Postdoctoral position in high energy theory - LPENSL (UMR 5672) et IP2I (UMR 5822)

Short description

The LIO Laboratory of Excellence (LabEx) proposes a 2-year post-doctoral position.
Starting date: September the 1st, 2021
The net salary (+social benefits) will depend on experience. A €3,000 annual package for travels and equipment will be allotted.

Research project

Among the proposals for describing a theory of quantum gravity, a fascinating idea, motivated in part by string theory, is that of holography. It is grounded in the realization that the interior of bounded spacetime regions can be described in terms of lower-dimensional theories living on the boundary of these regions. This corresponds to a duality between the bulk and the boundary theories, which is realized explicitly in the framework of the AdS/CFT correspondence.

The goal of this project will be to investigate holographic dualities in order to further improve our understanding of the fundamental principles and symmetries controlling the structure of quantum spacetime at the smallest length scales. Recently, considerable progress in understanding these dualities has been made by focusing on two-dimensional gravity. This is a simplified setup in which many concrete and fundamental physical questions can be phrased and answered. These studies involve many techniques such as higher spin theories, covariant phase space methods, and matrix models. The proposed project will in particular focus on the computation of the higher point correlation functions in the matrix model. This requires to further develop the currently known holographic techniques. In the long term, these results will contribute to understanding the origin of the holographic nature of quantum gravity.

Research field(s)

The position will involve studies of models in string theory and quantum gravity including, but not limited to, topics such as holography and AdS/CFT, supergravity, string/M-theory and matrix models.