Strings, Branes and Fields
Largely confirmed by the particle collider experiments from the 80s-90s, the Standard Model unifies three out of the four known fundamental interactions within the framework of relativistic quantum field theory. Gravity, described classically by General Relativity, seems to fall outside this framework, as it is perturbatively non-renormalizable. String theory is an ambitious, essentially canonical construct, which provides a consistent description of gravity at the quantum, perturbative level, and at the same time unifies it with the other gauge interactions. Its basic postulate is that at short distances, point particules are subsumed by string-like objects, in various excitation states. Superstring theory, and its putative non-perturbative extension known as M-theory, give a consistent framework for physics beyond the Standard Model. These theories also have important applications to several branches of mathematics.
Staff members :
- Ignatios Antoniadis,
- Laurent Baulieu,
- Victor Godet,
- Dan Israel,
- Bruno Le Floch,
- Severin Lüst,
- Michela Petrini,
- Boris Pioline,
- Emilio Trevisani,
- Paul Windey.
Postdocs:
PhD students :
Recent PhD theses : Anthony Guillen, Vincent Menet, Yann Proto, Francesco Merenda, Pierre Descombes, Francois Rondeau, Gregoire Josse, Osmin Lacombe, Guillaume Beaujard, Yoan Gautier, C. Cosnier-Horeau, O. de Felice, C. Markou, M. Sarkis, T. Bautista, H. Erbin, G. Solard, T. Vanel, D. Andriot, J. Gomes.
The Strings, Branes and Fields group at LPTHE investigates in particular:
- The landscape of string theory vacua
- Effective field theories in flux compactifications
- Holography in asymptotically anti de Sitter and Minkowski spaces
- Black hole microstates, topological strings and Donaldson-Thomas invariants (ANR-21-CE31-0021)
- Cosmological singularities and gravitational radiation
The group meets at 11am every Friday for its weekly journal club.
Access the String Theory in Greater Paris Portal