Augusto Sagnotti (born 1955) is an Italian theoretical physicist at Scuola Normale (since 2005).

Biography

Sagnotti earned a Laurea in Electrical Engineering from the

University of Rome "La Sapienza" The Sapienza University of Rome ( it, Sapienza – Università di Roma), also called simply Sapienza or the University of Rome, and formally the Università degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza", is a public research university located in Rome, Ita ...

in 1978 (advisors: Bruno Crosignani and Paolo Di Porto); and a Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from

Caltech The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...

in 1983 (advisor: John H. Schwarz). He was Post-Doctoral Fellow at Caltech (1983–84) and Miller Research Fellow at U.C. Berkeley (1984–86). Sagnotti was Junior Faculty at the

University of Rome "Tor Vergata" Tor Vergata University of Rome, also known as the University of Rome II ( it, Università degli Studi di Roma "Tor Vergata"), is a public research university located in Rome, Italy. Located in the southeastern suburb of Rome, the university combine ...

from 1986 to 1994, then Associate Professor (1994–99) and Professor (2000-2005). His research activity has been devoted to the quantization of the

gravitational field In physics, a gravitational field is a model used to explain the influences that a massive body extends into the space around itself, producing a force on another massive body. Thus, a gravitational field is used to explain gravitational phenome ...

, to

String Theory 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 interac ...

, to Conformal Field Theory and to Higher-Spin Gauge Fields. Sagnotti's main contribution to physics is perhaps the analysis of the 2-loop divergences in Einstein's theory of

General Relativity General relativity, also known as the general theory of relativity and Einstein's theory of gravity, is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915 and is the current description of gravitation in modern physics ...

. Moreover, he was the first to propose, in 1987, that the

type I string theory In theoretical physics, type I string theory is one of five consistent supersymmetric string theories in ten dimensions. It is the only one whose strings are unoriented (both orientations of a string are equivalent) and the only one which contains ...

can be obtained as an

orientifold In theoretical physics orientifold is a generalization of the notion of orbifold, proposed by Augusto Sagnotti in 1987. The novelty is that in the case of string theory the non-trivial element(s) of the orbifold group includes the reversal of the or ...

type IIB string In theoretical physics, type II string theory is a unified term that includes both type IIA strings and type IIB strings theories. Type II string theory accounts for two of the five consistent superstring theories in ten dimensions. Both theories ...

theory, with 32 half-

D9-brane In string theory, D-branes, short for ''Dirichlet membrane'', are a class of extended objects upon which open string (physics), strings can end with Dirichlet boundary conditions, after which they are named. D-branes were discovered by Jin Dai, R ...

s added in the vacuum to cancel various anomalies and offered the elucidation of the key properties of orientifold constructions and of Conformal Field Theory on non-orientable surfaces. He also discovered the 10D "0B' string", including both open and closed strings, non supersymmetric but free of

tachyon A tachyon () or tachyonic particle is a hypothetical particle that always travels faster than light. Physicists believe that faster-than-light particles cannot exist because they are not consistent with the known laws of physics. If such partic ...

s. He has worked extensively on higher spins, arriving at a geometric formulation of their free field equations in terms of higher-spin curvatures. More recently, Sagnotti has been working on the proposal of a possible link between " brane supersymmetry breaking", and the onset of the inflationary phase, and on the exploration of some of its possible imprints on the

CMB In Big Bang cosmology the cosmic microwave background (CMB, CMBR) is electromagnetic radiation that is a remnant from an early stage of the universe, also known as "relic radiation". The CMB is faint cosmic background radiation filling all spac ...

, in particular, the proposal that the low value of the CMB quadrupole and a first peak for l ~5 be a manifestation of the onset of the inflationary phase.

Awards and honors

Sagnotti received the Carosio Prize from the University of Rome “La Sapienza” in 1979, a Miller Fellowship from U.C. Berkeley in 1984, shared with Massimo Bianchi the 1994 SIGRAV Prize of the

Italian Society for General Relativity and Gravitation The Italian Society on General Relativity and Gravitation (SIGRAV), founded in 1990 , is a non-profit association whose purpose is that of bringing together members belonging to the Italian scientific community who are interested in the various a ...

, and received the Margherita Hack Prize for Science in 2014 for his work on the quantization of gravity and a

Humboldt Research Award The Humboldt Prize, the Humboldt-Forschungspreis in German, also known as the Humboldt Research Award, is an award given by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Germany to internationally renowned scientists and scholars who work outside of G ...

in 2018. He was also Andrejewski Lecturer at Humboldt Universitat in Berlin in 1999.

Books

* ''String Theory'', eds. C. Procesi and A. Sagnotti (Academic Press, 1988) * ''String Theory, Quantum Gravity and the Unification of the Fundamental Interactions'', eds. M. Bianchi, F. Fucito, V. Marinari and A. Sagnotti (World Scientific, 1992)

References

External Links

Scientific publications of Augusto Sagnotti
on

INSPIRE-HEP INSPIRE-HEP is an open access digital library for the field of high energy physics (HEP). It is the successor of the Stanford Physics Information Retrieval System (SPIRES) database, the main literature database for high energy physics since the 1970 ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sagnotti, Augusto Living people 20th-century Italian physicists Academic staff of the University of Rome Tor Vergata 1955 births Italian string theorists String theorists Quantum gravity physicists Theoretical physicists People associated with CERN 21st-century Italian physicists California Institute of Technology fellows