Nima Arkani-Hamed (born 1972) is a leading Iraniantheoretical physicist with interests in high-energy physics, string theory and cosmology.

Academic career

Arkani-Hamed was born on April 5, 1972 in Houston, Texas, and lived in Boston. His parents were both Iranian physicists. His family briefly returned to Iran after the 1979 revolution, then left again and moved to Toronto.

Arkani-Hamed graduated from the University of Toronto with a Joint Honours degree in Mathematics and Physics, and went to the University of California, Berkeley for his graduate studies, where he worked under the supervision of Lawrence Hall. He completed his PhD in 1997 and went to SLAC at Stanford University for post-doctoral studies. During this time he worked with Savas Dimopoulos on large extra dimensions.

In 1999 he joined the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley physics department. He took a leave of absence from Berkeley to visit Harvard University beginning January 2001. Shortly after arriving at Harvard he worked with Howard Georgi and Andrew Cohen on the idea of emergent extra dimensions, dubbed dimensional deconstruction. These ideas eventually led to the development of little Higgs theories.

He officially joined Harvard’s faculty in the fall of 2002. Arkani-Hamed has appeared on various television programs and newspapers talking about space, time and dimensions and the current state of theoretical physics. In 2003 he won the Gribov Medal of the European Physical Society, and in the summer of 2005 while at Harvard he won the ‘Phi Beta Kappa’ award for teaching excellence.

Arkani-Hamed participated in the Stock Exchange of Visions project in 2007.

In 2008 Arkani-Hamed won the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Prize given at Tel Aviv University to young scientists who have made outstanding and fundamental contributions in Physical Science.

In 2010 Arkani-Hamed gave the Messenger lectures at Cornell University.

He was a Professor of Physics at Harvard University from 2002–2008, and is now a Faculty member of the Institute for Advanced Study.

Selected works

• The paradigm of “large extra dimensions” (with Gia Dvali and Savas Dimopoulos):

N. Arkani-Hamed, S. Dimopoulos, G. Dvali (1998). “The Hierarchy problem and new dimensions at a millimeter”. Phys. Lett. B 436: 263–272.

I Antoniadis, N. Arkani-Hamed, S. Dimopoulos, G. Dvali (1998). “New dimensions at a millimeter to a Fermi and superstrings at a TeV”. Phys. Lett. B 429: 257–263.

N. Arkani-Hamed, S. Dimopoulos, G. Dvali (1999). “Phenomenology, astrophysics and cosmology of theories with submillimeter dimensions and TeV scale quantum gravity”. Phys. Rev. D 59: 086004. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.59.086004.

Arkani-Hamed, Nima; Savas Dimopoulos, Georgi Dvali (August 2000). “The Universe’s Unseen Dimensions”. Scientific American 283 (2): 62–69. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0800-62. PMID 10914401.

• Deconstruction (with Howard Georgi and Andrew Cohen):

N. Arkani-Hamed, A. G. Cohen, H. Georgi (2001). “(De)constructing dimensions”. Phys. Rev. Lett. 86 (21): 4757–4761. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.86.4757. PMID 11384341.

• Little Higgs theories:

N. Arkani-Hamed, A. G. Cohen, H. Georgi (2001). “Electroweak symmetry breaking from dimensional deconstruction”. Phys. Lett. B. 513: 232–240. doi:10.1016/S0370-2693(01)00741-9.

N. Arkani-Hamed, A. G. Cohen, T. Gregoire, J. G. Wacker (2002). “Phenomenology of electroweak symmetry breaking from theory space”. JHEP 0208: 020. doi:10.1088/1126-6708/2002/08/020.

N. Arkani-Hamed, A. G. Cohen, T. Gregoire,E. Katz, A. E. Nelson, J. G. Wacker (2002). “The Minimal moose for a little Higgs”. JHEP 0208: 021. doi:10.1088/1126-6708/2002/08/021.

N. Arkani-Hamed, A. G. Cohen, E. Katz, A. E. Nelson (2002). “The Littlest Higgs”. JHEP 0207: 034. doi:10.1088/1126-6708/2002/07/034.

• Ghost condensation:

N. Arkani-Hamed, H.C. Cheng, M. A. Luty, S. Mukohyama (2004). “Ghost condensation and a consistent infrared modification of gravity”. JHEP 0405: 074. doi:10.1088/1126-6708/2004/05/074.

• Split supersymmetry (with Savas Dimopoulos):

N. Arkani-Hamed,S. Dimopoulos; Dimopoulos, Savas (2005). “Supersymmetric unification without low energy supersymmetry and signatures for fine-tuning at the LHC”. JHEP 0506: 073. doi:10.1088/1126-6708/2005/06/073.

N. Arkani-Hamed,S. Dimopoulos, G. F. Giudice, A. Romanino (2005). “Aspects of split supersymmetry”. Nucl. Phys. B 0709: 3–46. doi:10.1016/j.nuclphysb.2004.12.026.

• Dark Matter:

N. Arkani-Hamed, N. Weiner (2008). “LHC Signals for a SuperUnified Theory of Dark Matter”. JHEP 0812: 104. doi:10.1088/1126-6708/2008/12/104.

N. Arkani-Hamed, D. P. Finkbeiner, T. R. Slatyer, N. Weiner (2009). “A Theory of Dark Matter”. Phys. Rev. D 79: 015014. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.79.015014.

• Scattering Amplitudes:

N. Arkani-Hamed, F. Cachazo, C. Cheung and J. Kaplan (2010). “A Duality for the S Matrix”. JHEP 1003: 020. doi:10.1007/JHEP03(2010)020.