On August 25, Joseph Dominicus Lap successfully defended the thesis, “Approaches to Strongly-Coupled Field Theory” (advisor: Ian Moult).
Lap explained, “A microsecond after the big bang, the universe was incredibly hot and dense. At temperatures nearly a quarter-million times hotter than the Sun’s core, protons and neutrons could not yet form. Instead, the cosmos was filled with a seething soup of quarks and gluons. How did this plasma cool and condense into the everyday matter we observe today?”
Lap continued, “My research over the past several years has approached this question from three directions. First, I used effective field theory to demonstrate that the particle yields measured in collider experiments can receive substantial contributions from later interactions, not just the primordial quark–gluon plasma. Second, I studied entanglement dynamics in strongly coupled systems that fragment into multiple parts, aiming to recover information about the early state from the particles ultimately detected. Third, I constructed formal quantum field theory observables capable of probing the time-dependent structure of states in collider experiments—for example, shedding light on the substructure of particle jets.”
Lap will be the Quantum Science and Engineering (QSE) Postdoctoral Fellowship at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). There he will be using Neural Quantum States to solve matrix quantum mechanics models. Such models are expected to give us insight into the nature of quantum gravity and the emergence of space-time.
The “QSE Fellowship gives outstanding and highly motivated young researchers the opportunity to carry out research in collaboration with the thriving EPFL QSE community on frontier topics in quantum science and quantum engineering. The Fellowship aims at establishing cutting-edge interdisciplinary research. Fellows will have the opportunity to work in collaboration with several laboratories and will be granted ample freedom to develop their own research agenda.”
As a QSE Fellow, Lap will be working primarily with João Penedones and Giuseppe Carleo to use modern machine-learning methods to address long-standing open questions in quantum gravity. Quantum mechanical matrix models that arise from string theory – such as BFSS, BMN, and IKKT – are conjectured to describe quantum gravity, black hole physics, and even the emergence of spacetime itself. By leveraging neural-network-based methods to approximate quantum states (NQS), his work aims to overcome long-standing computational barriers and deepen our understanding of the non-perturbative structure of quantum gravity.
“I am deeply honored to receive the QSE Postdoctoral Fellowship and excited to join the community at EPFL. This fellowship offers a unique opportunity to pursue interdisciplinary research at the intersection of quantum science, high energy theory, and machine learning. I look forward to collaborating with researchers across the QSE community and to developing new computational approaches that may help shed light on fundamental questions in physics.”
Ian Moult, assistant professor of physics, a member of Wright Lab, and Joseph Lap’s advisor, commented, “Joseph’s research focuses on better understanding non-perturbative aspects of quantum field theory, with the ultimate goal of improving our understanding of the quark-gluon plasma, an exotic state of matter relevant both in the early universe, and in collider experiments. During his time at Yale, he has worked on an impressively broad set of topics, ranging from improving the study of entanglement entropy, to performing concrete predictions relevant for understanding data in particle colliders.
As a Postdoctoral Fellow at EPFL, he will continue to pursue his unique combination of abstract theory and practical computation. This is an exciting opportunity for Joseph to pursue his research program, and we congratulate him on this well earned award. “
The Quantum Science and Engineering Postdoctoral Fellowship gives outstanding and highly motivated young researchers the opportunity to carry out research in collaboration with the thriving EPFL QSE community on frontier topics in quantum science and quantum engineering. The Fellowship aims at establishing cutting-edge interdisciplinary research. Fellows will have the opportunity to work in collaboration with several laboratories and will be granted ample freedom to develop their own research agenda.
Initial appointments will be made for one year, with the expectation of renewal for at least a second year, upon agreement of the QSE scientific committee.