Olle Engkvists Stiftelse 2022

Integrating the Conformal Bootstrap

2022 Swedish Foundations’ Starting Grant awarded to: Agnese Bissi, Division of Theoretical Physics
Funded by: Olle Engkvists Stiftelse
Grant: Up to 15 500 000 SEK over 5-year period
Project title: Integrating the Conformal Bootstrap

The Uppsala physicist exploring the riddle of quantum gravity

As a theoretical physicist, Agnese Bissi's foremost tools are a pen, paper and a laptop for modelling; to perform experiments would require technology so advanced it is yet to exist.

Bissi's project delves into the very fundamental of physics governing our world. Here, Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity is still the most accurate theory of gravity — elegantly relating space-time geometry to the momentum of the matter/energy in it. However, the theory’s validity is purely classical and fails in accounting for quantum effects, which is what Bissi is looking to explore further by combining the techniques of the so called “conformal bootstrap” – i.e., analytical and numerical approaches – and integrability (models which can be mathematically solved given their large number of conserved quantities and thereby high degree of symmetry).

“Receiving this grant is very important for me”, Bissi shares, “since it will allow me to pursue a very ambitious working idea that I have been elaborating and framing in recent years. In addition, it will spark new technology, results and ideas to enable me to compete for an ERC Consolidator grant in the near future.”

Biography

Agnese Bissi arrived to Uppsala as a Wallenberg Academy Fellow in 2017. Bissi obtained her PhD degree from the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen and has previously held post-doctoral positions at the University of Oxford and at Harvard University.

Learn more about Agnese Bissi's research

Profile page

List of publications (Google Scholar)