Davide Silvano Achille Gaiotto (born 11 March 1977) is an Italian mathematical physicist who deals with quantum field theories and string theory. He received the

Gribov Medal The Gribov Medal is a prize awarded every two years since 2001 by the European Physical Society for work in theoretical elementary particle physics or quantum field theory. It is awarded to younger physicists (age under 35) and is named after Vl ...

in 2011 and the

New Horizons in Physics Prize The Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics is one of the Breakthrough Prizes, awarded by the Breakthrough Prize Board. Initially named Fundamental Physics Prize, it was founded in July 2012 by Russia-born Israeli entrepreneur, venture cap ...

in 2013.

Biography

Gaiotto won 1996 the silver medal as Italian participants in the

International Mathematical Olympiad The International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) is a mathematical olympiad for pre-university students, and is the oldest of the International Science Olympiads. The first IMO was held in Romania in 1959. It has since been held annually, except i ...

and 1995 gold medal at the

International Physics Olympiad The International Physics Olympiad (IPhO) is an annual physics competition for high school students. It is one of the International Science Olympiads. The first IPhO was held in Warsaw, Poland in 1967. Each national delegation is made up of at ...

in Canberra. He was an undergraduate student at

Scuola Normale Superiore The Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa (commonly known in Italy as "la Normale") is a public university in Pisa and Florence, Tuscany, Italy, currently attended by about 600 undergraduate and postgraduate (PhD) students. It was founded in 1810 wi ...

in Pisa from 1996 to 2000. From 2004 to 2007 he was a post-doctoral researcher at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

and then to 2011 the

Institute for Advanced Study The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), located in Princeton, New Jersey, in the United States, is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent schola ...

. Since 2011 he has been working at the

Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (PI, Perimeter, PITP) is an independent research centre in foundational theoretical physics located in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. It was founded in 1999. The institute's founding and major benefactor i ...

in Waterloo, Ontario. He introduced new techniques in the study and design of four-dimensional (N = 2) supersymmetric

conformal field theories A conformal field theory (CFT) is a quantum field theory that is invariant under conformal transformations. In two dimensions, there is an infinite-dimensional algebra of local conformal transformations, and conformal field theories can sometime ...

. He constructed from M5-branes, which are wound around Riemann surfaces with punctures. This led to new insights into the dynamics of four-dimensional (supersymmetric) gauge theories. With

Juan Maldacena Juan Martín Maldacena (born September 10, 1968) is an Argentine theoretical physicist and the Carl P. Feinberg Professor in the School of Natural Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. He has made significant contributions to t ...

he studied these gauge theories using the

AdS/CFT correspondence In theoretical physics, the anti-de Sitter/conformal field theory correspondence, sometimes called Maldacena duality or gauge/gravity duality, is a conjectured relationship between two kinds of physical theories. On one side are anti-de Sitter s ...

. In 2010 he had with Yuji Tachikawa and Luis Alday, developed the AGT correspondence (named after the authors), a duality in the

6D (2,0) superconformal field theory In theoretical physics, the six-dimensional (2,0)-superconformal field theory is a quantum field theory whose existence is predicted by arguments in string theory. It is still poorly understood because there is no known description of the theory ...

with compactification on a surface to a conformal field theory on the surface (

Liouville field theory In physics, Liouville field theory (or simply Liouville theory) is a two-dimensional conformal field theory whose classical equation of motion is a generalization of Liouville's equation. Liouville theory is defined for all complex values of the ...

References

External links

Davide Gaiotto's Perimeter Institute Page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gaiotto, Davide 1977 births Living people 21st-century Italian physicists Theoretical physicists Princeton University alumni International Mathematical Olympiad participants Italian expatriates in Canada