Research will be carried out in theoretical elementary particle physics. The work will range from studies which are close to experiment to development of new theories which may not be immediately testable. It will include research on superstring theories, which may provide a consistent, unified description of gravity and the other forces. In particular, the question of how superstrings, which move in ten space-time dimensions, can properly describe the observed four-dimensional world, will be explored. Other work will deal with the unification of the families of elementary particles, the unification of the forces of nature, and varied topics in quantum field theory. The research will be carried out by Jonathan Bagger, a very promising young physicist who has been selected to be one of the new Presidential Young Investigators for 1987. The work is of great importance and interest in what is certainly a frontier area of physics research.
