Hugh Osborn
Hugh Osborn | |
---|---|
Nationality | British |
Known for | Conformal Field Theory, C-theorem, Quantum field theory |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Theoretical physicist |
Institutions | Cambridge University |
Website | http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/ho/ |
![](../I/m/Hugh_Osborn_in_Florence.jpg)
Hugh Osborn is a British theoretical high-energy physicist and a professor emeritus at the University of Cambridge, Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics. He is famous for his work on Conformal Field Theory and Quantum Field Theory.
Career
Osborn obtained his PhD in 1967 from the University College London. His PhD advisor was Sigurd Zienau. After postdoctoral positions at the University of Sussex and Queen Mary University of London, he became a professor first at the University of Glasgow and then in 1971 moved to the University of Cambridge where he remained ever since.[1] He is a fellow of Trinity College.
Notable results
In 1989, Osborn [2] has obtained the first proof of the four-dimensional C-theorem, which was conjectured one year earlier by John Cardy. Osborn's proof was applicable to renormalization group flows which are perturbative, that is do not deviate far from the free quantum field theories, and was valid to all orders in perturbation theory. It provided a strong hint that the four-dimensional C-theorem must be universally valid, but a nonperturbative proof of this fact was found only in 2011 by Zohar Komargodski and Adam Schwimmer.
In 2001 and 2004, Osborn, in collaboration with Francis Dolan, obtained explicit expressions for the conformal blocks in four dimensional conformal field theories.[3] Starting from 2008, these results found many important applications within the conformal bootstrap approach to conformal field theories.
PhD students
- Francis Dolan
- Johanna Erdmenger, professor at the University of Würzburg
- Ian Jack, professor at the University of Liverpool
- Tassos Petkou, professor at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
References
- ↑ Academic record of Hugh Osborn on INSPIRE-HEP
- ↑ Osborn, Hugh (1989). "Derivation of a Four-Dimensional c Theorem". Physics Letters B. 222: 97. doi:10.1016/0370-2693(89)90729-6. ; Jack, Ian; Osborn, Hugh (1990). "Analogs for the c Theorem for Four-Dimensional Renormalizable Field Theories". Nuclear Physics B. 343: 647. doi:10.1016/0550-3213(90)90584-Z.
- ↑ Dolan, Francis; Osborn, Hugh (2001). "Conformal four point functions and the operator product expansion". Nuclear Physics B. 599: 459. doi:10.1016/S0550-3213(01)00013-X. ; Dolan, Francis; Osborn, Hugh (2004). "Conformal partial waves and the operator product expansion". Nuclear Physics B. 678: 491. doi:10.1016/j.nuclphysb.2003.11.016.
External links
- Scientific publications of Hugh Osborn on INSPIRE-HEP
- Hugh Osborn publications indexed by the Scopus bibliographic database. (subscription required)