Sandip Trivedi
Prof. Trivedi is interested in various aspects of string theory, cosmology and particle physics. He is currently investigating the definition and properties of entanglement entropy in gauge theories, the constraints that follow from symmetry on the perturbations produced during inflation in cosmology, and the connections between gravitational systems and condensed matter physics using the AdS/CFT correspondence. In the past his research has been in the aspects of string compactifications, construction of vacuum with a positive cosmological constant, inflation, black hole physics and aspects of particle physics.
Publications
Email : sandip"at"theory.tifr.res.in
Gautam Mandal
Prof. Gautam Mandal studies various aspects of string theory, quantum field theory and black hole physics. His recent interest has been in dynamical aspects of quantum systems, with specific interest in `thermalization'. The tools in these studies include quantum entanglement and gauge/gravity duality. Using this tool, his group has recently proved some results on `subsystem thermalization' in a large class of two-dimensional conformal field theories, including integrable models. The gauge/gravity approach to thermalization involves black hole formation from gravitational collapse, the exactness and universality of which raises some important new questions for quantum field theories; these are being actively pursued by his group. In the recent past, Prof. Mandal studied AdS/CFT descriptions for the QCD phase transition and proposed a new model for the deconfinement phase transition. His earlier research involved studying the microscopic theory for five dimensional near-extremal black holes, leading to the derivation of their Hawking emission. Prof Mandal and collaborators have also worked extensively on two-dimensional string theory, including a nonperturbative version called matrix models, explored an infinite dimensional symmetry algebra in this theory and found the two-dimensional black hole in string theory.
Publications
Email : mandal"at"theory.tifr.res.in
Shiraz Minwalla
Prof. Minwalla is interested in several aspects of the dynamics of gravity, quantum field theories and their relations via the AdS/CFT correspondence of string theory. His current research interests incIude the reformulation of the classical dynamics of black holes in a large number of spacetime dimensions in terms of a non-gravitational theory of a dynamical membrane, the study of Chern-Simons matter theories (and their bulk duals) in three dimensions, and the classification of consistent classical modifications of Einstein gravity. In the past he has studied the duality between the long wavelength limit of Einstein's equations with a negative cosmological constant and the relativistic Navier-Stokes equations, and has co-discovered the so called fluid-gravity correspondence. He has also studied superconformal representation theory, defined and studied superconformal indices, counted supersymmetric states in various contexts, studied large N phase transitions in Yang-Mills theories and their interpretation in terms of black holes in the dual bulk theory. In early works he has investigated non-commutative field theories and string theories and the duality web that relates them. He has also studied correlation functions via the AdS/CFT correspondence, and has investigated tachyon condensation in string theory via the study of RG flows on the world sheet of the string.
Publications
Email : minwalla"at"theory.tifr.res.in
Abhijit Gadde
Prof. Abhijit Gadde is interested in various aspects of strongly coupled quantum field theories and string theory. Most recently, he has been interested in analytic results in conformal as well as superconformal field theories. He is also exploring consequences of other higher symmetries on quantum field theories. In the past he has worked on connections between mathematics and physics, in particular between four dimensional manifolds and supersymmetric two dimensional theories. Through this work he discovered a surprising low energy duality enjoyed by a certain class of two dimensional theories. He has also studied strong-weak coupling dualities of N=2 supersymmetric four dimensional theories with the help of the superconformal index. In earlier works, he has computed the string theory dual to N=2 superconformal QCD thus obtaining one of the first examples of AdS/CFT correspondence with large flavor symmetry. He also worked on the aspects of integrability of this theory.
Publications
Email : abhijit"at"theory.tifr.res.in
Onkar Parrikar
Dr. Onkar Parrikar is interested in the AdS/CFT correspondence and its connections with quantum information theory. I am currently studying aspects of the bulk to boundary map in AdS/CFT from the perspective of quantum error correction. Another recurring theme in my work is the interplay between complexity theory, chaos and quantum gravity. In the past, I have worked on using quantum information theory to prove energy conditions in quantum field theory, on showing the emergence of spacetime and Einstein's equations from the entanglement structure of holographic quantum systems, on complexity growth in chaotic quantum systems, on using information theory tools to study the topology of knots and links, etc.
Publications
Email : parrikar"at"theory.tifr.res.in