Research+Profiles

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//**Members:** Please place your sketch in alphabetical order by last name//

Allan Adams
I am an assistant professor at MIT. I've mostly worked on string theory and QFT. //Current research:// Applications of holography to many-body systems, especially non-relativistic critical systems, (non-)fermi liquids and superconductors.

J**ohanna Erdmenger**
I am research group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Physics in Munich, Germany. I am interested in both applied and theoretical aspects of gauge/gravity duality. I have been working on applying gauge/gravity duality to QCD-like theories, in particular on including flavor degrees of freedom, chiral symmetry breaking and systems at finite temperature and density. Recently with my students I wrote two papers on constructing a holographic superconductor for a 3+1-dimensional field theory at finite isospin density.

**Victor Gurarie**
I am an assistant professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder. I work on condensed matter theory, many body theory, and exactly solvable models of many body theory, and applications of these to cold atoms.

Sean Hartnoll
I am a postdoc at Harvard. //Current research:// Applications of AdS/CFT techniques to condensed matter physics. Emergent spacetime geometry from commuting eigenvalues. Finite temperature AdS/CFT and black holes.

**Christopher Herzog**
I am an assistant professor at Princeton. These days most of my time is spent thinking about applications of AdS/CFT to condensed matter physics. I am also interested in applications of AdS/CFT to QCD and some of the more mathematical aspects of these gauge/gravity dualities. See my website at [|http://www.phy.princeton.edu/~cpherzog]

Diego Hofman
I am a graduate student at Princeton and soon to be postdoc at Harvard, starting this September. I have worked in several topics within AdS/CFT including: AdS_3/CFT_2, Integrability in N=4 SYM and Applications of AdS/CFT to Collider Physics. I am interested in the possible uses of AdS/CFT to understand real world physics (QCD, Condensed Matter, Collider Physics, etc.).

Petr Horava
I am a professor at the Berkeley Center for Theoretical Physics, UC Berkeley & LBNL. My current research interests include the interface of string theory and quantum gravity with condensed matter physics, not just in the context of AdS/CFT; in particular, quantum gravity with anisotropic scaling.

Gary Horowitz
I am a professor in the physics department here at UCSB. //Current research:// (1) Holographic superconductors, (2) Understanding the physics near spacetime singularities using gauge/gravity duality, (3) Exploring whether there is a Kerr/CFT correspondence.

Shamit Kachru
Info about me can be found at my (old) webpage: [|http://www.stanford.edu/dept/physics/people/faculty/kachru_shamit.html]

Eun-Ah Kim
I am an assistant professor at Cornell university. For more about me, please see my [|homepage]. //Current research:// strongly correlated systems (especially high Tc superconductors) and topological phases in quantum Hall systems, chiral superconductor and model systems. Problems I would love to get help from AdS-CFT duality, it possible, are fermionic quantum criticality and QPT between topological phases.

Per Kraus
I'm a professor at UCLA, and am interested in various aspects of field theory, string theory, and gravity. Recent research includes developing an AdS/CFT version of the quantum Hall effect.

Sung-Sik Lee
I am an assistant professor at McMaster University. //Current research:// Low energy effective theory for 2+1 dimensional non-Fermi liquid states and critical spin liquids. In particular, I'm interested in understanding the consequences of strong quantum fluctuations in two space dimensions and the presence of infinitely many gapless modes in fermion systems at finite densities.

Rob Leigh
I am a professor at Illinois (Urbana). //Current research:// AdS_4/CFT_3 dualities, relativistic and non-relativistic with a variety of applications. Entanglement entropy in field theories. Superconductivity.

Hong Liu
I am an associate professor at MIT. Questions I am currently interested in include quantum nature of black holes, Quark gluon plasma, fermionic quantum criticality, and quantum gravity in asymptotic de Sitter spacetime.

Joe Polchinski
I am a KITP permanent member and Professor at UCSB. For more about me, please see my [|home page]. //Current research:// various topics in gauge/gravity duality. This duality is still our most precise answer to the question "What is String Theory?", since we know what gauge theory is, but only applies with special boundary conditions. Recent work with Idse Heemskerk, Joao Penedones, and James Sully identifies conditions for a general CFT to have a gravity dual.

Xiao-Liang Qi
I am a postdoc in Stanford University. Current research: Topological insulators and quantum spin Hall effect, topological superconductors and more generic topological phenomena. I am interested in AdS/CFT correspondence, especially interested in whether it has some relation to topological states of matter.

Subir Sachdev
I am a professor at Harvard University. I am interested in a variety of correlated electron systems, especially those near quantum critical points. An overview of my research on the high temperature superconductors can be found in my perspective article: []. My hope is that the AdS/CFT correspondence will lead to an understanding of new phases of quantum matter at finite densities.

Eva Silverstein
I am a professor, moving this year to KITP/UCSB from Stanford. Current research includes: (1) Construction of AdS/CFT dual pairs with small internal dimensions and hence small numbers of light fields on the gravity side (in order to finally formulate 4d gravity in string theory, via CFT duals to the landscape of vacua). This may also apply to AdS/CMT in that stabilizing scalar moduli and lifting Kaluza-Klein modes simplifies the phase diagram of UV complete examples. (2) Cosmology (inflationary theory and observational signatures).

Dam T. Son
I am a faculty at University of Washington and the Institute for Nuclear Theory. //Current research:// gauge/gravity duality applied to hot and/or dense systems, nonrelativistic holography, quark gluon plasma, strongly coupled atomic gases.

Shivaji Sondhi
I am a Professor of Physics at Princeton University. My field of specialization is condensed matter theory and my current interests lie in the theory of topological/fractionalized phases, frustrated magnetism and quantum computation.

Andrei O. Starinets
I am a lecturer at Oxford University. //Current research:// gauge/gravity duality at finite temperature and density.

Tadashi Takayanagi
I am an associate professor at IPMU, the University of Tokyo. One of my current researches is the application of holography to condensed matter systems. Especially I have been interested in holographic calculations of entanglement entropy, the holographic descriptions of quantum Hall effects and the string theory description of Lifshitz-like anisotropic scale invariance theories.

David Tong
I am a faculty at University of Cambridge. I have mostly worked on quantum field theory and string theory. My homepage is []

Cenke Xu
I am a postdoc at Harvard University. //Current research:// Strongly correlated electron system, critical phenomena, gauge fields in condensed matter systems, spin liquid, exotic phases in quantum magnetism, quantum phase transitions, topological insulator, high temperature superconductor.

Laurence Yaffe
I am a professor at the University of Washington, interested in high temperature gauge theory dynamics, large //N// gauge theories, and other aspects of quantum field theory. Recent work includes applications of gauge/string duality to problems motivated by heavy ion collisions involving equilibration and far-from-equilibrium dynamics of non-Abelian plasmas.

Jan Zaanen
I am professor in Leiden. For more see my homepage: [|http://www.lorentz.leidenuniv.nl/~jan/] //Current research:// various topics in condensed matter physics, with an emphasis on the fermion sign mystery, quantum criticality and superconductivity. A special interest developed in exploring the relevance of gravitational physics in condensed matter that culminated in a love affair with AdS/CFT.