Augusto Sagnotti | |
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![]() (2014) | |
Born | 1955 |
Nationality | Italian |
Alma mater | University of Rome "La Sapienza", California Institute of Technology |
Known for | Ultraviolet divergences of Einstein gravity, orientifolds, higher spins |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Theoretical physics |
Institutions | Scuola Normale Superiore |
Doctoral advisor | John H. Schwarz |
Augusto Sagnotti (born 1955) is an Italian theoretical physicist at Scuola Normale (since 2005).
Sagnotti earned a Laurea in Electrical Engineering from the University of Rome "La Sapienza" in 1978 (advisors: Bruno Crosignani and Paolo Di Porto); and a Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from Caltech in 1983 (advisor: John H. Schwarz). He was Post-Doctoral Fellow at Caltech (1983–84) and Miller Research Fellow at U.C. Berkeley (1984–86). [1]
Sagnotti was Junior Faculty at the University of Rome "Tor Vergata" from 1986 to 1994, then Associate Professor (1994–99) and Professor (2000-2005). [1] His research activity has been devoted to the quantization of the gravitational field, to String Theory, to Conformal Field Theory and to Higher-Spin Gauge Fields. [1]
Sagnotti's main contribution to physics is perhaps the analysis of the 2-loop divergences in Einstein's theory of General Relativity. [2] [3] Moreover, he was the first to propose, in 1987, that the type I string theory can be obtained as an orientifold of type IIB string theory, [4] with 32 half-D9-branes added in the vacuum to cancel various anomalies [5] [6] and offered the elucidation of the key properties of orientifold constructions and of Conformal Field Theory on non-orientable surfaces. [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] He also discovered the 10D "0B' string", including both open and closed strings, non supersymmetric but free of tachyons. [12] [13] He has worked extensively on higher spins, arriving at a geometric formulation of their free field equations in terms of higher-spin curvatures. [14]
More recently, Sagnotti has been working on the proposal of a possible link between "brane supersymmetry breaking", [15] [16] [17] [18] and the onset of the inflationary phase, and on the exploration of some of its possible imprints on the CMB, [19] in particular, the proposal that the low value of the CMB quadrupole [20] and a first peak for l ~5 [21] be a manifestation of the onset of the inflationary phase.
Sagnotti received the Carosio Prize from the University of Rome “La Sapienza” in 1979, a Miller Fellowship from U.C. Berkeley in 1984, shared with Massimo Bianchi the 1994 SIGRAV Prize of the Italian Society for General Relativity and Gravitation, [22] and received the Margherita Hack Prize for Science in 2014 for his work on the quantization of gravity and a Humboldt Research Award in 2018. [23] He was also Andrejewski Lecturer at Humboldt Universitat in Berlin in 1999.