This award funds the research activities of Professors Savas Dimopoulos, Peter Graham, Shamit Kachru, Renata Kallosh, Andrei Linde, Leonardo Senatore, Stephen Shenker, Eva Silverstein, and Leonard Susskind at Stanford University.
As part of their research activities, these nine professors will study a broad range of subjects, all aimed at answering two basic questions: Can we understand the origin and historical evolution of our Universe? And can we determine the nature of the basic building blocks --— the elementary particles —-- that constitute the world around us? This group of researchers will attack these questions from diverse perspectives. Professors Dimopoulos and Graham will focus on developing and proposing new techniques using cutting-edge modern technology to detect new particles (or even new forces that act between known particles) via experiments that fit on a table top. Professors Kallosh, Linde, and Senatore will focus on the behavior of our Universe at the largest observed scales. A number of experiments hint that the Universe expanded very rapidly, undergoing a period of cosmic "inflation" early in its history. Finding theoretical models of inflation that fit this data will be a part of this effort. Professors Shenker, Silverstein, and Susskind will focus on conceptual questions about the foundations of gravity as well as the interplay between gravity and quantum mechanics. This work will include attempts to understand the mysteries of black holes, wormholes, and other enigmatic objects that emerge within Einstein’s theory of gravity. Professor Kachru will focus on understanding the interplay between our most fundamental theories that unify gravity with quantum mechanics and ideas in modern mathematics. Each of these lines of research also has significant broader impacts that are in the natural interest. New tools will be developed which can have applications in diverse areas of science. Likewise, students and postdoctoral fellows who will be trained in the course of performing this research are likely to serve the nation in crucial ways, whether by joining the next generation of leaders in research and teaching, or by transferring their expertise towards the development of important new technologies in the private sector. These professors will also engage in outreach activities designed to bring the fruits of modern science to the general public through public lectures, videos, and popular publications, including books accessible to the general public.
At a more technical level, Professors Dimopoulos and Graham will use quantum-interference effects in atomic physics, which can be measured to very high precision, to leverage indirect signs of potential new physics to detectable levels. Professors Kallosh and Linde will explore supergravity and string-theory models of the expanding Universe and their connection to the most recent experiments constraining early-Universe inflation. Professor Senatore will develop theoretical frameworks to predict large-scale structure based on models of the early Universe. Such frameworks can also be turned around, allowing the use of observed large-scale structure data to postdict inflationary parameters. Professor Shenker will study low-dimensional toy models of quantum gravity, which can be solved exactly via connections to models of random matrices. Professor Silverstein will study models of string theory in which the required extra dimensions are curled up on a space of negative curvature. Indeed, such models offer a natural home for cosmologies with accelerated expansion. Professor Susskind will investigate connections between complexity theory in the information sciences and gravity. Finally, Professor Kachru will use dualities in field theory and string theory to elucidate still-mysterious aspects of Calabi-Yau compactification of string theory (such as the explicit form of the Calabi-Yau metric), and also investigate connections between number-theoretic notions and string compactification.
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.
