Discussion Leaders

Laura COVI

Desy, Hamburg

My main research interests are in the interplay between particle physics and cosmology and in general in physics beyond the Standard Model.
I have been active in computations of the CP asymmetry in the decay of heavy RH neutrinos, that could play a role in explaining the baryonic asymmetry of our Universe, in building inflationary models and testing their predictions towards observations and also in studying the properties of an exotic supersymmetric Dark Matter candidate, the axino.
Recently I have also become involved in studying the possibility of realizing Grand Unified Theories in extra dimensions.

Dmitri FURSAEV

JINR

fursaev@thsun1.jinr.ru

My interests are related to quantum field theories in non-trivial gravitational, gauge and other classical backgrounds. I am working on both mathematical aspects and on physical applications. One of my latest mathematical works concerns spectral geometry of non-linear spectral problems (quadratic operator polynomials). These problems determine spectra of single-particle excitations in arbitrary stationary space-times (for instance, near a rotating black hole) and also appear in other physical applications.
In the last years I have been also involved in studying the problem of statistical-mechanical explanation of the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy of black holes. Together with my collaborators we suggested a microscopic model of induced gravity which enabled one to relate the entropy of a black hole to the properties of the physical vacuum in the strong gravitational field and to interpret it as an entanglement entropy. This model mimics some basic features of string theory (such as absence of the leading ultraviolet divergences) and may help to develop ones intuition about properties of black holes in quantum gravity theory.

Alexei PIVOVAROV

INR, Moscow

aapiv@ms2.inr.ac.ru

The main area of my scientific interests is standard model of elementary particle interactions, especially low energy phenomenology of hadrons and quantum chromodynamics in different aspects: sum rules for hadronic matrix elements, effective Lagrangians in various contexts (e.g. for description of nonleptonic kaon decays or near threshold production of heavy quarks), general properties of the perturbative expansions in the coupling constant and asymptotic expansions of Feynman diagrams. Recently I was involved in the analysis of the hadronic contributions to the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon that is an important parameter for the high precision test of the standard model.

Tilman PLEHN

CERN

Tilman.Plehn@cern.ch

During the last several years I have been working on new physics at the Tevatron and the LHC. For the production of supersymmetric particles I have computed the next-to-leading order SUSY--QCD corrections. In the Higgs sector I have been working on the weak boson fusion production channel for Standard Model as well as supersymmetric Higgs bosons. Most recently I have been interested in the measurement of the Higg self coupling at hadron colliders and at linear colliders. Further away from the collider mainstream I am maintaining some interest in supersymmetric dark matter and in the implications of electric dipole moment measurements on supersymmetric collider signatures.

Michael PLUEMACHER

CERN

Michael.Pluemacher@cern.ch

The main subject of my research is the cosmological matter-antimatte asymmetry. This asymmetry may be related to properties of light neutrinos in the type I see-saw model, where light neutrino masses are due to mixing with heavy Majorana neutrinos whose interactions in the early universe can generate the observed baryon asymmetry. A specific prediction of this mechanism is that light neutrinos are Majorana particles whose masses are smaller than 0.1 eV. Further, I have worked on the construction of string derived models and their low energy phenomenology, and on the problem of ultra-high energy cosmic rays beyond the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin cutoff.

Oleg TERYAEV

JINR

teryaev@thsun1.jinr.ru

The main subject is Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) and its phenomenological applications. The latter include primarily spin effects and various non-perturbative ingredients (distributions and correlators). In particular, various sources of time reversal odd spin asymmetries in QCD, probing its very fine details, like higher twists, were investigated. The unintegrated gluon distributions were considered in connection with the QCD description of heavy quarks and quarkonia production and Pomeron/Odderton interference. The relations of QCD matrix elements (in particular Generalized Parton Distributions, relevant for hard exclusive processes) to statistical physics, gravity and Radon Tomography are also investigated.