Stefan Hollands

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 theoretical description of gravity in the classical regime. 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 and the forces that act between them. 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, such as primordial fluctuations in the early Universe or black hole radiance. The formalism also has interesting connections to many areas of mathematics such as operator algebras, geometry, microlocal analysis, combinatorics, or category theory.