Harmony of Scattering Amplitudes: From Collider Physics to Supergravity

by Prof. Zvi Bern (UCLA)

Tuesday 13 Mar 2012, 17:15 → 18:15 Europe/Berlin

Auditorium (MPP)

Feynman diagrams have long been the basic tool in quantum field theory giving a systematic description of the collisions of elementary particles. However, they can greatly obscure the beauty and simplicity, introducing complicated unphysical contributions that cancel only at the end of computations. We describe modern ideas allowing us to sneak past Heisenberg's uncertainty principle to reveal a remarkable simplicity. These ideas allow us to perform calculations addressing fundamental questions in quantum field theory that would have been extremely difficult, if not impossible, a few years ago. We describe state-of-the-art applications to physics at the Large Hadron Collider and to studies of the compatibility of General Relativity with quantum mechanics.

Slides mpi_harmony.pdf