ERC Starting Grant Project (ERC-2017-STG): CFT-MAP - Charting the space of Conformal Field Theories: a combined nuMerical and Analytical aPproach

Born in 1983, Alessandro Vichi graduated with a degree in Physics from the University of Pisa, followed by a master's from the Scuola Normale Superiore, and a doctorate from the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne. He then worked as a researcher at Berkeley and CERN, before taking up the position as associate professor here at the Department of Physics on 1 November 2020, bringing with him a prestigious ERC Starting Grant worth 1.5 million euros thanks also to the direct call for ERC grant winners. “CFT-MAP - Charting the space of Conformal Field Theories: a combined nuMerical and Analytical aPproach” is the name of the ERC project on which Prof. Vichi will work with his research group, with the aim of developing new techniques for the study and understanding of quantum systems of unchanged scale, and using these techniques to calculate important properties.

“Most physical systems can exist in various forms," explains prof. Vichi. "Whilst we are all familiar with the various phases of water (solid-liquid-gaseous), even such a common material can display bizarre behaviour in special circumstances: for particular values of temperature and pressure, the liquid and gaseous state coexist, and the microscopic constituents of the system interact at all distances. This phenomenon, called critical opalescence, is an example of a system that possesses a very special symmetry, called scale invariance: the system behaves similarly regardless of the distance it is observed from. In the language of quantum mechanics, systems of this type are described by a conformal field theory. Conformal field theories consistently appear in the description of phase transitions in condensed matter and in statistical physics, but they also play a fundamental role in our modern understanding of high-energy physics. Even more noteworthy, conformal theories offer a starting point for the study and understanding of quantum gravity, through the concept of holography, according to which space-time is not a fundamental quantity but emerges from quantum mechanics and symmetries. An example of the objectives achieved by my research group is that of making the most precise determination in the world of some of the properties of superfluid Helium in the transition between liquid and super-fluid state, such as its heat capacity or conductivity."