Augustine Larweh Mahu is a distinguished physicist specializing in quantum physics and gauge/gravity duality. He began his academic journey at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), earning a Master’s degree in Mathematics with a focus on Quantum Physics and Cosmology in 2010. During this period, he participated in CERN’s Non-Member State Summer Student Programme, working on the detection of W bosons using data from the ATLAS detector, which fueled his passion for particle physics.
In 2012, after completing his Master’s thesis, Larweh joined the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS Ghana) as a Teaching Assistant, contributing to the establishment of its postgraduate program. Inspired by Prof. Robert de Mello Koch, Larweh pursued a PhD in Theoretical Physics at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, concentrating on gauge/gravity duality. His academic excellence earned him the prestigious Postgraduate Merit Award and a bursary from South Africa’s National Research Foundation.
After receiving his PhD in 2018, Larweh returned to Ghana, joining the University of Ghana’s Department of Mathematics as a Lecturer. He has been instrumental in modernizing the department’s offerings and engaging the public on the importance of advanced physics. He secured a highly competitive $8,400 research grant from The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) and has mentored students in high-energy physics, despite challenges in securing sustained funding for research.
From 2019 to 2022, Larweh held a Visiting Research position at the University of the Witwatersrand, where his work explored the dynamics of heavy operators in black hole physics through gauge/gravity duality. His dedication to advancing quantum physics in Ghana, coupled with his commitment to building a robust research community, continues to inspire the next generation of physicists. Despite challenges, Larweh remains at the forefront of quantum research, pushing the boundaries of scientific discovery.
Publications:
Pre-print
- Robert de Mello Koch, Minkyoo Kim, and Augustine Larweh Mahu. A pedagogical introduction to restricted Schur polynomials with applications to heavy operators, 2024, arXiv:2409.15751.
Peer-Reviewed
- Robert de Mello Koch, Eunice Gandote, and Augustine Larweh Mahu. Scrambling in Yang-Mills. JHEP, 01:058, 2021, 2008.12409.
- Robert De Mello Koch, David Gossman, Nirina Hasina Tahiridimbisoa, and Augustine Larweh Mahu. Holography for Tensor models. Phys. Rev. D, 101(4):046004, 2020, 1910.13982.
- Shaun de Carvalho, Robert de Mello Koch, and Augustine Larweh Mahu. Anomalous dimensions from boson lattice models. Phys. Rev. D, 97(12):126004, 2018, 1801.02822.
- Abdelhamid Mohamed Adam Ali, Robert de Mello Koch, Nirina Hasina Tahiridimbisoa, and Augustine Larweh Mahu. Interacting Double Coset Magnons. Phys. Rev. D, 93(6):065057, 2016, 1512.05019.
Research:
Recent advancements in gauge theory/gravity dualities are shedding light on black hole microstates, particularly through large-N gauge theories. Early successes in this area reproduced the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy for specific supersymmetric black holes, inspiring numerous extensions. However, meaningful insights into black hole entropy were mostly limited to index computations for 1/16-BPS black holes, which overlook the critical dynamics of strongly coupled gauge theories.
Recent work, especially with 1/16-BPS black holes in AdS5×S5, has reframed the task of counting black hole microstates using supercharge cohomology, which encompasses the full spectrum of BPS operators. This method provides much richer information than index-based approaches. A key development is the classification of BPS operators into “monotone” and “fortuitous” categories. Monotone operators scale with the gauge group rank N, while fortuitous operators exist only within certain ranks.
While the large-N expansion of Yang-Mills theories, as established by ’t Hooft, has been extensively explored in planar limits—especially in N=4 super Yang-Mills theory—this approach is inadequate for understanding black hole microstates. The planar limit fails to capture the complexity of finite-N trace relations and the intricate multi-trace structures needed for non-planar regimes, which are crucial for black hole analysis.
A promising approach to studying these microstates is to incorporate representation theory of the symmetric group. By using restricted Schur polynomials, this method has been applied in many papers to compute anomalous dimensions of subsectors in N=4 super Yang-Mills theory beyond the planar limit, with the goal of extending it to heavy operators related to 1/16-BPS black holes in AdS5×S5.
Recognition:
Awards and Honours
- No. 20-120 RG/MATHS/AF/AC I–FR3240314136, The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) individual young researcher grant.
- Visiting Researcher; (November 1, 2019 – October 31, 2022 ), School of Physics, Faculty of Science, University of The Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.
- Visiting Researcher; (July 13, 2019 – August 27, 2019 ), School of Physics, Faculty of Science, University of The Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.
- National Research Foundation (NRF) Bursary, (January 2015 – December 2017 ) ; School of Physics, University of The Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.
- Postgraduate Merit Award (PMA), (January 2015 – December 2017 ) ; School of Physics, University of The Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.
