15 December 2021

Photo: private

Theoretical physicist Till Bargheer receives 1.5 million Euros through an Emmy-Noether grant from the German Research Foundation (DFG) to perform his research program within the DESY Theory Group. The Emmy-Noether Program admits excellent young researchers to achieve independent scientific leadership. The grant allows Till Bargheer to lead his own research group involving three PhD students and two postdoctoral researchers. Running over a period of six years, Bargheer and his team will conduct the ambitious project “Solving Field Theory with Integrability”.

Quantum field theory (QFT) is undoubtedly one of the most important achievements of modern theoretical physics, with broad applications ranging from condensed matter systems to elementary particle physics. For instance, it explains all interactions among fundamental particles, and eventually how these give rise to all the beautiful phenomena of nature that we observe. Despite this success, the current formulation of QFT is incomplete, and physicists are still a long way from understanding all of its aspects. 

Bargheer and his group will probe the uncharted parts of QFT using the powerful methods from the theory of integrable models. Traditionally rooted in the realm of statistical mechanics, integrability turns out to reach far into the depths of quantum field theory, yielding a completely new approach that admits access to regimes of quantum theory which before had been completely out of computational reach. The goals of Bargheer and his group are to develop this approach further, to establish it more firmly within the landscape of modern and conventional QFT methods, and to extend it from its natural home in planar maximally supersymmetric gauge theory towards more realistic theories.

The Emmy Noether Programme of the DFG supports young researchers in conducting independent research in the early stages of their scientific careers. Till Bargheer's nomination is the third Emmy-Noether grant that could be attracted by the DESY String Theory group within the past six years.