Quantum field theory marries the ideas of other quantum theories to depict all particles as “excitations” that arise in underlying fields. The British physicist Paul Dirac started the ball rolling in ...

Abstract: Theoretical physicist John McGreevy (UCSD) will introduce the Entanglement Bootstrap, a program to extract and understand the universal information characterizing a phase of matter starting ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. The Universe is out there, waiting for you to discover it. If you wanted to answer the question of what's truly fundamental in ...

Mean-field theory and semiclassical methods constitute vital frameworks in contemporary quantum mechanics. By replacing the intricate web of particle interactions with an average or “mean” field, mean ...

Mathematicians have struggled to understand the moduli space of graphs. A new paper uses tools from physics to peek inside. “That’s a super hard problem. It’s amazing they were able to,” said Dan ...

At the subatomic level, particles interact not only with one another, but with the quantum fields inherent to space, both owing to the presence of charged sources and also to the quantum vacuum of ...

At long last, a unified theory combining gravity with the other fundamental forces—electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces—is within reach. Bringing gravity into the fold has been the ...

Gravity, long the sovereign force in the cosmic hierarchy, may be little more than a statistical side effect a byproduct of entropy, not a fundamental interaction. That is the provocative assertion ...

A new physics paper takes a step toward creating a long-sought "theory of everything" by uniting gravity with the quantum world. However, the new theory remains far from being proven observationally.

Quantum physics often reveals phenomena that defy common sense. A new theory of quantum scarring deepens our understanding of ...

It might be possible, physicists say, but not anytime soon. And there’s no guarantee that we humans will understand the result. By Dennis Overbye Once upon a time, Albert Einstein described scientific ...