Congratulations to Assistant Professor James Halverson who has been awarded a grant by the National Science Foundation to support a program studying extended and novel particle sectors in string theory. This is a three year grant starting in September, 2016.

String theory attempts to describe physical laws, such as those governing electromagnetism, nuclear physics, and gravity, in a common unified framework. One central aspect of string theory is that it predicts the existence of extra dimensions of space, and the properties of these extra dimensions play a large role in determining how particles interact in the theory. However, it turns out that there are many self-consistent possibilities for these extra dimensions in string theory. The central goal of Professor Halverson’s research is to determine a sharp notion of generality in this context and to analyze corresponding predictions for potential additional laws of particle physics. This research program sits at the interface of formal string theory and quantum field theory, pure mathematics, and particle physics.