New perspectives on Ambitwistor String Theories

Research will be on string theory and quantum field theory. String theory is a tentative proposal for a quantum theory of gravity which, whilst providing a promising solution to one of the most important problems in theoretical physics, has also been a catalyst for parallel developments in many areas of pure and applied mathematics.

It was recently discovered that certain conventional field theories have scattering amplitudes (objects which determine the probability of a particular process occurring) that can be reformulated in a far simpler way using the language and structures more commonly found in string theory. Hasan's main focus will be to investigate generalisations of these `ambitwistor' string theories. He will also apply the insights gained, by treating the ambitwistor string theory
as a toy model for conventional string theory, to tackle outstanding conceptual issues in string theory and string field theory in general backgrounds. He will also work to clarify a number of outstanding issues in ambitwistor string theory itself.