The fascination with string theory centers on its ability to provide
a framework in which to think about gravity and quantum mechanics
in the same theoretical terms. Its foundation, however,
lay in its potential to solve a different long-standing problem:
describing the strong force that governs the nucleus
of the atom. My research focuses on gauge/gravity dualities
in string theory, a development which provides tools to understand both quantum gravity and the strong force.
My principal interest has been the gauge
theory applications of gauge/gravity
dualities. While quantum chromodynamics
(QCD) became the preferred description of the strong
force not long after the development of string theory, our
ability to study QCD is limited. At the energies
typically found inside the nucleus of an atom, QCD
is a strongly coupled gauge theory for which we lack the
mathematical tools to calculate important physical
quantities. Gauge/gravity
dualities provide a way to study QCD at these
low energies, giving us a
more quantitative understanding of confinement,
chiral symmetry breaking, and other non-perturbative phenomena.
More recently, I have become interested
in possible applications of gauge/gravity
duality to condensed matter systems,
for example high temperature superconductors.
At a quantum critical point, a material undergoes
a phase transition driven by
fluctuations due to quantum zero point
motion rather than due to
temperature. For materials where the
critical point is strongly interacting and
perturbative techniques fail, gauge/gravity
duality provides a new method for
predicting transport properties in the
neighborhood of the the critical point.
For more information see
Christopher Herzog's homepage
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