What holds
things together.
The strong force, confining strings, and where space and time come from.
Why quarks can't escape
The strong force between quarks behaves like a stretched string. With Sergei Dubovsky, I studied the symmetries of these confining strings and asked when their scattering can be integrable, meaning exactly solvable.
The Gribov ambiguity
To calculate anything in QCD, physicists have to "fix a gauge," choosing one description out of infinitely many equivalent ones. Vladimir Gribov showed that this choice is never quite unique. With Daniel Zwanziger, I worked on what this subtlety means for the origin of the confining force.
Emergent spacetime
Can general relativity be derived from the structure of quantum mechanics itself? I'm also interested in reformulating quantum mechanics with modern mathematical tools such as category theory.
Every string, from a guitar string to the string between two quarks, vibrates as a sum of simple patterns called normal modes.
Click and drag anywhere on the string, then let go. The shape is broken into a Fourier series, y(x,t) = Σ bₙ sin(nπx) cos(nπct), and each mode rings at its own frequency. Use fewer modes to see a rougher approximation.
- 2016Origin of Confining ForcePhys. Rev. D 93 · w/ Zwanziger ↗
- 2016Local QCD Action at Finite TemperaturePhys. Rev. D 93 · w/ Zwanziger ↗
- 2015Looking for Integrability on the Worldsheet of Confining StringsJHEP · w/ Dubovsky et al. ↗
- 2014Living with the Wrong SignPhys. Rev. D 89 · w/ Dubovsky, Mohsen ↗