Mathematics Department
Theoretical Physics Group
Photograph

Dr A Recknagel

Department of Mathematics
King's College London
Strand, London WC2R 2LS
United Kingdom

Room 410, Strand Building
Tel: +44-(0)-20-7848 2244 (direct)
Tel: +44-(0)-20-7848 2217 (general office)
Fax: +44-(0)-20-7848 2017
E-mail: andreas.recknagel.AT.kcl.ac.uk

Member of the Theoretical Physics Group

Research Interests

My research is mainly concerned with quantum field theory in two dimensions, in particular with conformal field theories and their applications to string theory and branes. I am also interested in the relation of non-commutative geometry to quantum field theory.

A conformally invariant quantum field theory is a physical system with an extremely large (infinite-dimensional) symmetry group, which makes it possible to compute many quantities of interest exactly, and to analyse such a field theory with tools from various branches of mathematics. Conformal field theories on surfaces with boundaries seem to have a particularly rich mathematical structure; at the same time, they have found rather direct applications in condensed matter physics (like the Kondo effect in three dimensions), and they provide the tools for a quantitative description of D-branes (non-perturbative string theory objects discovered only recently). One can use abstract methods from conformal field theory on surfaces with boundaries to construct D-branes for a large class of string models and to determine their properties. It turns out that often these branes cannot be viewed as classical objects ("membranes" in space-time), but rather behave as if their world-volume were a non-commutative (a quantised) space.

Some papers

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Department of Mathematics - King's College London