Profile

I am a theoretical particle physicist in limbo somewhere between Oviedo University in Asturias, Spain and SUNY Stony Brook, Long Island, New York.  I work largely on supergravity theories, solutions of which tell us something about string theory, a candidate for a quantum theory of gravity, as well as giving us valuable insights into exotic regimes of various field theories.

One of the goals of our field is to answer the question “why are we here?”

Theoretical particle physicists would like to say as much as possible about our universe as simply as possible. We exist merely because the interactions between the fundamental forces are finely balanced. If the strong nuclear force, the one holding the nucleus together had a longer range, atoms (and all of chemistry, nanoscience, etc. could not exist). Alternatively, if gravity was stronger, the universe would disappear in a big black hole.

While we have acceptable quantum theories for most of the forces, gravity is the odd one out. Without a quantum description for gravity, we will never fully understand black holes, particularly the supermassive ones that power all galaxies, including the Milky Way, or understand the origin of our universe and understand why we are here.

Supersymmetry, a mathematical symmetry between force particles and matter particles, presents a natural way to treat gravity and the other forces on an equal footing. This motivates the study of supergravity (supersymmetry + gravity) theories, though to date, supersymmetry is essentially maths and may not be a physical reality. There is a chance we will see some hint of supersymmetry at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, but if it exists, it is well hidden and has not been found in preliminary results.

Every morning over coffee, I check the Irish Times (for mild diversion) and scan the new papers on the arXiv (an online preprints archive) just to get a flavour of what other people are working on.

When I get to the office, I usually spend time calculating to derive new results for papers I am writing. Sometimes I work alone, but usually in collaboration with other people. Currently I am collaborating with a Thai scientist, a Japanese scientist and an Iranian, none of which I have met personally!

Given the international nature, we discuss our projects largely over Skype. Following discussion, we independently try to derive results, largely based on rigorous mathematics, then produce a Latex file (a way to display mathematics on computers), which we send to our collaborators to check. This process repeats itself until we write the all important paper presenting our results to the scientific community.

Alternatively, if I am working with someone in my own institute, we can spend time with chalk and blackboard pouring over the details of some equations. With coffee, this can go on for hours, it is a lot of fun and can lead to the odd heated argument (more fun!).

Big Bang theory captured this process accurately in the scene where Sheldon and Raj “buckle down and work”. This is not far from reality, just minus the Rocky soundtrack.

After work, I like to spend time running (destressing) or at home with my family.