Supergravity Tools for Holography

Utah State University, Logan UT

Investigators

Abstract

This award funds the research activities of Professor Oscar Varela at Utah State University. General relativity and quantum field theory have traditionally been thought to be irreconcilable theories. The former governs the large-scale structure of the universe and is manifestly classical. The latter describes the fundamental interactions --- electromagnetic, weak, and strong --- that operate at a subatomic level. But, could it be possible that these two seemingly different theories were actually two different sides of the same coin? Could they be regarded as dual manifestations of an overarching set of physical principles? If this were the case, general relativity and quantum field theory would complement rather than conflict each other, as they would be equivalent, albeit with different applicability regimes. In his research, Professor Varela will develop aspects of this idea, which is commonly known as the so-called "AdS/CFT correspondence". This research advances the national interest by promoting the development of science in a fundamental direction, by developing relations among the laws of physics at deeper and deeper levels. It will also have broader impacts by providing training for junior physicists and by disseminating its results to the general public, especially to members of under-represented groups. More technically, Professor Varela will study different aspects of the AdS/CFT correspondence with a focus in the supergravity regime where tighter control of the correspondence is attained. New tools will be introduced and developed to construct solutions to the supergravity equations that contain anti-de Sitter space. These methods will exploit the reformulations of higher-dimensional supergravities that make exceptional symmetries manifest, and will also utilize restricted tensor and duality hierarchies. Effective lower-dimensional supergravity theories with AdS vacua will be constructed and their embeddings into string theory elucidated. Finally, the field theory duals of those new string theory solutions will be investigated.