Augusto Sagnotti
{{short description|Italian theoretical physicist}}
{{Infobox scientist
| name = Augusto Sagnotti
| image = Cern Sagnotti.jpg
| image_size = 200 px
| caption = (2014)
| birth_date = 1955
| birth_place = Rome, Italy
| death_date =
| death_place =
| nationality = Italian
| fields = Theoretical physics
| work_institution = Scuola Normale Superiore
| alma_mater = University of Rome "La Sapienza", California Institute of Technology
| doctoral_advisor = John H. Schwarz
| doctoral_students =
| known_for = Ultraviolet divergences of Einstein gravity, orientifolds, higher spins
| awards =
}}
Augusto Sagnotti (born 1955) is an Italian theoretical physicist at Scuola Normale (since 2005).
Biography
Sagnotti earned a Laurea in Electrical Engineering from the University of Rome "La Sapienza" in 1978 (advisors: Bruno Crosignani and Paolo Di Porto); and a Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from Caltech in 1983 (advisor: John H. Schwarz). He was Post-Doctoral Fellow at Caltech (1983–84) and Miller Research Fellow at U.C. Berkeley (1984–86).{{Cite web |title=Augusto Sagnotti {{!}} ScuolaNormaleSuperiore |url=https://www.sns.it/it/persona/augusto-sagnotti |access-date=2025-06-09 |website=www.sns.it}}
Sagnotti was Junior Faculty at the University of Rome "Tor Vergata" from 1986 to 1994, then Associate Professor (1994–99) and Professor (2000-2005). His research activity has been devoted to the quantization of the gravitational field, to String Theory, to Conformal Field Theory and to Higher-Spin Gauge Fields.
Sagnotti's main contribution to physics is perhaps the analysis of the 2-loop divergences in Einstein's theory of General Relativity.
{{cite journal
|last1=Goroff |first=M. H.
|last2=Sagnotti |first2=A.
|year=1985
|title=Quantum gravity at two loops
|journal=Physics Letters B
|volume=160 |issue=1–3 |pages=81
|bibcode=1985PhLB..160...81G
|doi=10.1016/0370-2693(85)91470-4
{{cite journal
|last1=Goroff |first=M. H.
|last2=Sagnotti |first2=A.
|year=1986
|title=The ultraviolet behavior of Einstein gravity
|journal=Nuclear Physics B
|volume=266 |issue=3–4 |pages=709
|bibcode=1986NuPhB.266..709G
|doi=10.1016/0550-3213(86)90193-8
}} Moreover, he was the first to propose, in 1987, that the type I string theory can be obtained as an orientifold of type IIB string theory,
{{cite book
|last1=Sagnotti |first1=A.
|year=1988
|chapter=Open strings and their symmetry groups
|editor1-last='t Hooft |editor1-first=G.
|editor2-last=Jaffe |editor2-first=A.
|editor3-last=Mack |editor3-first=G.
|editor4-last=Mitter |editor4-first=P. K.
|editor5-last=Stora |editor5-first=R.
|title=Nonperturbative Quantum Field Theory
|publisher=Plenum Publishing Corporation
|pages=521–528
|arxiv=hep-th/0208020
|bibcode = 2002hep.th....8020S }} with 32 half-D9-branes added in the vacuum to cancel various anomalies
{{Cite journal
|last1=Sagnotti |first1=A.
|year=1992
|title=A note on the Green–Schwarz mechanism in open-string theories
|journal=Physics Letters B
|volume=294 |issue=2 |pages=196–203
|arxiv=hep-th/9210127
|bibcode=1992PhLB..294..196S
|doi=10.1016/0370-2693(92)90682-T
|s2cid=14528538
{{Cite journal
|last1=Angelantonj |first1=C.
|last2=Sagnotti |first2=A.
|year=2002
|title=Open strings
|journal=Physics Reports
|volume=371 |issue=376 |pages=1–150
|arxiv=hep-th/0204089
|bibcode=2002PhR...371....1A
|doi=10.1016/S0370-1573(02)00273-9
|s2cid=119334893
}} and offered the elucidation of the key properties of orientifold constructions and of Conformal Field Theory on non-orientable surfaces.
{{cite journal
|last1=Pradisi |first=G.
|last2=Sagnotti |first2=A.
|year=1989
|title=Open string orbifolds
|journal=Physics Letters B
|volume=216 |issue=1–2 |pages=59
|bibcode=1989PhLB..216...59P
|doi=10.1016/0370-2693(89)91369-5
{{cite journal
|last1=Bianchi |first=M.
|last2=Sagnotti |first2=A.
|year=1990
|title=On the systematics of open string theories
|journal=Physics Letters B
|volume=247 |issue=4 |pages=517
|bibcode=1990PhLB..247..517B
|doi=10.1016/0370-2693(90)91894-H
{{cite journal
|last1=Bianchi|first=M.
|last2=Pradisi |first2=G.
|last3=Sagnotti |first3=A.
|year=1992
|title=Toroidal compactification and symmetry breaking in open string theories
|journal=Nuclear Physics B
|volume=376 |issue=2|pages=362
|bibcode=1992NuPhB.376..365B
|doi=10.1016/0550-3213(92)90129-Y
{{Cite journal
|last1=Fioravanti |first1=D.
|last2=Pradisi |first2=G.
|last3=Sagnotti |first3=A.
|year=1994
|title=Sewing constraints and non-orientable open strings
|journal=Physics Letters B
|volume=321 |issue=4 |pages=349–354
|arxiv=hep-th/9311183
|bibcode=1994PhLB..321..349F
|doi=10.1016/0370-2693(94)90255-0
|s2cid=15330492
{{Cite journal
|last1=Pradisi |first1=Gianfranco
|last2=Sagnotti |first2=Augusto
|last3=Stanev |first3=Yassen S.
|year=1996
|title=Completeness conditions for boundary operators in 2D conformal field theory
|journal=Physics Letters B
|volume=381 |issue= 1–3|pages=97–104
|arxiv=hep-th/9603097
|bibcode=1996PhLB..381...97P
|doi=10.1016/0370-2693(96)00578-3
|s2cid=119096336
}} He also discovered the 10D "0B' string", including both open and closed strings, non supersymmetric but free of tachyons.
{{cite arXiv
|last1=Sagnotti |first1=A.
|year=1995
|title=Some properties of open-string theories
|eprint=hep-th/9509080
{{Cite journal
|last1=Sagnotti |first1=A.
|year=1997
|title=Surprises in open-string perturbation theory
|journal=Nuclear Physics B: Proceedings Supplements
|volume=56 |issue=3 |pages=332–343
|arxiv=hep-th/9702093
|bibcode=1997NuPhS..56..332S
|doi=10.1016/S0920-5632(97)00344-7
|s2cid=13867997
}} He has worked extensively on higher spins, arriving at a geometric formulation of their free field equations in terms of higher-spin curvatures.
{{cite journal
|last1=Francia |first=D.
|last2=Sagnotti |first2=A.
|year=2002
|title=Free geometric equations for higher spins
|journal=Physics Letters B
|volume=543 |issue=3–4|pages=303
|bibcode=2002PhLB..543..303F
|doi=10.1016/S0370-2693(02)02449-8
|arxiv = hep-th/0207002 |s2cid=14912668
}}
More recently, Sagnotti has been working on the proposal of a possible link between "brane supersymmetry breaking",
{{Cite journal
|last1=Sugimoto |first1=S.
|year=1999
|title=Anomaly cancellations in the type I D9-D{{overline|9}} system and the USp(32) string theory
|journal=Progress of Theoretical Physics
|volume=102 |issue=3 |pages=685–699
|arxiv=hep-th/9905159
|bibcode=1999PThPh.102..685S
|doi=10.1143/PTP.102.685
|s2cid=14476861
{{Cite journal
|last1=Antoniadis |first1=I.
|last2=Dudas |first2=E.
|last3=Sagnotti |first3=A.
|year=1999
|title=Brane supersymmetry breaking
|journal=Physics Letters B
|volume=464 |issue= 1–2|pages=38–45
|arxiv=hep-th/9908023
|bibcode=1999PhLB..464...38A
|doi=10.1016/S0370-2693(99)01023-0
|s2cid=16185036
{{Cite journal
|last1=Angelantonj |first1=C.
|year=2000
|title=Comments on open-string orbifolds with a non-vanishing Bab
|journal=Nuclear Physics B
|volume=566 |issue=1–2
|pages=126–150
|arxiv=hep-th/9908064
|bibcode=2000NuPhB.566..126A
|doi=10.1016/S0550-3213(99)00662-8
|s2cid=15795436
{{Cite journal
|last1=Aldazabal |first1=G.
|last2=Uranga |first2=A. M.
|year=1999
|title=Tachyon-free non-supersymmetric type IIB orientifolds via brane-antibrane systems
|journal=Journal of High Energy Physics
|volume=1999 |issue=10 |pages=24
|arxiv=hep-th/9908072
|bibcode=1999JHEP...10..024A
|doi=10.1088/1126-6708/1999/10/024
|s2cid=15612821
}} and the onset of the inflationary phase, and on the exploration of some of its possible imprints on the CMB,
{{Cite journal
|last1=Kitazawa |first1=N.
|last2=Sagnotti |first2=A.
|year=2014
|title=Pre-inflationary clues from string theory?
|journal=Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
|volume=2014 |issue=4 |pages=17
|arxiv=1402.1418
|bibcode=2014JCAP...04..017K
|doi=10.1088/1475-7516/2014/04/017
|s2cid=119232246
}} in particular, the proposal that the low value of the CMB quadrupole
{{Cite web
|last=Hu |first=W.
|date=
|title=Quadrupole types and polarization patterns
|url=http://background.uchicago.edu/~whu/intermediate/polarization/polar4.html
|publisher=University of Chicago
|accessdate=2014-07-25
{{Cite web
|last=Abdalla |first=F. B.
|date=
|title=Observational cosmology: The CMB
|url=http://zuserver2.star.ucl.ac.uk/~hiranya/PHAS3136/PHAS3136/PHAS3136_files/Cosmo6_101112_cmbpower.pdf
|website =
|publisher=University College London
|accessdate=2014-07-26
}} be a manifestation of the onset of the inflationary phase.
Awards and honors
Sagnotti received the Carosio Prize from the University of Rome “La Sapienza” in 1979, a Miller Fellowship from U.C. Berkeley in 1984, shared with Massimo Bianchi the 1994 SIGRAV Prize of the Italian Society for General Relativity and Gravitation,{{Cite web |title=I Premi SIGRAV |url=http://sigrav.na.infn.it/attivita/premi-sigrav/?lang=en |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190212070453/http://sigrav.na.infn.it/attivita/premi-sigrav/?lang=en |archive-date=February 12, 2019 |access-date=March 18, 2021}} and received the Margherita Hack Prize for Science in 2014 for his work on the quantization of gravity and a Humboldt Research Award in 2018.{{Cite news |date=9 January 2019 |title=Von Humboldt Foundation Prizes awarded to Professor Ferrara and Professor Sagnotti |work=Normale News |url=https://normalenews.sns.it/von-humboldt-foundation-prizes-awarded-to-professor-ferrara-and-professor-sagnotti |access-date=18 March 2021}} He was also Andrejewski Lecturer at Humboldt Universitat in Berlin in 1999.
Books
- String Theory, eds. C. Procesi and A. Sagnotti (Academic Press, 1988)
- String Theory, Quantum Gravity and the Unification of the Fundamental Interactions, eds. M. Bianchi, F. Fucito, V. Marinari and A. Sagnotti (World Scientific, 1992)
- Classical and Quantum Statistical Physics, by C. Heissenberg and A. Sagnotti (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2022)
References
{{reflist|2}}
External links
- [https://inspirehep.net/author/profile/A.Sagnotti.1 Scientific publications of Augusto Sagnotti] on INSPIRE-HEP
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Category:20th-century Italian physicists
Category:Academic staff of the University of Rome Tor Vergata
Category:Italian string theorists
Category:Quantum gravity physicists
Category:Italian theoretical physicists
Category:People associated with CERN