This award funds the research activities of Professors Edward Witten and Peter Goddard and a group of postdoctoral fellows at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
The project is devoted to the study of elementary particle physics, including its connections to other areas of study ranging from astrophysics and cosmology to condensed matter physics and geometry. Current and planned work of the researchers supported by this grant covers a very wide range of topics, including the connections between gauge theory (the modern language of elementary particle physics), string theory (a speculative proposal for unifying the fundamental forces of nature), and geometry. These researchers will also study the possibilities for new models of particle physics that might be relevant at current and future particle accelerators; new methods of computing and studying the ways in which elementary particles scatter off each other; new experimental hints of the cosmic dark matter which makes up most of the matter in the universe; and more. Research in these areas thus advances the national interest by promoting the progress of science in one of its most fundamental directions: the discovery and understanding of new physical laws. The postdoctoral fellows supported by this project will also gain experience working at a high level on these exciting scientific problems, which have all attracted great interest nationally and internationally.
More technically, Edward Witten has been working most recently on applications of quantum field theory to boundary states of topological insulators and superconductors, and is also currently developing new interests in classical General Relativity, with a view toward implications for quantum theory. Peter Goddard's focus is on new approaches to scattering amplitudes in gauge theory and gravity. The postdoctoral fellows supported by this project have a wide range of interests and work with each other on frontier topics in theoretical high-energy physics as well as with Professors Witten and Goddard and other local faculty.
