Beginnings of Ilarion's HomePage
Dear visitor, you have discovered my so-called homepage.
I cannot promise that it will ever get more sophisticated, but
all things are possible. The reason for the creation of this
page is simple: I was greatly inspired
by the sophisticated new backdrop for the physics web pages, and
I felt that with such a background no matter how little work I did,
it would look reasonable. (Check out the amazing column to the left!!)
(i) Properties of reflexive polytopes, in particular, the Reflexive Dimension, with Christian Haase. The work is very cute, it is a mathematics paper, and it is written up in math.CO/0406485.
(ii) Quiver Gauge Theories from D-branes on shrinking del Pezzos, with P.S. Aspinwall. This is written up in hep-th/0405134.
(iii) Supersymmetric boundary conditions for Non-Linear Sigma Models, with M.R. Plesser and S. Rinke. This is now on the archive: hep-th/0309223.
(iv) Gauged Linear Sigma Models and Mirror Symmetry. This was an attempt to prove mirror symmetry as an equivalence of the IR limits of two different massive theories (a la Seiberg duality in d = 4). It is a beautiful story, and surely has the right ingredients, but it is technically difficult, and we have not been able to understand the strong-coupling problems involved in it.
In my younger days I worked on pattern formation and nonlinear dynamics in the group of Eberhard Bodenschatz at Cornell. When I first came to Duke, I worked with Roxanne Springer on low energy QCD.
For a little more information you can take a look at my CV.
(I'm with the 2 by 4.)
Clearly, this site will get most of its hits for
Culture of Blame .
CoB is perhaps the most innovative post 90s rock group to come out of
the Duke physics department scene. Started by physicists Ilarion Melnikov
and Matthew Prior , and
strengthened by the awesome power-snare-drummer, Sheila Roberts, their
missions are: to play relentless rock, to stay committed to the scene,
to learn some chords and eventually to sign on to a large record label
for a fabulous sum of money and a free enough time schedule so that we
can go on with our physics work (well, Sheila is not a physicist, so
she gets to pick a different field).
Contact: Here's my email .
Well, I am now a postdoc at the University of Chicago. What I am going to do there is not yet entirely clear, but this much I know: this web page is somewhat out of date. You can find the new one here.
Some Information about Ilarion Melnikov
I am a graduate student in physics at Duke University, studying string theory under the able tutelage of M. Ronen Plesser. More generally, I talk to members and associates of the 'Center' for Geometry and Theoretical Physics at Duke.Research Interests (for non-experts)
I am studying string theory, a branch of high energy physics that attempts to unify the forces observed in nature, explain the origin and nature of spacetime and matter, and resolve paradoxes between classical general relativity (a theory of gravitation) and quantum mechanics. At this time we do not have a complete formulation of string theory. To find the concepts and tools needed to develop this formulation it has been quite useful to work in various limits of the theory that are (more or less) understood. My work so far has concentrated on aspects of how weakly coupled strings probe the spacetime geometry. This is a fascinating subject with a lot of interplay between quantum field theory and geometry.Research Interests (for the experts)
I have been studying worldsheet descriptions of (type II) strings propagating on Calabi-Yau manifolds. Recently, I have been looking at(i) Properties of reflexive polytopes, in particular, the Reflexive Dimension, with Christian Haase. The work is very cute, it is a mathematics paper, and it is written up in math.CO/0406485.
(ii) Quiver Gauge Theories from D-branes on shrinking del Pezzos, with P.S. Aspinwall. This is written up in hep-th/0405134.
(iii) Supersymmetric boundary conditions for Non-Linear Sigma Models, with M.R. Plesser and S. Rinke. This is now on the archive: hep-th/0309223.
(iv) Gauged Linear Sigma Models and Mirror Symmetry. This was an attempt to prove mirror symmetry as an equivalence of the IR limits of two different massive theories (a la Seiberg duality in d = 4). It is a beautiful story, and surely has the right ingredients, but it is technically difficult, and we have not been able to understand the strong-coupling problems involved in it.
In my younger days I worked on pattern formation and nonlinear dynamics in the group of Eberhard Bodenschatz at Cornell. When I first came to Duke, I worked with Roxanne Springer on low energy QCD.
For a little more information you can take a look at my CV.
Other People to Bother
My study of strings is greatly aided by many wonderful people in the math and physics departments. Especially fun are my pals Carina Curto (math student) and Sven Rinke (a fellow physicist). These two have had the patience to explain things a million times to poor Ilarion, and perhaps even more amazingly, the patience to sit through Ilarion's babblings on topics of which he has little comprehension.Teaching
Spring 2005: PHY 341: Quantum Field TheoryGraduate Student Seminar
I used to run the graduate student seminar in the physics department. This is an informal gathering of students and postdocs that happens on Friday at noon in the Faculty lounge. For more info see the seminar web page.Personal Stuff
(I'm with the 2 by 4.)
Contact: Here's my email .