Houri Christina Tarazi
Hello! I am Houri-Christina Tarazi, commonly called just Houri! I am of Greek-Iranian descent and I grew up in Greece. I frequently miss the sunny warm days next to the crystal blue waters!
I did my undergraduate studies in Mathematics at King's College London and received my masters from Cambridge University in Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics(Part III of the mathematical tripos).
I completed by PhD in the Center of Fundamental Laws in the department of physics at Harvard University under the supervision of Prof Cumrun Vafa.
Currently, I am a Kadanoff fellow and a KICP fellow at U Chicago working on diverse features of quantum gravity.
In particular, I am interested in understanding constraints that a quantum gravity imposes to low energy physics both from bottom up and from string theory. Additionally, I am interested in string compactifications and exotic construction to further our understanding of the string Landscape. The goal is to understand the most basic properties of a quantum gravity theory with the wish to create a window to high energy gravitational physics. An understanding of quantum gravity is important from both the theoretical point of view and from an attempt to make contact with observational physics and black holes. This makes me particularly interested to make a bridge between string theory/quantum gravity to astrophysics and cosmology.
What's New?
2024
-New Paper with Kaan Baykara and Cumrun Vafa
Title: "New Non-Supersymmetric Tachyon-Free Strings"
https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.00185
-New Paper with Kaan Baykara and Cumrun Vafa
Title:"The Quasicrystalline String Landscape"https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.00129
Swamplandia conference, Germany
Title: "New Non-Supersymmtric Tachyon-Free Strings"
2023
-Paper with Kaan Baykara, Yuta Hamada and Cumrun Vafa
Title: "On the string Landscape without Hypermultiplets"
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2309.15152.pdf
Swamplandia conference, Madrid, Spain
Title: "On the String Landscape without Hypermultiplets"
-CCTP, University of Crete, Greece
Title: "Infinite Distance Limits as a Path to the String Lamppost"
-String Pheno Seminar
Title: "Infinite Distance Limits as a Path to the String Lamppost"
-Caltech- Invited Speaker
Title: "Infinite Distance Limits as a Path to the String Lamppost"
Infinite distance limits in theories with gravity are expected to unravel secrets of the UV quantum gravity. In this talk we will focus on supergravity theories with 16 supercharges and study their BPS and Non-BPS infinite distance limits and show that they mainly lead to decompactifications. We will then show that a particular type of BPS infinite distance limits provides strong constraints on the rank of the gauge group in d dimensions given by r<=26-d. We will then focus on the Non-BPS limits in 9 dimensions and show that they lead to a decompactification to Type IIA supergravity on an interval. Without relying on string theory, we will provide a bottom-up explanations for various UV features of the theory, such as the physics near the orientifold branes and the worldvolume theories of different stacks of non-perturbative 8-branes.
-Amherst- "Theoretical Tests of the Landscape" - discussion leader
Title: Landscape Bottom Up
-Harvard Swampland Seminar
Title: "Non-BPS path to the string lamppost"
-New Paper with Alek Bedroya and Sanjay Raman
Title: "Non-BPS path to the string lamppost"
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2303.13585.pdf
2022
-Gong Show Strings Conference 2022 in Vienna Austria
Title: Where is the minimal 5d pure supergravity?
The five dimensional pure supergravity with 8 supercharges contains no dilation making its string theory realization hard to get. I will be discussing previous attempts to realize the theory through non geometric constructions and provide reasons why this approach will fail. Additionally, I will discuss properties of the mysterious theory to assess its potential consistency as a quantum theory of gravity, perhaps outside the string landscape.
-Parallel Talk at Strings Phenomenology 2022 Conference in Liverpool UK
Title: Minimal Supergravities in d> 4 and the Swampland
The Swampland program attempts to find clear constraints that separate the quantum field theories that are “good” supergravities (Landscape) versus those that are “bad” supergravities (Swampland). As one reduces the amount of supercharges finding such constraints becomes more challenging. I will discuss new conditions for the 6d N=1 supergravity which further constraints the Landscape. Additionally, I will discuss an open question about the consistency of the 5d N=1 pure supergravity as a quantum theory of gravity.
-Harvard Award Ceremony 2022
Awards Ceremony 2022
Presented by Tim Kaxiras
Department of Physics Chair
White Prize
Teaching Excellence
Gertude and Maurice Goldhaber Prize
Oustanding Graduate Student in Theoretical Physics
2020
Physical Review D Editor's Suggestion
For the full paper go to:
https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.102.026003
