Exceptional Holography

This award funds the research activities of Professor Oscar Varela at Utah State University. General relativity and quantum field theory have traditionally been thought to be irreconcilable theories. The former governs the large scale structure of the universe and is manifestly classical, while the latter describes the fundamental interactions --- electromagnetic, weak, and strong --- that operate at a subatomic level. But is it possible that these two seemingly different theories are actually two different sides of the same coin? Could they be regarded as "dual" manifestations of an overarching set of physical principles? If this were the case, general relativity and quantum field theory would complement rather than conflict with each other, as they would be equivalent albeit with different applicability regimes. As part of his research project, Professor Varela will develop aspects of this idea, generally known as the anti-deSitter/conformal field theory (AdS/CFT) correspondence. This research advances the national interest by promoting the development of science in a fundamental direction, by developing relations among the laws of physics at deeper and deeper levels. This research project will also have broader impacts by providing training for junior physicists and by disseminating results both to the physics community at large and to the general public. More technically, new supergravity tools will be introduced and developed to construct string theory backgrounds and study their holography. Supergravity theories in lower dimensions will be analyzed and anti-de Sitter solutions to those models constructed. Further, new techniques based on supergravity and its Exceptional Field Theory extensions will be developed to track those lower-dimensional solutions all the way up to ten and eleven dimensions, thereby obtaining new fully-fledged string theory solutions. Also, the corresponding field theory operator spectra and supergravity effective actions will be computed using novel Exceptional Field Theory methods. 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.