Research Interests

My main scientific interest is in the areas of general relativiy and quantum field theory, as well as especially in the interplay between the two. General relativity is the current theory of gravitation, and its main idea is that the gravitational force ought to be thought of as the "curvature of space". Quantum field theory, on the other hand, describes quantized fields (such as the electromagnetic field) and is the formalism underlying our current understanding of elementary particles. A framework in which the two theories make contact in a very concrete way is the theory of quantized fields in curved space, and this has been the center of my interest in recent years. This theory is able to describe many exciting physical effects (fluctuations in the early Universe, black hole radiance, particle creation induced by gravity...), and its formalism also has connections to many cutting edge areas of mathematics (operator algebras, geometry, microlocal analysis, combinatorics, category theory,...). My interests are shared in part by members of the operator algebra group at Cardiff.