The MIT Center for Theoretical Physics (CTP) is the hub of theoretical nuclear physics, particle physics, and quantum information research at MIT. It is a subdivision of MIT Laboratory for Nuclear Science and Department of Physics.

Research

CTP activities range from string theory and cosmology at the highest energies down through unification and beyond-the-standard-model physics, through the standard model, to QCD, hadrons, quark matter, and nuclei at the low energy scale. Members of the CTP are also currently working on quantum computation and on energy policy. The breadth and depth of research in nuclear, particle, string, and gravitational physics at the CTP makes it a unique environment for researchers in these fields.

Members

In addition to the 15 MIT faculty members working in the CTP, at any one time there are roughly a dozen postdoctoral fellows, and as many, or more, long-term visitors working at the postdoctoral or faculty level. The CTP supports 25-35 MIT graduate students, who work with the faculty and postdocs on problems across the energy spectrum. Current research areas in the center include

particle physics Particle physics or high energy physics is the study of fundamental particles and forces that constitute matter and radiation. The fundamental particles in the universe are classified in the Standard Model as fermions (matter particles) and ...

cosmology Cosmology () is a branch of physics and metaphysics dealing with the nature of the universe. The term ''cosmology'' was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blount's ''Glossographia'', and in 1731 taken up in Latin by German philosophe ...

, string theory,

phenomenology Phenomenology may refer to: Art * Phenomenology (architecture), based on the experience of building materials and their sensory properties Philosophy * Phenomenology (philosophy), a branch of philosophy which studies subjective experiences and a ...

in and beyond the

standard model The Standard Model of particle physics is the theory describing three of the four known fundamental forces ( electromagnetic, weak and strong interactions - excluding gravity) in the universe and classifying all known elementary particles. I ...

quantum field theory In theoretical physics, quantum field theory (QFT) is a theoretical framework that combines classical field theory, special relativity, and quantum mechanics. QFT is used in particle physics to construct physical models of subatomic particles a ...

lattice QCD Lattice QCD is a well-established non-perturbative approach to solving the quantum chromodynamics (QCD) theory of quarks and gluons. It is a lattice gauge theory formulated on a grid or lattice of points in space and time. When the size of the ...

condensed matter physics Condensed matter physics is the field of physics that deals with the macroscopic and microscopic physical properties of matter, especially the solid and liquid phases which arise from electromagnetic forces between atoms. More generally, the s ...

quantum computing Quantum computing is a type of computation whose operations can harness the phenomena of quantum mechanics, such as superposition, interference, and entanglement. Devices that perform quantum computations are known as quantum computers. Thou ...

, and

energy research Energy development is the field of activities focused on obtaining sources of energy from natural resources. These activities include production of renewable, nuclear, and fossil fuel derived sources of energy, and for the recovery and reuse ...

. Notable current faculty include Nobel Laureate

Frank Wilczek Frank Anthony Wilczek (; born May 15, 1951) is an American theoretical physicist, mathematician and Nobel laureate. He is currently the Herman Feshbach Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Founding Direct ...

, Jeffrey Goldstone, inflationary cosmologist

Alan Guth Alan Harvey Guth (; born February 27, 1947) is an American theoretical physicist and cosmologist. Guth has researched elementary particle theory (and how particle theory is applicable to the early universe). He is Victor Weisskopf Professo ...

, cosmologist

Max Tegmark Max Erik Tegmark (born 5 May 1967) is a Swedish-American physicist, cosmologist and machine learning researcher. He is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the president of the Future of Life Institute. He is also a scie ...

, and quantum information scientist

Peter Shor Peter Williston Shor (born August 14, 1959) is an American professor of applied mathematics at MIT. He is known for his work on quantum computation, in particular for devising Shor's algorithm, a quantum algorithm for factoring exponentially ...

. Past CTP faculty members include US

Secretary of Energy The United States secretary of energy is the head of the United States Department of Energy, a member of the Cabinet of the United States, and fifteenth in the presidential line of succession. The position was created on October 1, 1977, when Pr ...

Ernest Moniz Ernest Jeffrey Moniz, GCIH (; born December 22, 1944) is an American nuclear physicist and former government official. From May 2013 to January 2017, he served as the 13th United States secretary of Energy in the Obama Administration. Prior to ...

, Breakthrough Prize winner Daniel Freedman, particle theorist and author Lisa Randall, Abel Prize winner

Isadore Singer Isadore Manuel Singer (May 3, 1924 – February 11, 2021) was an American mathematician. He was an Emeritus Institute Professor in the Department of Mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Professor Emeritus of Mathemat ...

, Nobel Laureate

Steven Weinberg Steven Weinberg (; May 3, 1933 – July 23, 2021) was an American theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate in physics for his contributions with Abdus Salam and Sheldon Glashow to the unification of the weak force and electromagnetic inter ...

, and many others.

Directors

Herman Feshbach Herman Feshbach (February 2, 1917, in New York City – 22 December 2000, in Cambridge, Massachusetts) was an American physicist. He was an Institute Professor Emeritus of physics at MIT. Feshbach is best known for Feshbach resonance and for w ...

, 1967–73 * Francis Low, 1973–76 * Arthur Kerman, 1976–83 * Jeffrey Goldstone, 1983–89 * John Negele, 1989–98 * Robert Jaffe, 1998–2004 * Eddie Farhi, 2004–16 * Washington Taylor IV, 2016–19 * Iain Stewart, 2019–present

Faculty

Current and former faculty members in the CTP include: *

Michel Baranger Michel Jacques Louis Baranger (31 July 1927, Le Mans – 1 October 2014, Tucson, Arizona) was a Franco-American theoretical physicist. Baranger matriculated in 1945 at the École normale supérieure, Paris, graduating there in 1949. In 1951 he re ...

, student of Hans Bethe, made contributions to plasma spectroscopy, nuclear collective motion, and quantum chaos *

Netta Engelhardt Netta Engelhardt is an Israeli-American theoretical physicist known for her work resolving the black hole information paradox, concerning the apparent loss of physical information from objects that enter black holes and become transformed into ...

, 2021 New Horizons in Physics Prize recipient for work on black holes * Edward Farhi, particle-physicist turned quantum information theorist *

, founding director of the CTP * Daniel Freedman, Breakthrough Prize winner * Sergio Fubini, pioneer of string theory *

Roscoe Giles Roscoe C. Giles, III is an American physicist and computer engineer, the deputy director of Boston University's Center for Computational Science. He is also a professor of computer and electrical engineering at Boston University College of Engin ...

, computer engineer and theoretical physicist; first African-American to earn a theoretical physics Ph.D. from

Stanford Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

* Jeffrey Goldstone, namesake of

Goldstone boson In particle and condensed matter physics, Goldstone bosons or Nambu–Goldstone bosons (NGBs) are bosons that appear necessarily in models exhibiting spontaneous breakdown of continuous symmetries. They were discovered by Yoichiro Nambu in part ...

s *

, discoverer of inflation *

Daniel Harlow Daniel Harlow is the Jerrold R. Zacharias Career Development Associate Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Biography Harlow was born in Cincinnati and grew up in Boston and Chicago. He received his B.A. from Columb ...

, 2019 New Horizons in Physics Prize recipient for contributions to "quantum information, quantum field theory, and gravity" * Aram Harrow, quantum information scientist * Kerson Huang, known for contributions to statistical physics and quantum field theory alongside C. N. Yang,

T. D. Lee Tsung-Dao Lee (; born November 24, 1926) is a Chinese-American physicist, known for his work on parity violation, the Lee–Yang theorem, particle physics, relativistic heavy ion (RHIC) physics, nontopological solitons, and soliton stars ...

, and

* Roman Jackiw, of the Jackiw-Teitelboim model of 2d gravity * Robert Jaffe, CTP director, known for MIT Bag Model *

Xiangdong Ji Xiangdong Ji (; born 1962) is a Chinese theoretical nuclear and elementary particle physicist. Xiangdong Ji received his bachelor's degree from Tongji University in 1982 and his PhD from Drexel University in 1987. He was a postdoctoral rese ...

, recipient of Herman Feshbach Prize in nuclear physics * Kenneth Johnson, famous for fundamental contributions to quantum field theory and quark substructure * David Kaiser, cosmologist and historian of science * Francis Low, CTP director, Manhattan project alumnus and co-founder of

Union of Concerned Scientists The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) is a nonprofit science advocacy organization based in the United States. The UCS membership includes many private citizens in addition to professional scientists. Anne Kapuscinski, Professor of Environmenta ...

* Samir Mathur, string theorist and architect of "

fuzzball Fuzzball may refer to: * Fuzzball (sport), a variation of baseball similar to stickball * Fuzzball (string theory), an alternative quantum description of black holes * Fuzzball router, the first modern routers on the Internet * ''Fuzzball'', a car ...

" program for understanding black hole microstates *

, former U.S. Secretary of Energy * John Negele, CTP director, nuclear physicist * Lisa Randall, particle physicist, cosmologist, and popular physics author; first female professor in the CTP *

, quantum information scientist known for

Shor's algorithm Shor's algorithm is a quantum computer algorithm for finding the prime factors of an integer. It was developed in 1994 by the American mathematician Peter Shor. On a quantum computer, to factor an integer N , Shor's algorithm runs in polynomial ...

, winner of the

Abel Prize The Abel Prize ( ; no, Abelprisen ) is awarded annually by the King of Norway to one or more outstanding mathematicians. It is named after the Norwegian mathematician Niels Henrik Abel (1802–1829) and directly modeled after the Nobel Pri ...

Tracy Slatyer Tracy Robyn Slatyer is a professor of particle physics with a concentration in theoretical astrophysics with tenure at MIT. She was a 2014 recipient of the Rossi Prize for gamma ray detection of Fermi bubbles, which are unexpected large stru ...

, known for Fermi bubbles; second tenured female professor in the CTP *

, notable cosmologist and popular physics author *

Jesse Thaler Jesse Thaler is an American particle physicist who is a professor at the MIT Department of Physics. He was named director of the NSF Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Fundamental Interactions (IAIFI) upon its creation in August 2020. Ed ...

, Director of NSF AI Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Fundamental Interactions *

Charles Thorn Charles Thorn (born 14 August 1946) is a Professor of Physics at University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida. He played an important role in the development of dual models and string theory. Among his contributions is the proof of the non-existe ...

, noted string theorist *

Gabriele Veneziano Gabriele Veneziano (; ; born 7 September 1942) is an Italian theoretical physicist widely considered the father of string theory. He has conducted most of his scientific activities at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, and held the Chair of Elementar ...

, pioneer of string theory * Felix Villars, of Pauli-Villars regularization method in quantum field theory *

, Nobel Laureate * Victor Weisskopf, former MIT physics department chair *

, Nobel Laureate known for asymptotic freedom and axions * James Young, notable nuclear physicist; founding member of National Society of Black Physicists; first tenured black professor in the MIT Physics Department *

Barton Zwiebach Barton Zwiebach (born ''Barton Zwiebach Cantor'', October 4, 1954) is a Peruvian string theorist and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Work Zwiebach's undergraduate work was in Electrical Engineering at the Universidad Nac ...

, Peruvian string theorist, made central contributions to string field theory

References

External links

MIT CTP website
* List of MIT Center for Theoretical Physics faculty * List of MIT Center for Theoretical Physics alumni {{authority control Center for Theoretical Physics Theoretical physics institutes