Research in String Theory, Supergravity and Cosmology

该奖项资助利哈伊大学蒂姆·莱斯教授的研究活动。在阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦（Albert Einstein）发现广义相对论一百多年后，我们仍在努力将其与量子力学统一起来，量子力学是支配亚原子世界的理论。弦理论是这一努力的主要候选者，它已经对量子引力理论中什么是可能的、什么是不可能的提供了深刻的见解。其中一些见解，比如在任何理论上一致的宇宙中，引力比其他力弱的要求，被广泛接受。然而，也有其他更投机的想法。例如，我们的宇宙充满了一种神秘的所谓暗能量，它抵消了引力，使星系分开。最近有人推测，随着时间的推移，这种暗能量会变得越来越弱。作为他研究的一部分，Wrase教授将研究这个和其他相关的猜想，这些猜想对我们自己的宇宙做出了有趣的预测。这些研究的目标是提供理论预测，可以与正在进行和未来的暗能量宇宙学观测和所谓的宇宙膨胀时期进行比较，这被认为发生在宇宙的早期。预计该项目还将产生更广泛的重大影响。Wrase教授将让研究生和博士后参与他的研究，从而为在这个领域开始研究的初级物理学家提供关键的培训。他还打算就他的研究课题发表公开演讲。从技术上讲，Wrase教授将研究弦理论的宇宙学应用，如暴胀和dS真空。有各种相关的沼泽猜想需要更好地理解和更精确。例如，真空和大场膨胀在弦理论中的地位就备受争议。提高我们对现有结构的理解和/或推导出潜在的不成立定理，将有助于我们把这些猜想建立在更坚实的基础上，或者反驳它们。这将有助于面对未来的宇宙学观测，改进对暗能量状态方程或膨胀期间张量与标量比等量的理论预测。该项目的另一个目标是提高我们对弦理论中超对称破缺的理解，特别是通过研究非超对称dp膜及其与非线性和错位超对称的联系。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 award funds the research activities of Professor Timm Wrase at Lehigh University.More than a hundred years after Albert Einstein discovered his theory of general relativity, we are still working on unifying it with quantum mechanics, the theory that governs the subatomic world. String theory, the leading candidate in this endeavor, has already provided deep insights into what is and what is not possible in a theory of quantum gravity. Some of these insights, like the requirement that the gravitational force be weaker than the other forces in any theoretically consistent universe, are widely accepted. However, there are also other much more speculative ideas. For example, our universe is filled with a mysterious so-called dark energy that counteracts gravity and pushes galaxies apart. It was recently conjectured that such a dark energy has to become weaker over time. As part of his research, Professor Wrase will study this and other related conjectures that make interesting predictions for our own universe. The goal of these investigations is to provide theoretical predictions that can be compared to on-going and future cosmological observations of dark energy and a period of so-called cosmological inflation that is believed to have taken place during the very early universe. This project is also expected to have significant broader impacts. Professor Wrase will involve graduate students and a postdoc in his research, and thereby provide critical training for junior physicists beginning research in this field. He also intends to give public lectures on the topics of his research.More technically, Professor Wrase will study cosmological applications of string theory such as inflation and dS vacua. There are a variety of related swampland conjectures that need to be better understood and made more precise. For example, the status of dS vacua and large-field inflation in string theory are highly debated. Improving our understanding of existing constructions and/or deriving potential no-go theorems will help us in either putting such conjectures on more solid footing or refuting them. This should help in confronting future cosmological observations with improved theoretical predictions for quantities such as the equation of state of dark energy or the tensor-to-scalar ratio during inflation. Another goal of this project is to improve our understanding of supersymmetry breaking in string theory, in particular by studying non-supersymmetric Dp-branes and their connections to non-linear and misaligned supersymmetry.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.