Office: Room 502, 17 Lex., Phone: (646) 660-6255, E-mail: scatto@gc.cuny.edu

Sultan Catto, Ph.D., Yale University (Mathematical Physics), has made important contributions to the development of elementary particle physics particularly in the area of dynamical supersymmetry, and in mathematics in the areas of spectral theory of automorphic forms and octonionic projective geometries with applications to quantum mechanics. He is a professor and Executive Officer for the Ph.D. Program in Physics at the CUNY Graduate School, Adjunct Associate Research Scientist in Henry Krumb School of Mines, Columbia University, and Visiting Professor at the Rockefeller University. He was the U.S. winner of Mathematics competitions (Math Olympiads) and spent eight months research fellowship at the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory. He is also on the permanent International Advisory Board of the “International Conferences on Differential Geometric Methods in Theoretical Physics”, “International Conferences on Symmetries and Strings,” and “International Wigner Symposia”, together with internationally renowned scientists and Nobel Laureates in physics and Fields Medalists in mathematics. He has had short term physics professorships at Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, Academia Sinica (Chinese Academy of Sciences) in Beijing, and Nankai University in Tianjin, China and International Center for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy. He was a panel member on Hollywood and Science at International Hamptons Film Festival sponsored by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and is a permanent member of the International Counsel for Development of Science and Technology in Peru. He was awarded the “Benjamin W. Lee Prize” by the International School of Sub-Nuclear Physics (Ettore Majorana) in Sicily (referees were Nobel Laureates T.D. Lee, S. Glashow and E.P. Wigner), Italy, for his work on quark-diquark supersymmetry.

RESEARCH

Starting with a series of papers published between 1985 and the present, he and his collaborators (mainly Feza Gursey) exploited internal (dynamical) supersymmetries to construct a combined classification scheme for mesons and baryons. Theoretical models they developed led to existence of multiquark bound states which were recently grounded in experiments (for example a₀ (980) and f₀(975) are of this type). More recently he is completing a book on "Algebraic Approaches to Particle Theory" with H.C. Tze of Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and VPI. The book deals with Relativistic Quark Models, Constraint Superalgebras, Supergroups in Critical Dimensions and Lattices Generated by Discrete Jordan Algebras. Another book on "Octonionic Structures in Physics" is near its completion (with Carlos J. Moreno at Baruch and CUNY graduate school). Other problems they are currently looking at are:

1. Conformal structures in D=4; Quaternion Analyticity.
2. Euclidean Instantons from Chiral Superfields (N=2), Connections to Statistical Mechanical Models, Yang-Mills Theories.
3. Hyperbolic Extensions of Exceptional Groups and Unified Field Theories
4. Uniform Treatment of Chiral Symmetry and SU(4) Symmetry of Nuclear Forces.
5. Quaternionic and Octonionic Structures in Physics: Possible Octonionic Basis for Internal Symmetries in Nature."
6. Multiquark states, especially recent results on pentaquarks and associated phenomenology based on split octonionic algebra approach.

Publications 1992-Present

Link to Prof. Sultan Catto's web page on the gursey server with access to current publications in "Publications Archive."