CAREER: A Holographic World

Princeton University, Princeton NJ

Investigators

Abstract

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). The PI plans to obtain new examples of gauge/gravity dualities and apply them to address open problems in standard model, nuclear, and condensed matter physics.The PI's research focuses on the AdS/CFT correspondence and more generally on gauge/gravity dualities in string theory, a framework that provides tools to understand both quantum gravity and strongly interacting field theories. His research is in three areas a) building new gauge/gravity dualities that will deepen our fundamental understanding of string theory; b) using gauge/gravity dualities to better understand QCD by studying related theories with gravity duals; c) applying gauge/gravity dualities to better understand the transport properties of strongly interacting condensed matter systems including superconductors and superfluids. This work is important because of its potential to develop fundamental aspects of string theory in addition to helping to answer experimental questions posed by LHC, RHIC, and certain condensed matter experiments, questions for which we otherwise have few theoretical tools. The educational outreach goal of this proposal will be to hold a number of staged readings of physics plays followed by talkbacks with scientists on the Princeton campus. While some of the plays will be published work, others will be generated by a playwriting competition open to college students. Through advertising these events in the Princeton community and at local high schools, these readings are intended to generate greater awareness of and good will toward physics among the general public.