ABSTRACT

This Collaborative grant funds the research activities of Professors Sebastian Franco, Parameswaran Nair, and Alexios Polychronakos at the City College of New York, and Professor Daniel Kabat at the Lehman College of New York.

In this research project, Professors Franco, Nair, Polychronakos, and Kabat will explore two fundamental concepts. The first of these is "entanglement". This refers to the surprising correlations between measurements carried out far from each other (sometimes referred to as "quantum weirdness? or "spooky action at a distance?). The second of these is the curvature of space and time, which is the source of gravitational forces according to Einstein?s theory of gravity. The PIs will strive to relate and unify these concepts by establishing connections and developing new mathematical tools. These concepts will be explored in quantum field theory, the fundamental structural framework for describing all known particle interactions, and in string theory, the most promising direction for a full unification of quantum mechanics with gravity. The results will be applicable to a wide variety of physical systems including elementary particles, quantum fluids, and gravity. This research will advance the national interest by maintaining US preeminence in the exploration and understanding of physical laws, the central goal of all research in physics. The project will also involve graduate students, providing crucial research training for young scientists. Undergraduate students, especially from underrepresented groups, will be integrated into various aspects of the research, thereby further broadening the societal impact of this project.

More technically, the research by Professors Sebastian Franco, Parameswaran Nair, Alexios Polychronakos, and Daniel Kabat involves the use of a number of new theoretical techniques, developed by the PIs and collaborators, and applied to a variety of problems of current interest including entanglement in field theory, gauge field dynamics, supersymmetry breaking, dualities, and bulk reconstruction in AdS/CFT. Advances in one aspect will inform developments in another since, remarkably, there is a common thread of similar underlying mathematical and theoretical tools. Some of the topics will be of direct relevance and proximity to observations, such as supersymmetry breaking and quantum fluids, while other topics are focused on deeper conceptual and mathematical questions, such as bulk reconstruction in the holographic AdS/CFT correspondence.

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.

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