Department of Particle Theory and
Phenomenology
Martin Schnabl
History of the department
Prominent theorists of our department’s past include:
 Václav Votruba †1990
Postdoc of Pauli and Wentzel, father of Czechoslovak particle physics.
Discovered that pions form a SU(3) triplet with M. Lokajíček, but did not publish!

Jaroslav Perneger †1988
Emigrated in 1968, worked as Prof. at ETH Zurich and Milan.
Phenomenology of hadronic physics. Discovered 1014 eV particle.

Jiří Patera
Emigrated in 1968, worked as Prof. at Montreal University. Interested in group theory.

Jiří Niederle †2010
Czech Republic becomes a member of CERN thanks to him.
Interested in group theory, mathematical physics, and SUSY.

Petr Hořava
String theorist, now Prof. at Berkeley and LBNL. Has 3 papers with over 1000 citations.
In total, close to 9000.
The department TODAY
STRING THEORY
Holography
& black holes
Mathematics of W-algebras,
Yangians etc.
String Field Theory,
D-branes, tachyon
condensation
Conformal Field
Theory
3D gravity
Perturbative superstring
COSMOLOGY
Higher Spin Theories
Quark model
Perturbative QCD ALICE
New physics at LHC, jet physics ATLAS
TOTEM
Present and past members of String group
Prior to 2010
2010-2014 @FZU
2015 -
Martin Schnabl CZ
SISSA, MIT, CERN,
IAS-Princeton
String Field Theory,
D-branes, CFT
FZU
Joris Raeymaekers
Leuven, Tokyo, Soul
String Theory, holography,
Black holes, 3D gravity
FZU
Renann Jusinskas
Sao Paulo
Superstrings, pure spinors
FZU
Tomáš Procházka CZ
SISSA-Trieste
W-algebras, 3D gravity,
Higher spins
LMU since 1.12.2015
Carlo Iazeolla
Rome, Pisa, Bologna
Higher spins
Rome,Moscow
Higher spins, 3D gravity,
MPI-Potsdam
Gustavo Lucena-Gomez Brussels
Theodore Erler
Santa Barbara, HRI
String Field Theory
LMU (FZU in 2016?)
Dario Francia
Rome, Chalmers,
Paris 7
Higher spins
Pisa
Carlo Maccaferri
SISSA, Brussels
String Field Theory
Torino
Masaki Murata
Kyoto
String Field Theory
Boundary CFT
HRI-Allahabad
Cosmo and Phenomenological group
Prior to 2010
2010-2014 @FZU 2015 -
Oldřich Kepka CZ
FZU & Saclay
Physics of jets
FZU
Alex Vikman
LMU, NYU, CERN,
Stanford
Dark matter & energy,
cosmology
FZU since 1.10.2015
Costas Skordis
UC Davis, Oxford,
Perimeter,
Nottingham, Cyprus
Tests of gravity, Dark
matter & energy,
cosmology
FZU since 1.8. 2016
Theory students:
 Matěj Kudrna: obtained MSc, now working on PhD. Spent 15 months at Ecole
Polytechnique. Received French government and Unicredit bank fellowships.
Miroslav Rapčák: Best physics bachelor thesis Award, now at Perimeter (MSc and PhD)
Pavel Jiroušek, Aleš Flandera: both obtained Bc diploma.
Senior researchers with less than 100%
employment contract
Petr Závada CZ
0.80
Quark model, proton spin, ALICE
Jiří Chýla CZ
0.50
Perturbative QCD, popularization, science policy
Vojtěch Kundrát CZ
0.30
Elastic scattering, TOTEM
Jan Fischer CZ
0.23
QCD, Borel summation
Miloš Lokajíček CZ
0.15
Elastic scattering, TOTEM, Bell inequalities,
Radiation biology
STRING THEORY



Reconciles quantum mechanics with general relativity.
Unites all 4 forces and known matter into a single entity.
Has potential to explain the structure of the standard
model of elementary particles (c.f. the landscape problem).
Provides candidates for inflaton, fictious particle driving
inflation in early universe.
STRING THEORY

Suggests holographic principle, with far reaching
consequences for black hole physics and strongly couple
systems (quark-gluon plasma, non-Fermi liquids etc.)

Implications for conformal field theory, statistical physics
and pure mathematics.
Research highlights -THEORY

Landscape of boundary conditions in 2D CFT from OSFT
- tachyon vacuum
- boundary conditions from boundary conditions

No time machines !

Black hole microstates

Structure of W-algebras
Open String Field Theory

In ’05 we proved Sen’s conjectures regarding
tachyon condensation Adv.Theor.Math.Phys. 10
(2006) 433-501

In ‘13 Erler solved analogous problem for
superstrings: JHEP 1311 (2013) 007

In ‘13 Kudrna, Maccaferri, MS showed how to
construct BCFT data from such solutions: JHEP
1307 (2013) 033

In ’14 Kudrna, Rapčák, MS showed how to
apply the OSFT technique to Ising
model, arXiv:1401.7980.

Very interesting new numerical results for free
bosons confirming
predictions of K-theory.
No time machines !

General relativity allows for time machines, i.e. closed
time like curves.
Gödel and Einstein in the early 1950s

Light-cones in Gödel’s universe
Locally in GR there is nothing that forbids them. In
quantum gravity, however, holographic principle, links it to
the sacred principle of unitarity.
J. Raeymaekers et al.: JHEP 1004 (2010) 021, JHEP 1104 (2011) 037, JHEP 1111 (2011) 024
Black hole microstates

Hawking’s famous calculation showed that
black holes have temperature T ~ 1/M and
entropy S= A/4. Where are their microstates?

Strominger, Vafa ‘96: D-brane excitations
Mathur proposed that what we see as a BH is
actually an ensemble of regular microstate
geometries.


Following upon previous work by JR and
v.d.Bleeken JHEP 1411 (2014) 029 such
states were constructed arXiv:1510.00583
Higher spin symmetries, W-symmetry


Spin>3 notoriously difficult since 1939 (Pauli, Fierz). Recent progress due to
Vasiliev, but very complicated. It is natural to study 3 dimensions first.
W-algebras - extensions of 2d CFT by higher spins (3,4,...). Prominent
example: W[1+∞] - whole tower of spins (1,2,3,4,...).Very difficult to
construct and study, but quite surprisingly appears in many different areas
of Mathematical Physics: integrability, 4d supersymmetric gauge theories,
instanton physics, quantum Hall effect, topological strings
T. Prochazka, JHEP 1509 (2015) 116
TP, JR, Perlmutter JHEP 1305 (2013) 007
TP, JR, Canmpoleoni JHEP 1305 (2013) 052
Analogous to 3D generalization of 1D
harmonic oscillator: algebra of operators
which create or annihilate boxes of 3d
partitions.
Collider phenomenology

Synergy with the experimental efforts of the departement

Use LHC as photon-photon collider to probe
electroweak physics: Constraints on 𝛾𝛾𝛾𝛾
and 𝛾𝛾 WW contact interactions

Motivates building forward proton detectors
O. Kepka et al. : Phys.Rev.D81 (2010) 074003, PhysRevD.89 (2014)114004
LPCC Forward Physics Yellow Report, ATLAS Upgrade Letter of Intent

Recent interest: jet substructure techniques to
identify boosted particles steming from deacays of heavy BSM
particles


Example: Left-Right Symmetric SM - heavy right-handed W
and neutrino
Students 2 Bc, 1 M.A., 2 PhD
The 3D quark-gluon structure of nucleons
Researcher: Petr Závada
Student: Lukáš Ferencz (FJFI), Bc. Thesis, Diploma Thesis (at present)
Collaboration: LTF JINR DUBNA, A.Efremov, O.Teryaev , and other…
Motivation: In the last years the new
concepts, like the “Transverse Momentum
Dependent parton distributions” help to
address fundamental questions concerning
the intrinsic motion of quarks and gluons
inside the nucleon and the interplay of their
spins and orbital angular moments.
1/2=1/3+1/6
Recent results:
[1] Proton spin in leading order of the covariant approach, P.Zavada, Phys.Rev. D89 (2014) 1, 014012.
[2] Kinematics of deep inelastic scattering in leading order of the covariant approach, P.Zavada, Phys.Rev. D85 (2012) 037501.
[3] The relation between TMDs and PDFs in the covariant parton model approach.
A.V. Efremov, P. Schweitzer, O.V.Teryaev, P. Zavada, . Phys.Rev. D83 (2011) 054025.
[4] Generalized Cahn effect and parton 3D motion in covariant Approach. P. Zavada, Phys.Rev. D83 (2011) 014022.
Heavy ion collisions at LHC

ALICE experiment designed to test the QCD prediction of
quark-gluon plasma
FZU team composed of P. Závada, J.A.Mareš (Div. of Solid State)
and J.Hladký, K.Píška (both Dept. of Experimental Particle Physics)
Recent and current activities:
1) Upgrade of the PHOS spectrometer, collaboration
with Czech industry (Duo Opočno, TENEZ
Chotěboř)
2) Phenomenology of azimuthal asymmetries and
analysis of the ALICE data (collaboration with
DUBNA theoreticians A.Efremov, O.Teryaev)
3) Data taking at CERN
Important publications:
PHYS. REV. LETT. 105, 25, (2010) 252302
PHYS. REV. LETT. 107, 3, (2011) 032301
PHYS. REV. LETT. 109, 7, (2012) 072301
PHYS. REV. LETT. 110, 8, (2013) 082302
TOTEM experiment at the LHC (CERN)


Small experiment: only 80 physicists from 23 institutions !
FZU team: V. Kundrát, J. Kašpar, J. Kopal, M.V.Lokajíček, J. Procházka
Study of elastic and diffractive-production proton collisions at the LHC
energies (in forward direction)
Vacuum encasing manufactured
by Vakuum Praha thanks to VK.
Now being installed at ATLAS as
well.


Team involved in data acquisition (J. Kašpar) and data analysis. To determine
the elastic and total cross sections a method based on a model of VK and
MVL (1994) was used (better than traditional one due to West-Yennie).
Total 19 paper with over 700 citations total.
E.g. A luminosity-independent measurement of the proton-proton total
cross-section at √s= 8 TeV Phys. Rev. Lett. 111 (2013) 012001
Funding structure
Provider
dates
k EUR subject
Academy
2015-2020
194 Cosmology – Purkyně Fellowship to Vikman
GACR
2014-2016
313 String theory and quantum gravity
GACR
2012-2019
611 Eduard Čech Institute for Algebra, Geometry
and Mathematical Physics
GACR
2011-2014
95 Black hole microstates and chronology
protection in string theory
MSMT
2011-2013
13 JSPS project: SUSY in BSM and SFT
EURYI
2008-2013
MSMT
2008-2013
754 String field theory
2862 Collaboration between Czech R. and CERN
 For the theory group it is about 190 kEUR per year. Occasionally additional
funding from FZU, Academy or private (UniCredit) sources.
 The phenomenology group relies on institutional funding and CZ-CERN funding.
The cosmology group relies on Purkyně, and is applying for more.
Thank you for your attention