The String Theory group at CEICO focuses on foundations of string theory, applications of 2D conformal field theory, and holography for 3D higher spin gravity.

String theory has emerged over the years as the prime candidate for the ultimate theory of nature describing all elementary particles as vibrations of a string and interactions between them as simple geometric process of string joining and splitting. Attempts at a proper off-shell description lead us to string field theory which does have intricate relations with 2D conformal field theories describing string backgrounds.

Currently our research in string field theory is led along two main directions: the study of classical solutions of open string field theory and their implications for 2D boundary CFT’s, and construction of field theories for closed supersymmetric strings. One of the outstanding goals for the future is to construct and understand the classical solutions to closed string field theory. 

A remarkable, not yet fully understood, property of nonperturbative string theory is holography which provides a description of the theory via a different theory in one spacetime dimension less. At CEICO we study the holographic duality in the context of correspondence between 3D higher spin gravity and 2D CFT with W-symmetry.