What are the most important problems in physics now?

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I would like to share with you David Gross’s talk at CERN, which gives the 25 most important questions over the next 25 years. The slides can be found here.

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Welcome to my Cold Atomic Site

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Hi, I am a theoretical physicist on condensed matter systems. My primary research focuses on cold atomic systems, with an interest in non-equilibrium dynamics, topological phases, Feshbach resonances, and strongly interacting systems. 

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Recently, I am working on the generalization of the topological Haldane phase to SU(N>2) symmetries. This research is motivated by the following two aspects:

1) The SU(N) symmetries are physically fundamental in nature. For example, the most successful and beautiful theory in physics – QED is basically a guage theory of U(1) symmetry, the standard model is a theory of non-abelian gauge SU(3)$\times$SU(2)$\times$U(1) theory, and even more radically the Georgi–Glashow model of Grand Unified Theory (GUT) belongs to the gauge SU(5) symmetry.

2) The effective field theory description of the SU(N) topological Haldane phase is the Wess-Zumino-Witten model

\[
S_{WZW}[g]=\frac{1}{8\pi}\int_{S^2}d^2x~\rm{Tr} (\partial_\mu g\partial_\mu g^{-1})+\Gamma [g],
\]

which is a nonlinear simgma model plus a topological term. This model has fundamental importance, as it is known connected to the black hole physics, bosonic strings, and quantum Hall effect.

 

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