March 26, 2008
3pm in Howey Physics Lecture Room 5

 

Oleg Lunin
Particle Theory Group
University of Chicago

 

"Gauge theories, strings, and gravity"

Two of the most important open problems in theoretical physics are a construction of a consistent theory of quantum gravity and an analytic understanding of strongly coupled gauge theories. These two problems are unified in the context of gauge/string duality, which states that gravity and field theory give complementary descriptions of the same physics. Over the last few years this duality has been used to learn a great deal of information about both field theories and quantum gravity. I will review the basic ideas of the gauge/gravity correspondence with a particular emphasis on the gravity description of heavy states in field theory. I will show that such states correspond to regular geometries, and, unlike the familiar metrics appearing in general relativity, these geometries do not have sources. I will discuss how to use these metrics to learn about field theory and black holes.