Team Description

INFN SEZIONE di Bologna

Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (I.N.F.N) is a government research institution founded in the early 1950’s in the form of different Laboratories and Sezioni (divisions) widespread on the Italian territory (www.infn.it). The Sezione in Bologna was one of the first to see the light of day in within the University, as was the aim of the project for all the other divisions as well. Still today we are a synergic part of the Department of Physics and Astronomy of the Bologna University, (one of) the oldest University in Europe (founded in 1088). The research activities of I.N.F.N range from experimental particle physics (with particular emphasis on CERN and LHC) to theoretical physics, up to technological applications, divided in five national Committees. The full (University and INFN) Theory Group of Bologna belongs to the fourth of these, the Theoretical Committee, and is mainly concerned with different topics of theoretical high energy physics and cosmology. Inside this group with the INFN perspective and expertise, our team is focused on (low dimensional or gauge) quantum field and string theories and their non-perturbative aspects, with also interplay with condensed matter scholars for modern applications. In particular, integrability theory, both at classical and quantum level, is our main interest, with its different uses for gauge and string theories (dualities). In recent times, we devoted major efforts to development and understanding of (all coupling) anomalous dimensions of gauge theories in AdS/CFT dualities (with particular interest in thermodynamic Bethe Ansatz and algebraic curve descriptions). Moreover, in the last two years we brought forward a systematic study of polygonal Wilson loops (or, which is the same, gluon scattering amplitudes) in N=4 gauge theory by means of an operator product expansion, a sort of form factor series in the language of integrability. By this we were lead to the investigation of Nekrasov partition functions as well. In fact, the latter are two parameter deformations (regularisations) of N=2 Seiberg-Witten gauge theory (low energy effective action) which share some mathematical features with the aforementioned series for polygonal Wilson loops. Further information is available here: www-th.bo.infn.it/activities/pi14/.