NSF Award
1820733
This RUI award funds the research activities of Professor Matthew Lippert at Long Island University Brooklyn.<br/><br/>String theory has emerged in recent years as a powerful tool, not just for understanding quantum gravity and extremely high-energy physics, but also for studying a wide range of strongly interacting systems exhibiting a variety of length scales, from electrons in exotic superconductors to the ultra-dense cores of neutron stars. Professor Lippert will conduct research into these systems with the goal of developing interdisciplinary connections between string theory and gravitational physics, nuclear physics, astrophysics, and condensed matter physics. Such bridges enable the exchange of ideas and techniques between different fields of physics, enriching and advancing them all. As such, this research advances the national interest by fostering the development of basic science within the United States. This grant will also support the research of African-American and Hispanic students, thereby increasing the diversity of students in STEM fields and thereby allowing these students to improve their practical quantitative and computing skills, to gain a hands-on appreciation for how actual science is done, and to glimpse the exciting frontier of human knowledge.<br/> <br/>More specifically, this research uses holographic gauge/gravity duality to investigate open questions in strongly coupled quantum field theories, organized around four topics. First, the poorly understood behavior of cold, dense nuclear matter at the core of neutron stars will be investigated using holographic models of QCD in order to test predictions against the recent and ongoing observations of binary neutron star mergers. Second, strongly coupled striped states, such as charge density waves, will be studied using holographic models, including their response to applied electromagnetic fields and the interplay between spontaneous and explicit spatial symmetry breaking. Third, anyons, whose unusual behavior is poorly understood even at weak coupling, will be analyzed at strong coupling using a holographic dual description. Finally, using holographic duality, this research will explore the out-of-equilibrium dynamics by which certain strongly interacting systems relax to ground states with spontaneously broken symmetry.<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.
