Guido Festuccia receives ERC Starting Grant

Guido Festuccia, who joined the NBIA as an Assistant Professor in  2013, has been awarded a prestigious Starting Grant from the European  Research Council.

Guido's research aims at shedding light on the dynamics of strongly  coupled quantum systems. These are ubiquitous in Nature: they are, for  instance, central to many phenomenons in condensed matter (e.g.  non-Fermi liquids) and underpin also some of our understanding of  nuclear forces. They are however notoriously difficult to study  analytically. The research will focus in particular on supersymmetric  field theories. Such systems are accessible to analytical studies even  at strong coupling while displaying phenomena, like confinement, that  occur in Nature. In addition, forthcoming experiments at the LHC have  the potential to show if supersymmetry is realized at a more fundamental  level in Nature. Insights on the fascinating dynamics of supersymmetric  field theories at strong coupling will be obtained by analyzing their  dependence on the geometry of space.