Arkady Tseytlin made important contributions to string theory, both as a consistent framework for the unification of gravity with other fundamental interactions, and as a tool for describing the strong-coupling dynamics of gauge theories. He pioneered the sigma-model approach to string theory in curved spacetime and proposed a path integral method for computing the low-energy effective action connecting string theory with field theory. Tseytlin also uncovered the fundamental role of the Born-Infeld term in the open-string effective action which led to many applications in the study of D-brane dynamics and gauge/string duality.
He also constructed a superstring action in anti-de Sitter space, which plays a central role in the AdS/CFT correspondence and underlies the integrability-based exact solution of the maximally supersymmetric gauge theory.
His research was recognised by the Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award, the Rayleigh Medal and Prize of the UK Institute of Physics, and the Pomeranchuk International Prize in Theoretical Physics.
Professional position
- Professor of Theoretical Physics, Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College London
