Research Projects

For a theoretical physicist, symmetries are the most powerful tools of the trade lying around. The more symmetry a system has, the simpler it is to solve. Moreover, symmetries make it intuitively easier to extract the physics out of a complicated physical situation. Even so, if a particular class of symmetry envelopes multiple different physical situations, with perhaps different degree of complications, solving the easier of them can help us in solving the harder ones. Thus a theoretical physicist’s life is often a long search for missed, hidden or emergent symmetries that makes lives easier. Ultra-relativistic (or Carrollian) symmetries are one of these new weapons in the theorists arsenal, and one of the most promising ones. Fathoming physical theories in this regime has been difficult, due to our usual intuitions failing, but all in all extremely rewarding. Excellent groups all over the world, Europe, the Americas and in Asia have been putting in much amount of resources in exploring such a regime. Global Carroll symmetries have turned out to be extremely powerful from gravitational waves, to fluid dynamics and further to condensed matter systems, even when one excludes its (very important) role in quantum gravity. It is the need of the hour to understand the interdependencies and the unifying perspectives Carroll symmetries offer over this vast landscape. We plan to answer some extremely significant questions about ultra-relativistic symmetries that arise, quite fortuitously, in distinctive areas of physical theories. It is absolutely amazing to realize same natural symmetries dictate the degrees of freedom on black hole horizons, fluid dynamics in shallow water and in a quantum material. The binding force between all of these phenomena is the Carroll symmetry, more precisely, emergence of a supertranslation symmetry. This makes quantum correlations ultra-local as particles are decoupled from each other. Our goal is to find a synergistic description of such symmetries as they appear in very different physical systems. Since we are at the very beginning of understanding these symmetries, this is the right time to use our resources to reach an internationally competitive position in these sub-areas. In this proposal, which combines expertise between theoretical high-energy physics, condensed-matter theory, quantum information theory and mathematical physics, we will be asking pertinent questions about the larger structures that make these theories so useful. Once we understand the generic structure, pushing with case-by-case situations will be simpler. The group members involved will be able to talk to physicists across the spectrum, learn new analytical and numerical techniques and use them effectively in novel situations. In this day and age, where interdisciplinary is the key word in research, this project offers a perfect stage to synthesize a harmonious relation between classically disjoint physics arenas.