NSF Award
0903134
This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).<br/><br/>Recently there has been a lot of progress studying string theory using a web of duality symmetries relating non-perturbative effects to perturbative ones. This project involves studies in string theory with emphasis on the supergravity limit of the theory. Some of the goals of the research include:<br/><br/>1) The classification of supersymmetric (SUSY) solutions in various dimensions. Here the approach is the classification of SUSY solutions using Killing symmetries, represented as bispinors.<br/>2) The study of the Anti-de Sitter / Conformal Field Theory (AdS/CFT)correspondence, specifically incorporating higher derivative corrections into the classical solutions on the Supergravity side of the correspondence to see their implications for Conformal Field Theory.<br/>3) Development of the non-perturbative theory underlying string theory<br/>4) Phenomenological implications of string theory, specifically in cosmology using cosmological solutions to Supergravity. <br/><br/>Many of the broader implications follow from the PI being the director of the Center for Advanced Mathematical Sciences (CAMS) at the American University in Beirut (AUB). This center has a significant potential for impact on science in Lebanon and in the region. This connection has the potential for "broad impact" in a much more substantial sense than is customary for an individual investigator grant. The Center has a significant impact on the training of students, hosting various scientific workshops, summer schools and international conferences.
