The Abdus Salam Centre for Theoretical Physics is the first of a new class of Centre of Excellence in Fundamental Science at Imperial, created to drive basic, discovery-driven science.

  • What is the meaning of space and time in the quantum world we live in?
  • What is the origin of our universe and of everything in it?
  • How can we build new explanations of reality when our current descriptions fail?
  • What happens at the centre of a black hole?

Answering these questions is central to humanity’s innate desire to understand the laws of Nature at their most fundamental level.

Research Questions

Cosmic Origin & Fate of the Universe

How did the Universe begin? What are the origins of cosmic structure? Can the Universe tunnel to a new Vacuum? What are the imprints of symmetry breaking? What is the origin of Cosmic acceleration?

String theory, M-Theory & Holography

What is the Quantum Nature of Space, Time & Black Holes? What does the Black Hole Entropy represent? How can non-perturbative effects be computed in quantum gravity? What is the vacuum structure of supersymmetric quantum field theories?

Gravity as a Quantum Field Theory

What is Gravity from a quantum bottom-up approach? What do we know about the Graviton? How do we connect its low-energy description with its high-energy completion?

S-matrix Bootstrap & Strong Coupling

What are the fundamental laws of the Universe and of QFT? Can We Bootstrap Them? What can we learn from Strong Coupling? Are there hidden rules guiding particle interactions? What are the hidden properties of the gravitational amplitude?

Quantum Foundations

Does quantum mechanics apply to everything? Including spacetime? How do fundamentally quantum and complex systems end up behaving classically and coherently?

Tests of Fundamental Physics

Listening to the Universe with Gravitational Waves and other Observations. Bridging Theory and Experiments by unveiling new tests of Fundamental Physics, from the lab to outer space onto the edges of our Universe.

Research papers

Preprints

View a partial list of recent preprints on arxiv.org co-authored by members of the Abdus Salam Centre.

View preprints

Publications

Search the publications archive for members of the Abdus Salam Centre.

View publications