Exceptional Holography

This award supports the research program of Professor Oscar Varela at Utah State University. General relativity and quantum field theory have traditionally been viewed as fundamentally incompatible descriptions of nature. General relativity governs gravity and the large-scale structure of the universe and is inherently classical, whereas quantum field theory describes the electromagnetic, weak, and strong interactions that operate at subatomic scales. Nevertheless, these seemingly different frameworks may provide complementary descriptions of the same underlying physics. Could they emerge as dual formulations of a more fundamental set of physical principles? If so, general relativity and quantum field theory would not contradict one another, but would instead offer equivalent descriptions suited to different regimes. In this project, Professor Varela will explore several aspects of this possibility using the anti-de Sitter/conformal field theory (AdS/CFT) correspondence. The project advances the national interest by promoting fundamental scientific research and revealing deeper connections among the basic laws of physics. It will also have broader impacts by training junior researchers and communicating scientific discoveries to the general public. At a more technical level, the project will investigate the AdS/CFT correspondence mainly within the supergravity regime, where the duality can be analyzed with greater theoretical precision. New methods will be developed to construct solutions of the supergravity field equations that incorporate anti-de Sitter spacetime. These methods will draw on reformulations of higher-dimensional supergravity theories in which exceptional symmetries are made explicit. They will also yield efficient new tools for computing observables in the associated dual quantum field theories. 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.