Holography, CFTs and Black Holes

Two of the most important outstanding problems in fundamental physics are describing the dynamics of strongly interacting quantum field theories (QFTs) and understanding the mysteries of black hole physics and quantum gravity. These two puzzles are deeply connected through the  holographic correspondence, which relates the physics of quantum gravity to that of QFT in one less dimension. Studying this duality in detail enhances our understanding of strongly coupled QFTs, like QCD, and black holes, similar to the ones in our galaxy. The main objective of this  proposal is to make progress towards solving these problems by studying holography using tools arising from string theory. I plan to utilize holography, and a variety of other nonperturbative methods, to study the vast landscape of new conformal field theories and black hole solutions in string theory and establish novel dualities between them. I will use string theory to construct novel explicit examples of holography and will seek a systematic description of the space of QFTs which admit gravitational duals. In addition, I will apply conformal bootstrap methods to find constraints on the space of conformal field theories in two and higher dimensions. This work will bring us closer to understanding the fundamental properties of QFT and gravitational physics and will have broad implications for particle and condensed matter physics, string cosmology and some areas of mathematics.