Hirosi Ooguri

Hirosi Ooguri

Fred Kavli Professor of Theoretical Physics

日本語版はこちら。

Biographical Sketch:

After receiving B.A. in 1984 and M.S. in 1986 from Kyoto University, Ooguri became an Assistant Professor with tenure at the University of Tokyo in 1986. He was a research associate at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton from 1988 to 1989. He received Sc.D. from the University of Tokyo in 1989.

Subsequently, Ooguri held faculty appointments at the University of Chicago and at the Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Kyoto University.

In 1994, Ooguri became a Professor at the University of California at Berkeley and was appointed a Faculty Senior Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 1996. (An article about Ooguri in Berkeleyan, the campus newspaper.)

Since 2000, Ooguri has been at Caltech, where he is now Fred Kavli Professor of Theoretical Physics.

In 2007, Ooguri also became a principal investigator of the newly established Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe at the University of Tokyo.

Ooguri, together with Andrew Strominger and Cumrun Vafa, received the inaugural Leonard Eisenbud Prize for Mathematics and Physics from the American Mathematical Society in 2008, for the work relating the counting of black hole microstates to the Gromov-Witten invariants. (For a more colloquial description of the work, see the press release from Caltech.)

Ooguri has been chosen to receive a Humboldt Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. In 2008, he gave the Takagi Lectures, the only named lecture series of the Mathematical Society of Japan.

Ooguri has held visiting appointments at Harvard University and at the University of Paris VI, and was a 21st Century Center of Excellence Visiting Professor at the University of Tokyo in 2007.

Ooguri is a member of the Aspen Center for Physics and is on the advisory board of the International Solvay Institute in Brussels and on the scientific advisory board of the Banff International Science Station. Previously, he was a member of the Advisory Board of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara.

Ooguri is an editor of Physical Review D and is a supervisory editor of Nuclear Physics B.

Ooguri is a member of Caltech Particle Theory Group, and is also affiliated to Moore Center for Theoretical Cosmology and Physics at Caltech.

Research Interests:

In the past few hundred years, scientists have searched for fundamental laws of nature by exploring phenomena at shorter and shorter distances. By the late 19^th century, it was established that all matter is made of atoms. Scientists then tried to divide atoms into pieces and discovered that they are made up of electrons and nuclei. Furthermore it was found that nuclei can be divided into protons and neutrons. We now know that protons and neutrons are made up of quarks.

It is natural to ask whether this progression continues indefinitely. Surprisingly, there are reasons to think that the hierarchical structure of nature will terminate at 10^-35meter, the so-called Planck length. Let us perform a thought-experiment to explain why this might be the case. Physicists build particle colliders to probe short distances. The more energy we use to collide particles, the shorter distances we can explore. This has been the case so far. One may then ask: can we build a collider with energy so high that it can probe distances shorter than the Planck length? The answer is no. When we collide particles with such high energy, a black hole will form and its event horizon will conceal the entire interaction area. Stated in another way, the measurement at this energy would perturb the geometry so much that the fabric of space and time would be torn apart. This would prevent physicists from ever seeing what is happening at distances shorter than the Planck length. This is a new kind of uncertainty principle. The Planck length is truly fundamental since it is the distance where the hierarchical structure of nature will terminate.

'tHooft1.gif

Space and time do not exist beyond the Planck scale, and they should emerge from a more fundamental structure. Superstring theory is a leading candidate for a mathematical framework to describe physics at the Planck scale since it contains all the ingredients necessary to unify general relativity and quantum mechanics and to deduce the Standard Model of Particle Physics. It has helped us solve various mysteries of quantum gravity such as the information paradox of black holes posed by Stephen Hawking. It provides powerful tools study many difficult problems in theoretical physics – often involving strongly interacting systems – such as QCD (theory of quark interactions), quantum liquid and quantum phase transitions. It has also inspired many important developments in mathematics.

Ooguri is developing theoretical tools to apply superstring theory to questions relevant to high energy physics, astrophysics, and cosmology.

'tHooft2.gif

For more details, see One-Page CV or Full Curriculum Vitae (updated in 2008).

Research:

My list of publication from SLAC Spires

(Citation Summary)

Seminars in our group:

String Theory Seminar

Journal Club

Online Lectures:

Strings Conferences:

Strings 93	(Berkeley, California)	“Quantization of the Mirror Symmetry”
Strings Conference was not held in 1994.
Strings 95	(Los Angeles, California)	“Loop Amplitudes of N=2 String”
Strings 96	(Santa Barbara, California)	“D-branes on Calabi-Yau Spaces and Their Mirrors”
Strings 97	(Amsterdam, Netherlands)	“Strong Coupling Dynamics of Four-Dimensional N=1 Gauge Theories from M Theory Fivebrane”
Strings 98	(Santa barbara, California)	I was an organizer of this conference.
Strings 99	(Potsdam, Germany)	“Wilson Loops in Large N Theories”
Strings 2000	(Ann Arbor, Michigan)	“Strings in AdS3 and the SL(2,R) WZW Model”
Strings 2001	(Mumbai, India)	“How Non-commutative Gauge Theories Couple to Gravity”
Strings 2002	(Cambridge, UK)	“Worldsheet Derivation of a Large N Duality”
Strings 2003	(Kyoto, Japan)	*I was an organizer of this conference.*
Strings 2004	(Paris, France)	“Concluding Remarks”
Strings 2005	(Toronto, Canada)	“Topological String Theory”
Strings 2006	(Beijing, China)	“Landscape of Supersymmetry Breaking Vacua in Geometrically Realized Gauge Theories ”
Strings 2007	(Madrid, Spain)	“On the Ubiquity of Meta-Stable Vacua”
Strings 2008	(CERN, Switzerland)	“Summary Talk” (video)

Supergravity Conference:

o 30 Years of Supergravity, Paris, France

“Summary and Perspectives” (October 2007)

At Caltech:

o String Theory at the Millennium	“Long Strings in AdS3, Short Strings in CY3,” (January, 2000)
o JHS/60 (in honor of John Schwarz’s 60th Birthday)	“Strings in AdS3 and the SL(2,R) WZW Model,” (November, 2001)

At Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, Santa Barbara:

o Director’s blackboard talk	“Supersymmetry and Duality, Before 1995,” (March, 1998)
o Geometry and Physics mini-program	“The AdS/CFT Correspondence,” (August, 1999)
o DavidFest	“Strings in AdS3,” (March, 2001)
o M-Theory program	“Strings in AdS3 and the SL(2,R) WZW Model," (April, 2001)
o M-Theory program	“Seiberg-Witten Transforms of Non-commutative Solitons,” (June, 2001)
o Theory semina	“Topological Strings and Black Holes,” (April, 2005)
o Director’s blackboard talk	“Probing Geometry by Strings,” (September, 2005)

In Canada:

o PITP Showcase Conference, “Baby Universes in Quantum Gravity” (May, 2005)

Popular Talks:

o Bay Area Wonderfest 2000 at UC Berkeley, “Is the Universe 11-Dimensional?,” (March, 2000)

o High school teachers’ educational forum at KITP, Santa Barbara, “What String Theory has taught us about Quantum Gravity and Unification of Forces,” (May, 2001)

o Caltech Almuni Day Seminar, “Black Holes and the Fate of Determinism,” (May, 2008)

Popular Science Articles written for Japanese Magazines:

o “Toward Unification of General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics,” Daigaku eno Suugaku (1992) 68; a mathematics magazine for high school students.

o “Perspective from Superstring Theory,” Suugaku Seminar, Special Edition on Mathematical Physics, 486 (2002) 10; a Japanese equivalent of Mathematical Intelligencer.

o “Topological String Theory and Its Applications,” Butsuri (to appear); the magazine of Japanese Physical Society.

Teaching:

I have taught various undergraduate and graduate courses in physics.

In 1999, I was voted as one of the best instructors by graduating seniors of UC Berkeley.

The following is a list of graduate students who have received Ph.D.’s under my supervision:

UC Berkeley

o Zheng Yin

o Harlan Robins

o Jonathan Tannenhauser

Caltech:

o Peter Lee