Harvard University Department of Physics

• Faculty by Name
• Faculty by Research Area

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Jefferson 467
17 Oxford Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
(617) 496-8207

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Nancy Partridge
Jefferson 463
(617) 495-2807




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Physics Department Faculty:

Cumrun Vafa

Donner Professor of Science

PhD 1985, Princeton University

Cumrun Vafa's research area is theoretical high energy physics with emphasis on such fundamental questions as the nature of quantum gravity and the relation between geometry and quantum field theories. String theory has emerged as a strong candidate for a unified description of gravity and other forces. The recent discovery of duality symmetries (generalizing electric/magnetic exchange symmetry in Maxwell theory) in string theory has led to a significant insight into non-perturbative dynamics of gravity and quantum field theories. Among these one can name the discovery of Strominger and Vafa that the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy of a black hole can be accounted for by solitonic states of string theory and also the relation between geometry and field theories that arise through string dualities, a topic known as "geometric engineering of quantum field theories".

Vafa's main interest now is to understand the underlying meaning of string dualities, as well as trying to apply string theory to some unsolved questions of particle physics such as the hierarchy problem and the cosmological constant problem.