Howard Georgi

Howard Georgi

Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics; Harvard College Professor; Co-Director of Undergraduate Studies
Howard Georgie

Howard Georgi has ongoing research programs in several areas of theoretical particle physics. The common elements in these areas are symmetries and quantum field theory. Georgi pioneered the subject of Grand Unified Theories, both without (with Sheldon Glashow) and with supersymmetry (with Savas Dimopoulos), invented the modern QCD quark model (with Glashow and Alvaro De Rujula), the chiral quark model (with former student Aneesh Manohar), and the Heavy Quark Effective Theory.

One of the most important issues in particle physics today is the interpretation of the discoveries at the LHC. Is the Higgs-like particle that has been seen simply a fundamental scalar, or does it have more structure or as-yet unseen relatives? Georgi (who with former student David Kaplan showed how one could build composite Higgs bosons) studies the possibility of strong coupling models for the Higgs. Georgi has explored the properties of theories in which a conformal-invariant sector of the world is weakly coupled to the standard model. In the conformal invariant sector, energy and momentum is not bundled into particles, so Georgi dubbed this strange situation "unparticle physics" (DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.101.131603). He is currently studying a class of models in 1+1 dimensions in which he can do explicit calculations to explore the phenomenon.

Georgi also studies QCD, the formalism of effective field theories, the strong CP problem, and the flavor puzzle, and explores new ways of understanding the complicated events that experimenters see in high-energy collisions.

In addition, he is interested in increasing the participation of women and minorities in science and has been on a number of local and national committees that attempt to address this important issue.

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Faculty Assistant: Morgan Holly

Contact Information

Jefferson Lab 456
17 Oxford Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
p: (617) 496-8293