Department of Particle Theory and Phenomenology

Martin Schnabl

History of the departmentProminent theorists of our department’s past include: Václav Votruba  †1990

Postdoc of Pauli and Wentzel, father of Czechoslovak particle physics.Discovered that pions form a SU(3) triplet with M. Lokajíček, but did not publish!

Jaroslav Perneger †1988 Emigrated in 1968, worked as Prof. at ETH Zurich and Milan. Phenomenology of hadronic physics. Discovered 1014 eV particle.

Jiří Patera Emigrated in 1968, worked as Prof. at Montreal University. Interested in group theory.

Jiří Niederle †2010Czech Republic becomes a member of CERN thanks to him. Interested in group theory, mathematical physics, and SUSY.

Petr HořavaString theorist, now Prof. at Berkeley and LBNL. Has 3 papers with over 1000 citations. In total, close to 9000.

The department TODAYSTRING THEORY Holography

& black holesMathematics of W-algebras, Yangians etc.

String Field Theory, D-branes, tachyon condensation

Conformal Field Theory

3D gravity

Perturbative superstring

COSMOLOGY Quark model

Higher Spin Theories Perturbative QCD ALICE

New physics at LHC, jet physics

ATLAS TOTEM

Present and past members of String groupPrior to 2010 2010-2014

@FZU2015 -

Martin Schnabl CZ SISSA, MIT, CERN, IAS-Princeton

String Field Theory,D-branes, CFT

FZU

Joris Raeymaekers

Leuven, Tokyo, Soul

String Theory, holography,Black holes, 3D gravity

FZU

Renann Jusinskas Sao Paulo Superstrings, pure spinors

FZU

Tomáš Procházka CZ

SISSA-Trieste W-algebras, 3D gravity, Higher spins

LMU since 1.12.2015

Carlo Iazeolla Rome, Pisa, Bologna

Higher spins Rome,Moscow

Gustavo Lucena-Gomez

Brussels Higher spins, 3D gravity,

MPI-Potsdam

Theodore Erler Santa Barbara, HRI

String Field Theory LMU (FZU in 2016?)

Dario Francia Rome, Chalmers,

Paris 7

Higher spins Pisa

Carlo Maccaferri SISSA, Brussels String Field Theory Torino

Masaki Murata Kyoto String Field TheoryBoundary CFT

HRI-Allahabad

Cosmo and Phenomenological groupPrior to 2010 2010-2014

@FZU2015 -

Oldřich Kepka CZ FZU & Saclay Physics of jets FZU

Alex Vikman LMU, NYU, CERN,Stanford

Dark matter & energy, cosmology

FZU since 1.10.2015

Costas Skordis UC Davis, Oxford, Perimeter, Nottingham, Cyprus

Tests of gravity, Dark matter & energy, cosmology

FZU since 1.8. 2016

Theory students: Matěj Kudrna: obtained MSc, now working on PhD. Spent 15 months at Ecole Polytechnique. Received French government and Unicredit bank fellowships.Miroslav Rapčák: Best physics bachelor thesis Award, now at Perimeter (MSc and PhD)Pavel Jiroušek, Aleš Flandera: both obtained Bc diploma.

Senior researchers with less than 100% employment contract

Petr Závada CZ 0.80 Quark model, proton spin, ALICE

Jiří Chýla CZ 0.50 Perturbative QCD, popularization, science policy

Vojtěch Kundrát CZ

0.30 Elastic scattering, TOTEM

Jan Fischer CZ 0.23 QCD, Borel summation

Miloš Lokajíček CZ 0.15 Elastic scattering, TOTEM, Bell inequalities,Radiation biology

STRING THEORY Reconciles quantum mechanics with general

relativity. Unites all 4 forces and known matter into a

single entity. Has potential to explain the structure of the standard model of elementary particles (c.f. the landscape problem).

Provides candidates for inflaton, fictious particle driving inflation in early universe.

STRING THEORY Suggests holographic principle, with far

reaching consequences for black hole physics and strongly couple systems (quark-gluon plasma, non-Fermi liquids etc.)

Implications for conformal field theory, statistical physics and pure mathematics.

Research highlights -THEORY Landscape of boundary conditions in 2D CFT

from OSFT - tachyon vacuum

- boundary conditions from boundary conditions

No time machines !

Black hole microstates

Structure of W-algebras

Open String Field Theory In ’05 we proved Sen’s conjectures

regarding tachyon condensation Adv.Theor.Math.Phys. 10 (2006) 433-501 

In ‘13 Erler solved analogous problem for superstrings:  JHEP 1311 (2013) 007

In ‘13 Kudrna, Maccaferri, MS showed how to construct BCFT data from such solutions: JHEP 1307 (2013) 033

In ’14 Kudrna, Rapčák, MS showed how to apply the OSFT technique to Ising model,  arXiv:1401.7980.

Very interesting new numerical results for free bosons confirming predictions of K-theory.

No time machines ! General relativity allows for time machines,

i.e. closed time like curves.

Locally in GR there is nothing that forbids them. In quantum gravity, however, holographic principle, links it to the sacred principle of unitarity.

J. Raeymaekers et al.: JHEP 1004 (2010) 021, JHEP 1104 (2011) 037,  JHEP 1111 (2011) 024   

Gödel and Einstein in the early 1950s Light-cones in Gödel’s universe

Black hole microstates Hawking’s famous calculation showed

that black holes have temperature T ~ 1/M and entropy S= A/4. Where are their microstates?

Strominger, Vafa ‘96: D-brane excitations

Mathur proposed that what we see as a BH is actually an ensemble of regular microstate geometries.

Following upon previous work by JR and v.d.Bleeken JHEP 1411 (2014) 029 such states were constructed arXiv:1510.00583

Higher spin symmetries, W-symmetry Spin>3 notoriously difficult since 1939 (Pauli, Fierz). Recent

progress due to Vasiliev, but very complicated. It is natural to study 3 dimensions first.

W-algebras - extensions of 2d CFT by higher spins (3,4,...). Prominent example: W[1+∞] - whole tower of spins (1,2,3,4,...). Very difficult to construct and study, but quite surprisingly appears in many different areas of Mathematical Physics: integrability, 4d supersymmetric gauge theories, instanton physics, quantum Hall effect, topological strings

Analogous to 3D generalization of 1D harmonic oscillator: algebra of operators which create or annihilate boxes of 3d partitions.

T. Prochazka,  JHEP 1509 (2015) 116TP, JR, Perlmutter JHEP 1305 (2013) 007 TP, JR, Canmpoleoni JHEP 1305 (2013) 052

Collider phenomenology Synergy with the experimental efforts of the departement

Use LHC as photon-photon collider to probeelectroweak physics: Constraints on 𝛾𝛾𝛾𝛾 and WW𝛾𝛾 contact interactions

Motivates building forward proton detectorsO. Kepka et al. : Phys.Rev.D81 (2010) 074003, PhysRevD.89 (2014)114004LPCC Forward Physics Yellow Report, ATLAS Upgrade Letter of Intent

Recent interest: jet substructure techniques toidentify boosted particles steming from deacays of heavy BSM particles Example: Left-Right Symmetric SM - heavy right-handed W

and neutrino

Students 2 Bc, 1 M.A., 2 PhD

Researcher: Petr Závada Student: Lukáš Ferencz (FJFI), Bc. Thesis, Diploma Thesis (at present) Collaboration: LTF JINR DUBNA, A.Efremov, O.Teryaev , and other…Motivation: In the last years the new concepts, like the “Transverse Momentum Dependent parton distributions” help to address fundamental questions concerning the intrinsic motion of quarks and gluons inside the nucleon and the interplay of their spins and orbital angular moments.Recent results:[1] Proton spin in leading order of the covariant approach, P.Zavada,  Phys.Rev. D89 (2014) 1, 014012. [2] Kinematics of deep inelastic scattering in leading order of the covariant approach, P.Zavada, Phys.Rev. D85 (2012) 037501. [3] The relation between TMDs and PDFs in the covariant parton model approach. A.V. Efremov, P. Schweitzer, O.V. Teryaev, P. Zavada, . Phys.Rev. D83 (2011) 054025.  [4] Generalized Cahn effect and parton 3D motion in covariant Approach. P. Zavada, Phys.Rev. D83 (2011) 014022. 

The 3D quark-gluon structure of nucleons

1/2=1/3+1/6

Heavy ion collisions at LHC ALICE experiment designed to test the QCD

prediction of quark-gluon plasmaFZU team composed of P. Závada, J.A.Mareš (Div. of Solid State) and J.Hladký, K.Píška (both Dept. of Experimental Particle Physics)

Recent and current activities:1) Upgrade of the PHOS spectrometer,

collaboration with Czech industry (Duo Opočno, TENEZ Chotěboř)

2) Phenomenology of azimuthal asymmetries and analysis of the ALICE data (collaboration with DUBNA theoreticians A.Efremov, O.Teryaev)

3) Data taking at CERN

Important publications:PHYS. REV. LETT. 105, 25, (2010) 252302PHYS. REV. LETT. 107, 3, (2011) 032301PHYS. REV. LETT. 109, 7, (2012) 072301PHYS. REV. LETT. 110, 8, (2013) 082302

Small experiment: only 80 physicists from 23 institutions !FZU team: V. Kundrát, J. Kašpar, J. Kopal, M. V.Lokajíček, J. Procházka

Study of elastic and diffractive-production proton collisions at the LHC energies (in forward direction)

Team involved in data acquisition (J. Kašpar) and data analysis. To determine the elastic and total cross sections a method based on a model of VK and MVL (1994) was used (better than traditional one due to West-Yennie).

Total 19 paper with over 700 citations total. E.g. A luminosity-independent measurement of the proton-proton total cross-section at √s= 8 TeV Phys. Rev. Lett. 111 (2013) 012001

TOTEM experiment at the LHC (CERN)

Vacuum encasing manufactured by Vakuum Praha thanks to VK. Now being installed at ATLAS as well.

Funding structureProvider dates k

EURsubject

Academy 2015-2020

194 Cosmology – Purkyně Fellowship to Vikman

GACR 2014-2016

313 String theory and quantum gravity

GACR 2012-2019

611 Eduard Čech Institute for Algebra, Geometry and Mathematical Physics 

GACR 2011-2014

95 Black hole microstates and chronology protection in string theory 

MSMT 2011-2013

13 JSPS project: SUSY in BSM and SFT

EURYI 2008-2013

754 String field theory

MSMT 2008-2013

2862 Collaboration between Czech R. and CERN

For the theory group it is about 190 kEUR per year. Occasionally additional funding from FZU, Academy or private (UniCredit) sources. The phenomenology group relies on institutional funding and CZ-CERN funding.The cosmology group relies on Purkyně, and is applying for more.

Thank you for your attention