Final Activity Report Summary - NON CUBED (Towards a non-critical non-AdS/non-CFT correspondence)
Quarks constitute the fundamental building blocks of nuclear matter. Despite their pervasiveness, though, a complete description of their interactions at low energies, which are relevant for subnuclear and nuclear interactions, is still missing. This short-coming is mainly due to the fact that at such low energies, these interactions are very strong and a standard perturbative field theory description is not suitable.
Over the years various proposals have been put forward to tackle this central problem. One of the most promising and far reaching one is the string/gauge correspondence. Oversimplifying, this correspondence proposes to describe strongly coupled field theories via a dual formulation in terms of a weakly coupled, and therefore at least in principle more manageable, string theory.
Throughout the whole project, the fellow has achieved, in collaboration with a small group of local and foreign researchers, to improve the present understanding of this correspondence focusing on the description of the dynamics of flavoured degrees of freedom (i.e. quarks).
In particular, he has participated in the development of a procedure to include the effect of many flavours (of supersymmetric theories) on the dual string theory background. Solving this problem has required understanding the effect of a set of additional D-branes on a previously known background, and the ability to recognise the essential features of the model to focus on the relevant aspects of the system. This has allowed him and his collaborators to reproduce, in an original way, many interesting field theory phenomena in terms of the newly built dual string theory solutions. Such phenomena depend essentially on the number of quark flavours being the same order as the number of colour degrees of freedom.
Their work constitutes therefore an important step forward in the understanding of the string/gauge correspondence in general, and in its applicability to the study of phenomenologically interesting field theories, in particular.
Over the years various proposals have been put forward to tackle this central problem. One of the most promising and far reaching one is the string/gauge correspondence. Oversimplifying, this correspondence proposes to describe strongly coupled field theories via a dual formulation in terms of a weakly coupled, and therefore at least in principle more manageable, string theory.
Throughout the whole project, the fellow has achieved, in collaboration with a small group of local and foreign researchers, to improve the present understanding of this correspondence focusing on the description of the dynamics of flavoured degrees of freedom (i.e. quarks).
In particular, he has participated in the development of a procedure to include the effect of many flavours (of supersymmetric theories) on the dual string theory background. Solving this problem has required understanding the effect of a set of additional D-branes on a previously known background, and the ability to recognise the essential features of the model to focus on the relevant aspects of the system. This has allowed him and his collaborators to reproduce, in an original way, many interesting field theory phenomena in terms of the newly built dual string theory solutions. Such phenomena depend essentially on the number of quark flavours being the same order as the number of colour degrees of freedom.
Their work constitutes therefore an important step forward in the understanding of the string/gauge correspondence in general, and in its applicability to the study of phenomenologically interesting field theories, in particular.