NSF Award
2310305
This RUI award funds the research activities of Professor Sophia Domokos at the New York Institute of Technology. <br/><br/>When swarms of tiny particles interact very forcefully and often, new phenomena emerge: electron seas conspire to let currents flow forever; and elementary particles called quarks and gluons clump together into the protons and neutrons at the center of every atom. Predicting what kind of structure emerges in such strongly interacting systems remains a fundamental mystery in physics. Its resolution will advance our understanding of a huge array of physical systems, from atomic nuclei to the cores of neutron stars and to the dense plasma present in the earliest moments of our universe. In her research, Professor Domokos will use a phenomenon which emerges within string theory and which is known as "holographic duality" to categorize and classify clumps of elementary particles (like protons and neutrons) that emerge in strongly interacting systems. Her work will not only help to understand these objects better, but it will also make predictions for new structures we have never seen before. Research in this area advances the national interest by pushing the frontier of our scientific understanding of strongly interacting systems, and by developing new mathematics to describe them. This project will also yield significant broader impacts. Professor Domokos will involve a diverse group of undergraduate students in her research activities, providing key research training for students from groups historically underrepresented in STEM, and helping to launch their scientific careers. Professor Domokos will also give undergraduate and general-audience lectures to foster public understanding of cutting-edge physics research, to spark a fascination with physics in a new generation of students, and to recruit new students to study physics at the undergraduate level.<br/><br/>More technically, the proposed work expands holographic duality in two important directions. The first line of work addresses the critically important but challenging non-perturbative sector of the duality. Using a supersymmetric toy model will shed light on how non-trivial classical backgrounds enhance the spectrum of solitonic objects. It will also lead to new insights into recently identified systems of extended Bogomolny equations for monopoles. The second program pushes the boundaries of holographic models for hadron physics, enhancing the applicability of the correspondence to real-world problems, and providing a set of meaningful undergraduate projects. It will also generate novel techniques for pushing holographic models beyond commonly-used but severely limiting approximations, and will identify new effects --- such as the mixing of meson and glueball states --- that appear beyond this limit.<br/><br/>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.
