Half a Century of Supergravity -- the quest to bridge Einstein and the Quantum

 

The fiftieth anniversary of the original construction of supergravity — an extension of Einstein's gravity in which supersymmetry, promoted to a local gauge symmetry, combines with general coordinate transformations — offers an occasion to revisit the many profound ideas it has introduced across quantum field theory, string theory, gravitational physics, and beyond. Supergravity underpins the web of dualities unifying string theory and M-theory, helps explain the microscopic origin of black-hole entropy, and was instrumental in shaping the AdS/CFT correspondence as the new paradigm to relate gravity and gauge theories. Whether supergravity will ever be proven true by experiments or will remain an elegant mathematical framework, it is worth reflecting on its legacy and its continuing influence on the quest for a quantum theory of gravity. We take this occasion to celebrate its founders.

 

Bio:

Anna Ceresole is a research director in Theoretical Physics of the National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN), presently serving as an attachée at the Italian Permanent Delegation to UNESCO in Paris. After graduating from the University of Turin in 1984, she earned her PhD from Stony Brook University and held a postdoctoral fellowship at Caltech till 1992, before returning to Italy as a research professor at the Polytechnic University of Turin and then move to the local INFN Division.

Her research explores quantum field theories and gravitational theories, particularly supergravity and superstrings, with applications to black holes and cosmology. Since the 1990s, she has been active in various European research networks, including the COST action "The String Theory Universe," and has visited CERN regularly, notably as a team member of the ERC "Superfields." She led a national INFN research project on Gauge Theories, Supergravity and String Theory and coordinated the INFN Theory group in Turin until 2023. She collaborates with Bocconi University in Milan and is involved in science outreach through various means, including theatre.