级的物理相关，那么R重子就是重子的超级伙伴。找到单极子的可能性很小，因为理论上没有人期望它们在弱电标度下存在。然而，其他奇怪的现象，如Q球和假真空气泡，在理论上更难排除，事实上，考虑到标准模型中观察到的质量尺度的非凡重合，很可能存在。对它们存在或不存在的原因有一些了解是很重要的。拓扑学在量子场论中的另一个作用，我们最近参与了它的发现，是创造了场论的子系统的奇异量子纠缠可以自然发生的场景。这个想法还处于初级阶段，尽管我已经有了初步的结果，这种拓扑驱动的纠缠可以用来实现简单的量子过程，比如密集打包经典信息或在电子系统中以最小的退相干传输量子信息。

The quantum field theory called the standard model has given us a remarkably successful understanding of elementary particle physics. String theory is a speculative model of physics at the smallest possible distance scales and a fascinating dynamical system which has been found to have solutions dual to some gauge field theories. ***The proposed research explores the structures of quantum field theory and string theory with the goal of improving the understanding of both subjects. It concentrates on the AdS/CFT duality between certain solutions of string theory and certain supersymmetric gauge field theories with the goal of obtaining a better understanding of the behaviour of gauge theory when its degrees of freedom are strongly coupled. Potential applications of this research range from understanding potential new structures of elementary particle physics within and beyond the standard model to examining the modes of behaviour of strongly correlated systems in condensed matter physics. A second research direction explores the role of topological features in quantum field theory in various environments and their possible role in determining the physical properties of the system. This work should have its most immediate applications in condensed matter physics where the understanding of materials such as topological insulators has seen rapid advances and where topological data has been used to characterize other exotic phases of matter. It also has potential applications in particle physics where various topological configurations of the Higgs condensate of the standard model pose intriguing questions. I am a member of the MOEDAL experimental collaboration at the Large Hadron Collider in CERN. The MOEDAL experiment is intended to look for monopoles produced by the collision of high energy proton and anti-proton beams. It can also look for other exotics, for example, R-baryons, the super-partners of baryons, should supersymmetry be relevant for physics at the TEV energy scale. The likelihood of finding monopoles is small, as there is no theoretical expectation for their existence at the electroweak scale. However, other exotics, such as Q-balls and false vacuum bubbles are harder to rule out theoretically and, in fact, given an extraordinary coincidence of mass scales observed in the standard model, could well exist. Gaining some understanding of why they are or are not there is important. Another role of topology in quantum field theory, in whose discovery we have recently participated, is in creating scenarios where exotic quantum entanglement of subsystems of the field theory can occur naturally. This idea is in its infancy, although I have preliminary results where such topologically driven entanglement can be used to implement simple quantum processes such as dense packing of classical information or teleportation of quantum information in an electronic system, with minimal decoherence.