Related papers: Joseph Polchinski: A Biographical Memoir
The past year has seen enormous progress in string theory. It has become clear that all of the different string theories are different limits of a single theory. Moreover, in certain limits, one obtains a new, eleven-dimensional structure…
We review recent attempts to address the cosmological constant problem and the late-time acceleration of the Universe based on braneworld models. In braneworld models, the way in which the vacuum energy gravitates in the 4D spacetime is…
Since Stephen Hawking discovered that black holes emit thermal radiation, black holes have become the theoretical laboratories for testing our ideas on quantum gravity. This dissertation is devoted to the study of singularities, the…
A relativistic 4D string is described in the framework of the covariant quantum theory first introduced by Stueckelberg (1941) [1], and further developed by Horwitz and Piron (1973) [2], and discussed at length in the book of Horwitz (2015)…
James Earl Baumgartner (March 23, 1943 - December 28, 2011) came of age mathematically during the emergence of forcing as a fundamental technique of set theory, and his seminal research changed the way set theory is done. He made…
In November 2014 Alexander Grothendieck passed away at the age of 86. There is no doubt that he was one of the greatest and most innovative mathematicians of the 20th century. After a bitter childhood, his meteoric ascent started in the…
Quantum field theory in curved spacetime is a theory wherein matter is treated fully in accord with the principles of quantum field theory, but gravity is treated classically in accord with general relativity. It is not expected to be an…
Motivated by the space-time uncertainty principle, we establish a conformal symmetry in the dynamics of D-particles. The conformal symmetry, combined with the supersymmetric non-renormalization theorem, uniquely determines the classical…
The Lorentz harmonic formulation of D-dimensional bosonic p-brane theory with $D\geq (p+1)(p+2)/2$ coupled to an antisymmetric tensor field of rank d=(p+1) provides the dynamical ground for the description of d=(p+1) dimensional Gravity. It…
From 1929 to his death in 1944, A. Eddington worked on developing a highly ambitious theory of fundamental physics that covered everything in the physical world, from the tiny electron to the universe at large. His unfinished theory…
The two major goals in fundamental physics are: 1) Unification of all forces incorporating relativity and quantum theory, 2) Understanding the origin and evolution of the Universe as well as explaining the smallness of the cosmological…
A 4D-brane realization of $q$-theory has been proposed a few years ago. The present paper studies the corresponding late-time cosmology and establishes the dynamic cancellation of an initial cosmological constant and an attractor behavior…
More than a century ago, Albert Einstein presented his general theory of gravitation (GR) to the Prussian Academy of Sciences. One of the predictions of the theory is that not only particles and objects with mass, but also the quanta of…
This article is a tribute to one of the most prominent Polish mathematicians Jozef Marcinkiewicz who perished 80 years ago in the Katyn' massacre. His personality and main mathematical achievements are described.
The subject of the thesis is the construction of a perturbative quantum theory of interacting fields on a curved space-time, following a point of view pioneered by Stueckelberg and Bogoliubov and developed by Epstein-Glaser on the flat…
We formulate an approach to quantum gravity, called the ring paradigm. Gravity is mediated superluminally, and the graviton is described as a phonon on the grid of matter in the Universe. This theory has very interesting applications to…
In two respects Ludwig Boltzmann was a pioneer of quantum mechanics. First because in his statistical interpretation of the second law of thermodynamics he introduced the theory of probability into a fundamental law of physics and thus…
We review recent progress on the instabilities of black strings and branes both for pure Einstein gravity as well as supergravity theories which are relevant for string theory. We focus mainly on Gregory-Laflamme instabilities. In the first…
Some of the consequences of Eyvind Wichmann's contributions to modular theory and the QFT phase-space structure are presented. In order to show the power of those ideas in contemporary problems, I selected the issue of algebraic holography…
The Planck scale is usually believed to be an unpassable wall. Putting a cutoff there and thinking of it as a quantized spacetime entity shows that. However, this is exactly the cause of many problems in quantum gravity. The cosmological…