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Walter Landry
Quantum field theory (QFT) is a universal language for theoretical physics, describing the Standard Model of particle physics, early universe inflation, and condensed matter phenomena such as phase transitions, superconductors, and quantum Hall fluids. A triumph of 20th century physics was to understand weakly coupled QFTs. However, weakly interacting systems represent a tiny island in theory space and cannot capture many of the most interesting physical phenomena.
The critical challenge for the 21st century is to map and understand the whole space of QFTs, including strongly coupled models. This is the main goal of the Simons Collaboration on the Nonperturbative Bootstrap . Meeting this challenge requires new physical insight, new mathematics, and new computational tools. Our starting point is the astonishing discovery that the space of QFTs can be determined by using only general principles: symmetries and quantum mechanics. By analyzing the full implications of the
The bootstrap idea has its roots in the S-matrix approach to the strong nuclear force, popular in the 1960's but largely abandoned after the advent of Quantum Chromodynamics. The idea that general principles uniquely fix the dynamics of QFT reappeared in the 1970's and 1980's with the formulation of the conformal bootstrap , an infinite set of consistency relations for conformal field theories (CFTs). At the time, these bootstrap equations were applied with great success to rational CFTs, a special class of
Bootstr.com - Site Name Reserved
Walter Landry