Research

String theory leads to new relationships between quantum field theories and classical gravitational theories such as Einstein's theory of relativity. These relations represent dualities, that is, they map strongly coupled quantum field theories onto weakly coupled gravitational theories. The best understood example of this duality is the AdS/CFT correspondence, which has a particularly high degree of symmetry. Here, AdS stands for the curved anti-de Sitter space and CFT for conformal field theory. [continue reading...]

The group "Quantum Information Theory and Statistical Physics" deals with the fundamental question of how complex systems behave far from thermal equilibrium and how such non-equilibrium phenomena can be understood from the perspective of quantum information theory. [continue reading...]