Theoretical Physics

该奖项资助石溪大学玛丽亚·C·冈萨雷斯-加西亚、帕特里克·米德、莱昂纳多·拉斯特利、马丁·罗塞克、罗伯特·施罗克、沃伦·西格尔、乔治·斯特曼和亚历山大·扎莫罗奇科夫教授的研究活动。随着理解自然界的新技术和新能力的发展，物理学也在不断发展。该奖项支持在理论物理中广泛但相关的一系列主题的研究。通过推动美国国内的基本科学进步，在这些知识前沿的每一个领域的参与都符合国家利益。调查将包括分析基本粒子的高能碰撞，探索物质宇宙所依据的基本规律，以及提出涉及基本粒子和原子核的新实验。这些努力将补充对重力、空间和时间的深层奥秘的研究，以及自然界中所有已知力相互关联的可能性，将重力本身与电子现象、放射性和核物理中看到的力统一起来。量子场论中发展起来的理论方法也被发现在固体的性质和流体中的湍流方面有着令人兴奋的应用。预计该项目还将产生更广泛的重大影响。在该奖项下开展的研究将服务于研究生的培训和最高级别博士后研究员的指导。这项计划的教师与研究生一起进行研究，并在课堂内外与本科生和社区成员分享他们的经验和专业知识。个别成员还将继续他们自己的外联活动，其中包括在高中研究指导和组织科学剧本创作比赛方面的成功传统。在技术层面，该奖项将支持广泛的理论物理研究，主要基于量子场论、唯象分析、统计力学和弦理论。近年来，粒子物理方面的理论和实验加强了接触，合成了来自大型强子对撞机、中微子天文台、宇宙射线卫星以及现在的引力波探测器的数据。这些关于我们宇宙的新信息来源使理论家能够用不断演变的数据来检验长期存在的想法，并开发新的理论方法来指导实验。要了解粒子物理标准模型的非凡成就，以及它如何嵌入到一个更基本的理论中，将需要在微扰和非微扰场理论中开发新的精确技术。关于味觉量子数和中微子质量的现有数据分析的新方法正在研究中。与此同时，量子场和弦理论的新应用，包括理论对偶性、共形对称性和可积性，已经在粒子物理内外得到了发展，为凝聚态物理、统计力学和纯数学的研究开辟了意想不到的途径。作为这些历史性发展的积极参与者，该奖项的高级人员将研究以下主题的理论问题：具有和不具有超对称性的量子场、高能对撞机现象学、模型构建、量子色动力学、中微子物理、天体粒子物理和天体物理、规范-引力二象性的应用、共形场理论、理论空间的概念、标准模型的扩展、弱对称破缺、超弦和超对称规范理论的几何。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award funds the research activities of Professors Maria C. Gonzalez-Garcia, Patrick Meade, Leonardo Rastelli, Martin Rocek, Robert Shrock, Warren Siegel, George Sterman, and Alexander Zamolodchikov at Stony Brook University. Physics is constantly evolving as new techniques and capabilities are developed to understand the natural world. This award supports research in a broad but deeply related set of topics in theoretical physics. Engagement at each of these frontiers of knowledge serves the national interest by advancing fundamental scientific progress within the United States. Investigations will include the analysis of high-energy collisions of elementary particles, which probe the fundamental laws upon which the material universe is based, and proposals for new experiments involving elementary particles and atomic nuclei. These efforts will complement studies of the deep mysteries of gravity, space and time, and the possibility that all of the known forces in nature are related, unifying gravity itself with the forces that are seen in electrical phenomena, in radioactivity, and in nuclear physics. The theoretical methods developed in quantum field theory have also been found to have exciting applications to the properties of solids and to turbulence in fluids. This project is also envisioned to have significant broader impacts. The research carried out under this award will serve in the training of graduate students and the mentoring of postdoctoral fellows at the highest level. The faculty of this proposal conduct their research with graduate students and share their experience and expertise with undergraduates and community members, in and beyond the classroom. Individual members will also continue their own outreach activities, which have included successful traditions in high-school research mentoring and in the organization of science playwriting competitions. At the technical level, this award will support research over a wide range of theoretical physics, largely based on quantum field theory, phenomenological analysis, statistical mechanics, and string theory. Recent years have seen a strengthening engagement of theory and experiment in particle physics, synthesizing data from the Large Hadron Collider, from neutrino observatories, cosmic ray satellites and now gravitational wave detectors. These new sources of information concerning our universe enable theorists to test long-standing ideas against evolving data, and to develop new theoretical methods to guide experiment. Understanding the extraordinary successes of the Standard Model of particle physics and how it is embedded in a still more fundamental theory will require development of new precision techniques in perturbative and nonperturbative field theory. New approaches to the analysis of existing data on flavor quantum numbers and neutrino masses are under study. At the same time, novel applications of quantum field and string theory, including theory duality, conformal symmetries and integrability properties, have been developed in and beyond particle physics, opening unexpected avenues of research into condensed-matter physics, statistical mechanics, and pure mathematics. As active participants in these historic developments, the senior personnel of this award will investigate theoretical questions in such topics as quantum fields with and without supersymmetry, high-energy collider phenomenology, model-building, quantum chromodynamics, neutrino physics, astroparticle physics and astrophysics, applications of gauge-gravity duality, conformal field theory, the concept of theory space, extensions of the Standard Model, electroweak symmetry breaking, superstrings, and the geometry of supersymmetric gauge theories.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.