Emil Martinec

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Emil John Martinec (born 1958) is an American string theorist, a physics professor at the Enrico Fermi Institute at the University of Chicago, and director of the Kadanoff Center for Theoretical Physics. He was part of a group at Princeton University that developed heterotic string theory in 1985. [1]

Contents

Early life and education

Martinec was born October 4, 1958, [2] in Downers Grove, Illinois. He graduated from Northwestern University in 1979 and earned his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1984, with a dissertation titled, Quantum Mechanics Versus General Covariance In Gravity And String Models, advised by Michael Peskin. [3] He worked the last two years of his graduate education at SLAC, following Peskin's move there.

Career

Early in his career, Martinec worked at Princeton University, where he was part of a research group known as the "Princeton string quartet" that also included physicists David Gross, Jeffrey A. Harvey and Ryan Rohm. [4] The group developed heterotic string theory in 1985. [5] As its name suggests, heterotic string theory combines elements of multiple versions of string theory to attempt to create a more realistic explanation of elementary particle physics. This work was part of a series of advances that forestalled the predicted merger of cosmology and fundamental physics. [6]

He is currently a professor at the Enrico Fermi Institute at the University of Chicago. He directs the university's Kadanoff Center for Theoretical Physics. [7]

Selected publications

Martinec is co-author of six papers that SLAC's inSPIRE database classifies as "renowned" (having 500 or more citations apiece): [8]

Awards

Related Research Articles

In physics, string theory is a theoretical framework in which the point-like particles of particle physics are replaced by one-dimensional objects called strings. String theory describes how these strings propagate through space and interact with each other. On distance scales larger than the string scale, a string looks just like an ordinary particle, with its mass, charge, and other properties determined by the vibrational state of the string. In string theory, one of the many vibrational states of the string corresponds to the graviton, a quantum mechanical particle that carries the gravitational force. Thus, string theory is a theory of quantum gravity.

String field theory (SFT) is a formalism in string theory in which the dynamics of relativistic strings is reformulated in the language of quantum field theory. This is accomplished at the level of perturbation theory by finding a collection of vertices for joining and splitting strings, as well as string propagators, that give a Feynman diagram-like expansion for string scattering amplitudes. In most string field theories, this expansion is encoded by a classical action found by second-quantizing the free string and adding interaction terms. As is usually the case in second quantization, a classical field configuration of the second-quantized theory is given by a wave function in the original theory. In the case of string field theory, this implies that a classical configuration, usually called the string field, is given by an element of the free string Fock space.

In string theory, a heterotic string is a closed string (or loop) which is a hybrid ('heterotic') of a superstring and a bosonic string. There are two kinds of heterotic superstring theories, the heterotic SO(32) and the heterotic E8 × E8, abbreviated to HO and HE. Apart from that there exist seven more heterotic string theories which are not supersymmetric and hence are only of secondary importance in most applications. Heterotic string theory was first developed in 1985 by David Gross, Jeffrey Harvey, Emil Martinec, and Ryan Rohm (the so-called "Princeton string quartet"), in one of the key papers that fueled the first superstring revolution.

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References

  1. ↑ Cappelli, Andrea; Castellani, Elena; Colomo, Filippo; Vecchia, Paolo Di (2012-04-12). The Birth of String Theory. Cambridge University Press. p. 402. ISBN   9780521197908.
  2. ↑ "CV: Emil Martinec". theory.uchicago.edu. Retrieved 2018-02-14.
  3. ↑ Martinec, Emil J. (1984). "Quantum Mechanics Versus General Covariance In Gravity And String Models".
  4. ↑ Overbye, Dennis (December 7, 2004). "String theory, at 20, explains it all (or not)". The New York Times . Retrieved February 13, 2018.
  5. ↑ Mitra, Asoke Nath (2009). India in the World of Physics: Then and Now. Pearson Education India. p. 8. ISBN   9788131715796.
  6. ↑ Steinhardt, Paul J.; Turok, Neil (2007). Endless Universe: Beyond the Big Bang. Crown/Archetype. p. 129. ISBN   9780385523110.
  7. ↑ Chang, Kenneth (November 1, 2015). "Leo P. Kadanoff, physicist who explored how matter changes, dies at 78". The New York Times . Retrieved February 13, 2018.
  8. ↑ "Martinec, Emil John - Profile - INSPIRE-HEP". inspirehep.net. Retrieved 2018-02-14.
  9. ↑ "Past Fellows". sloan.org. Archived from the original on 2018-03-14. Retrieved 2018-02-14.
  10. ↑ "Award Abstract #number 657788, Presidential Young Investigator Award: Research in String Theory (Physics)". National Science Foundation . July 1, 1987.
  11. ↑ "DOE Outstanding Junior Investigator Awardees" (PDF). U.S. Department of Energy. 2009. p. 6. Retrieved February 14, 2018.
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