Nathan Seiberg

Template:Short description Template:Distinguish Template:Infobox scientist Nathan "Nati" Seiberg (Template:IPAc-en; Template:Langx; born September 22, 1956) is an Israeli American theoretical physicist who works on quantum field theory and string theory. He is currently a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, United States.

Honors and awards

He was recipient of a 1996 MacArthur Fellowship<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}.</ref> and the Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics in 1998.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}.</ref> In July 2012, he was an inaugural awardee of the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, the creation of physicist and internet entrepreneur, Yuri Milner.<ref>New annual US$3 million Fundamental Physics Prize recognizes transformative advances in the field Template:Webarchive, FPP, accessed 1 August 2012</ref> In 2016, he was awarded the Dirac Medal of the ICTP. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Member of the US National Academy of Sciences.

Research

His contributions include:

• Ian Affleck, Michael Dine, and Seiberg explored nonperturbative effects in supersymmetric field theories.<ref>Ian Affleck, Michael Dine, Nathan Seiberg Dynamical supersymmetry breaking in supersymmetric QCD, Nucl. Phys. B, vol. 241, 1984, pp. 493–534 {{#invoke:doi|main}}; Dynamical supersymmetry breaking in four dimensions and its phenomenological implications, Nucl. Phys. B, vol. 256, 1985, p. 557, Template:Bibcode.</ref> This work demonstrated, for the first time, that nonperturbative effects in four-dimensional field theories do not respect the supersymmetry nonrenormalization theorems. This understanding led them to find four-dimensional models with dynamical supersymmetry breaking.
• In a series of papers, Michael Dine and Seiberg explored various aspects of string theory. In particular, Dine, Ryan Rohm, Seiberg, and Edward Witten proposed a supersymmetry breaking mechanism based on gluino condensation,<ref>Dine, Rohm, Seiberg, Witten Gluino condensation in superstring models, Physics Letters B, vol. 156, 1985, pp. 55–60 {{#invoke:doi|main}}.</ref> Dine, Seiberg, and Witten showed that terms similar to Fayet–Iliopoulos D-terms arise in string theory,<ref>Dine, Seiberg, Witten Fayet-Iliopoulos Terms in String Theory, Nucl. Phys. B, vol. 289, 1987, pp. 589–598 {{#invoke:doi|main}}</ref> and Dine, Seiberg, X. G. Wen, and Witten studied instantons on the string worldsheet.<ref>Dine, Seiberg, Wen, Witten Nonperturbative effects on the string world sheet, Nucl. Phys. B, vol. 278, 1986, pp. 769–789 {{#invoke:doi|main}}; Nucl. Phys. B, vol. 289, 1987, pp. 319–363 {{#invoke:doi|main}}.</ref>
• Gregory Moore and Seiberg studied Rational Conformal Field Theories. In the course of doing it, they invented modular tensor categories and described many of their properties.<ref>Moore and Seiberg “Classical and Quantum Conformal Field Theory”, Commun.Math.Phys. 123 (1989), 177 {{doi: 10.1007/BF01238857}}</ref> They also explored the relation between Chern–Simons theory and the corresponding Rational Conformal Field Theory.<ref>Moore and Seiberg “Lectures on RCFT” in Trieste 1989, Proceedings, Superstrings '89* 1-129 https://www.physics.rutgers.edu/~gmoore/LecturesRCFT.pdf .</ref> This body of work was later used in mathematics and in the study of topological phases of matter.
• In the 90’s, Seiberg realized the significance of holomorphy as the underlying reason for the perturbative supersymmetry nonrenormalization theorems<ref>Seiberg “Naturalness versus supersymmetric nonrenormalization theorems”, Phys.Lett.B 318 (1993), 469-475 {{doi: 10.1016/0370-2693(93)91541-T}} hep-ph/9309335.</ref> and initiated a program to use it to find exact results in complicated field theories including several N=1 supersymmetric gauge theories in four dimension. These theories exhibit unexpected rich phenomena like confinement with and without chiral symmetry breaking and a new kind of electric-magnetic duality – Seiberg duality.<ref>Seiberg, “Exact results on the space of vacua of four-dimensional SUSY gauge theories”, hep-th/9402044, {{DOI:10.1103/PhysRevD.49.6857}}, Phys.Rev.D 49 (1994), 6857-6863; “Electric - magnetic duality in supersymmetric non-Abelian gauge theories”, hep-th/9411149, {{DOI: 10.1016/0550-3213(94)00023-8}}, Nucl.Phys.B 435 (1995), 129-146.</ref> Kenneth Intriligator and Seiberg studied many more models and summarized the subject in lecture notes.<ref>Intriligator and Seiberg “Lectures on supersymmetric gauge theories and electric-magnetic duality” Nucl.Phys.B Proc.Suppl. 45BC (1996), 1-28, Subnucl.Ser. 34 (1997), 237-299, {{ DOI: 10.1016/0920-5632(95)00626-5}}, hep-th/9509066</ref> Later, Intriligator, Seiberg and David Shih used this understanding of the dynamics to present four-dimensional models with dynamical supersymmetry breaking in a metastable vacuum.<ref>Intriligator, Seiberg, and Shih, “Dynamical SUSY breaking in meta-stable vacua”, hep-th/0602239 [hep-th], JHEP 04 (2006), 021, {{DOI: 10.1088/1126-6708/2006/04/021}}</ref>
• Seiberg and Witten studied the dynamics of four-dimensional N=2 supersymmetric theories – Seiberg–Witten theory. They found exact expressions for several quantities of interest. These shed new light on interesting phenomena like confinement, chiral symmetry breaking, and electric-magnetic duality.<ref>Seiberg and Witten, “Electric - magnetic duality, monopole condensation, and confinement in N=2 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory”{{ DOI: 10.1016/0550-3213(94)90124-4, 10.1016/0550-3213(94)00449-8 (erratum)}}, Nucl.Phys.B 426 (1994), 19-52, Nucl.Phys.B 430 (1994), 485-486 (erratum), hep-th/9407087; “Monopoles, duality and chiral symmetry breaking in N=2 supersymmetric QCD”, Nucl.Phys.B 431 (1994), 484-550, {{DOI: 10.1016/0550-3213(94)90214-3}}, hep-th/9408099.</ref> This insight was used by Witten to derive the Seiberg–Witten invariants. Later, Seiberg and Witten extended their work to the four-dimensional N=2 theory compactified to three dimensions.<ref>Seiberg and Witten, “Gauge dynamics and compactification to three-dimensions”, hep-th/9607163, in “Conference on the Mathematical Beauty of Physics (In Memory of C. Itzykson)”.</ref>
• Intriligator and Seiberg found a new kind of duality in three-dimensional N=4 supersymmetric theories, which is reminiscent of the well-known 2D mirror symmetry – 3D mirror symmetry.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
• In a series of papers with various collaborators, Seiberg studied many supersymmetric theories in three, four, five, and six dimensions. The three-dimensional N=2 supersymmetric theories<ref>Aharony, Hanany, Intriligator, and Seiberg, “Aspects of N=2 supersymmetric gauge theories in three-dimensions”, hep-th/9703110, Nucl.Phys.B 499 (1997), 67-99, {{DOI: 10.1016/S0550-3213(97)00323-4}}</ref> and their dualities were shown to be related to the four-dimensional N=1 theories.<ref>Aharony, Razamat, Seiberg, and Willett, “3d dualities from 4d dualities”, hep-th/1305.3924, {{DOI: 10.1007/JHEP07(2013)149}}, JHEP 07 (2013), 149</ref> And surprising five-dimensional theories with N=2 supersymmetries were discovered<ref>Seiberg, “Five-dimensional SUSY field theories, nontrivial fixed points and string dynamics”, hep-th/9608111 {{DOI: 10.1016/S0370-2693(96)01215-4}}, Phys.Lett.B 388 (1996), 753-760</ref> and analyzed.<ref>Morrison and Seiberg, “Extremal transitions and five-dimensional supersymmetric field theories”, hep-th/9609070, {{DOI: 10.1016/S0550-3213(96)00592-5}}, Nucl.Phys.B 483 (1997), 229-247; Intriligator, Morrison, and Seiberg, “Five-dimensional supersymmetric gauge theories and degenerations of Calabi-Yau spaces”, hep-th/9702198, {{DOI: 10.1016/S0550-3213(97)00279-4}}, Nucl.Phys.B 497 (1997), 56-100.</ref>
• As part of his work on the BFSS matrix model, Seiberg discovered little string theories.<ref>Seiberg “New theories in six-dimensions and matrix description of M theory on T**5 and T**5 / Z(2)” hep-th/9705221,{{DOI: 10.1016/S0370-2693(97)00805-8}} Phys.Lett.B 408 (1997), 98-104</ref> These are limits of string theory without gravity that are not local quantum field theories.
• Seiberg and Witten identified a particular low-energy limit (Seiberg–Witten limit) of theories containing open strings in which the dynamics becomes that of noncommutative quantum field theory – a field theory on a non-commutative geometry. They also presented a map (Seiberg–Witten map) between standard gauge theories and gauge theories on a noncommutative space.<ref>Seiberg and Witten “String theory and noncommutative geometry”, JHEP 09 (1999), 032, In *Li, M. (ed.) et al.: Physics in non-commutative world* 327-401, hep-th/9908142, {{DOI:10.1088/1126-6708/1999/09/032}}.</ref> Shiraz Minwalla, Mark Van Raamsdonk and Seiberg uncovered a surprising mixing between short-distance and long-distance phenomena in these field theories on a noncommutative space. Such mixing violates the standard picture of the renormalization group. They referred to this phenomenon as UV/IR mixing.<ref>Minwalla, Van Raamsdonk, and Seiberg, “Noncommutative perturbative dynamics”, JHEP 02 (2000), 020, In *Li, M. (ed.) et al.: Physics in non-commutative world* 426-451, hep-th/9912072, {{DOI: 10.1088/1126-6708/2000/02/020}}</ref>
• Davide Gaiotto, Anton Kapustin, Seiberg, and Brian Willett introduced the notion of higher-form global symmetries and studied some of their properties and applications.<ref name="1412.5148">Template:Cite journal</ref>

See also

• Gauge theory
• Instanton
• String theory
• Two-dimensional conformal field theory
• S-duality
• Noncommutative quantum field theory
• Anomaly (physics)

External links

• Nathan Seiberg's web page at the Institute
• Template:MathGenealogy