Project description
Exploring generalised symmetries of quantum fields
Quantum field theories (QFTs) are essential to modern physics, yet many of their behaviours (especially during phase transitions or across energy scales) remain unclear. A new approach is gaining ground, using ‘generalised symmetries’ to uncover hidden patterns in QFTs. These insights could transform our understanding of many phenomena ranging from particle physics to materials science. In this context, the ERC-funded HIGH project will combine tools from topological field theory, string geometry and dualities to explore generalised symmetries. The team is working to unlock new selection rules that govern quantum fields. The goal is to tackle some of the most fundamental open questions in quantum theory and reshape how physicists think about symmetry.
Objective
Quantum field theories (QFTs) are among the most powerful tools of modern theoretical physics, with wide applications from condensed matter to elementary particle physics, phase transitions, and quantum gravity. Over the past decade, and with tremendous progress over the past two years, QFT is undergoing a revolution: a generalized notion of symmetries, capable of giving conserved quantum numbers to extended field configurations, has emerged. Generalized symmetries are radically changing many aspects of the formalism, with applications ranging from the stability of impurities and defects in condensed matter systems, to the physics of hadrons in the standard model, as well as to the structures of phases. The hallmark of generalized symmetries is their higher structure, which encodes much more refined and sophisticated information about the QFT than that of ordinary symmetries.
The goal of this reaserch proposal is to consolidate my research team, which will be devoted to develop and exploit the higher structure of symmetries to attack foundational open questions about QFT. In particular, in this project we will exploit the higher structures to obtain novel selection rules on QFT correlators, to constrain the behavior of quantum fields upon phase transitions and dualities, and most importantly to give new tools to study the behavior of QFTs across different energy scales along the flow of renormalization. To this end we are exploiting two different strategies. Firstly, we capitalize on the description of generalized symmetries as topological membranes, which allows the characterization of the higher structure via QFT correlators and topological field theory techniques. Secondly, we use a combination of tools ranging from dualities to higher dimensional QFT, and strings geometry, to probe regimes that are out of reach of more conventional methods. These strategies are complementary and intertwined.
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
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HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
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(opens in new window) ERC-2024-COG
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751 05 Uppsala
Sweden
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