Dr Dario Martelli
Telephone: +44 020 7848 2153
Email: dario.martelli@kcl.ac.uk
Office: S5.29, Strand Building, Strand Campus
Title: Lecturer in Theoretical Physics and EPSRC Advanced Fellow
Biography
Dario Martelli studied Physics at the University of Pisa and the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa, and obtained his PhD in Theoretical Physics in 2000 from the International School of Advanced Studies in Trieste. He then had postdoctoral research positions at Queen Mary College and Imperial College (holding a Marie Curie Fellowship), CERN, and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. In 2009 he joined the Department of Physics at Swansea University. Since January 2010 he has been Lecturer in Theoretical Physics and EPSRC Advanced Fellow in the Department of Mathematics at King's College.
In 2010 Dr Martelli won the SIGRAV Prize from the Italian Society of General Relativity and Gravitational Physics for his work in string theory. Among his most significant achievements there are a number of publications written in collaboration with Prof S.-T. Yau, concerning Sasaki-Einstein geometry and its relationship to string theory. He has also worked with Prof J. Maldacena on aspects of the string theory/gauge theory correspondence.
Research Interests
Dario's research interests are centred around the gauge/gravity correspondence in string theory and geometric structures arising in this context. In particular, he is interested in supergravities and their supersymmetric solutions. For example, the class of solutions based on Sasaki-Einstein manifolds is an instance where the interplay of geometry with the AdS/CFT correspondence has led to advancements on both sides. He discovered the first example of an infinite family of Sasaki-Einstein metrics and obtained important results in Sasakian geometry. Dario is currently continuing research in the subject of Sasaki-Einstein geometry and some novel generalisations, which are relevant to string theory.
Other interests include D-branes and quiver gauge theories, M5 and M2 branes in M-theory, and the relationship of the latter to supersymmetric Chern-Simons theories. Recently he has been studying certain matrix models capturing the essential features of these theories, and their relationship to geometry, via the AdS/CFT correspondence. Another line of research concerns applications of the AdS/CFT duality to study physical systems arising in condensed matter physics, possibly with non-relativistic symmetries.
Selection of Publications
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D. Martelli and J. Sparks, The large N limit of quiver matrix models and Sasaki-Einstein manifolds, Phys. Rev. D, 2011
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J. Maldacena and D. Martelli, The unwarped, resolved, deformed conifold: fivebranes and the baryonic branch of the Klebanov-Strassler theory, JHEP 1001:104,2010
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D. Martelli and J. Sparks, Moduli spaces of Chern-Simons quiver gauge theories and AdS4/CFT3, Phys. Rev. D78:126005,2008
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J. Maldacena, D. Martelli, and Y. Tachikawa, Comments on string theory backgrounds with non-relativistic conformal symmetry, JHEP 0810:072,2008
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D. Martelli, J. Sparks, and S.-T. Yau, Sasaki-Einstein manifolds and volume minimisation, Commun. Math. Phys. 280:611-673,2008
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D. Martelli, J. Sparks, and S.-T. Yau, The geometric dual of a-maximisation for toric Sasaki-Einstein manifolds, Commun. Math. Phys. 268:39-65,2006
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J. Gauntlett, D. Martelli, J. Sparks, and D. Waldram, Sasaki-Einstein metrics on S2 x S3, Adv.Theor. Math. Phys.8:711-734,2004