About

Anastasia Volovich is a Professor of Physics specializing in theoretical physics, with research areas including quantum field theory, general relativity, string theory, and related areas in mathematics. She received her M. A. in Physics with highest honors from Moscow State University in 1999 and her Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from Harvard University in 2002. Her academic career includes post-doctoral research at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics and membership at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. She joined Brown University as an assistant professor in 2006, was promoted to associate professor with tenure in 2011, and became a full professor in 2016. Her research is funded by the Department of Energy and the Simons Foundation, and she holds editorial positions including Editor-in-Chief of Letters in Mathematical Physics and editor of Physics Letters B. Her work has earned numerous honors, including the NSF CAREER Award, White House PECASE Award, DOE Early Career Research Award, Sloan Research Fellowship, and APS Fellowship.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Quantum mechanics
• Mathematics
• Physics
• Combinatorics
• Theoretical physics
• Mathematical physics
• Mathematical analysis
• Discrete mathematics
• Pure mathematics

Selected publications

• Symbol alphabets in QCD and flag cluster algebras

  Journal of High Energy Physics · 2026-03-12 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  A bstract The full 245-letter symbol alphabet for all planar massless two-loop six-point Feynman integrals was recently determined in arXiv:2412.19884 and arXiv:2501.01847. In a parallel mathematical development, it was shown in arXiv:2408.14956 that there is an embedding of the cluster algebra associated to the partial flag variety $$ {\mathcal{Fl}}_{2,n-2;n} $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msub> <mml:mi>Fl</mml:mi> <mml:mrow> <mml:mn>2</mml:mn> <mml:mo>,</mml:mo> <mml:mi>n</mml:mi> <mml:mo>−</mml:mo> <mml:mn>2</mml:mn> <mml:mo>;</mml:mo> <mml:mi>n</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> </mml:msub> </mml:math> , which describes the kinematics of n massless particles, into that of the Grassmannian Gr( n –2, 2 n –4). In this paper we connect these developments by showing that most of the rational symbol letters can be expressed in terms of flag cluster variables, and that all of the algebraic symbol letters arise from infinite mutation sequences.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Split-helicity tree amplitudes and flag cluster algebras

  Journal of High Energy Physics · 2026-05-12

  articleOpen access

  A bstract Recent work has uncovered a connection between the symbol letters of general massless scattering and (permutations of) cluster variables of partial flag varieties. In this paper we explore the cluster adjacency of tree-level gluon amplitudes, specifically focusing on split-helicity amplitudes which can be written in closed form in terms of zigzag diagrams. We check in several cases, and conjecture in general, that the poles in each term satisfy cluster adjacency under a set of permutations that is built from arc permutations of the corresponding zigzag.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Hidden Zeros of the Cosmological Wavefunction

  ArXiv.org · 2025-03-30

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  Motivated by the recent discovery of hidden zeros in particle and string amplitudes, we characterize zeros of individual graph contributions to the cosmological wavefunction of a scalar field theory. We demonstrate that these contributions factorize near these zeros for all tree graphs and provide evidence that this extends to loop graphs as well. We explicitly construct polytopal realizations of the relevant graph associahedra and show that the cosmological zeros have natural geometric and physical interpretations. As a byproduct, we establish an equivalence between the wavefunction coefficients of chain graphs and flat-space Tr$(ϕ^3)$ amplitudes, enabling us to leverage the cosmological zeros to uncover the recently discovered hidden zeros of colored amplitudes.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Symbol Alphabets in QCD and Flag Cluster Algebras

  ArXiv.org · 2025-06-13

  preprintOpen access

  The full 245-letter symbol alphabet for all planar massless two-loop six-point Feynman integrals was recently determined in arXiv:2412.19884 and arXiv:2501.01847. In a parallel mathematical development, it was shown in arXiv:2408.14956 that there is an embedding of the cluster algebra associated to the partial flag variety $Fl_{2,n-2;n}$, which describes the kinematics of $n$ massless particles, into that of the Grassmannian Gr$(n{-}2,2n{-}4)$. In this paper we connect these developments by showing that most of the rational symbol letters can be expressed in terms of flag cluster variables, and that all of the algebraic symbol letters arise from infinite mutation sequences.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Large deformations of Tr($Φ^3$) and the world at infinity

  ArXiv.org · 2025-04-15

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  The amplitudes of the non-linear sigma model can be obtained from those of Tr($Φ^3$) theory by sending the kinematic (Mandelstam) variables to infinity in a certain direction. In this paper we characterize the behavior of Tr($Φ^3$) amplitudes under a general class of large kinematic shifts called $g$-vector shifts. The objects that live in this world at infinity retain certain key amplitude-like properties, most notably factorization, and admit descriptions in terms of polytopes, but they are not generally amplitudes of any cognizable theory. We identify particular $g$-vector shifts that lead at infinity to mixed amplitudes involving two pions and any number of scalars, allowing us to provide polytopal descriptions of these amplitudes.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Hidden zeros of the cosmological wavefunction

  Journal of High Energy Physics · 2025-07-16 · 5 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  A bstract Motivated by the recent discovery of hidden zeros in particle and string amplitudes, we characterize zeros of individual graph contributions to the cosmological wavefunction of a scalar field theory. We demonstrate that these contributions factorize near these zeros for all tree graphs and provide evidence that this extends to loop graphs as well. We explicitly construct polytopal realizations of the relevant graph associahedra and show that the cosmological zeros have natural geometric and physical interpretations. As a byproduct, we establish an equivalence between the wavefunction coefficients of chain graphs and flat-space Tr( ϕ 3 ) amplitudes, enabling us to leverage the cosmological zeros to uncover the recently discovered hidden zeros of colored amplitudes.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Five-dimensional spinor helicity for all masses and spins

  Journal of High Energy Physics · 2025-07-03

  articleOpen access

  A bstract We develop a spinor helicity formalism for five-dimensional scattering amplitudes of any mass and spin configuration. While five-dimensional spinor helicity variables have been previously studied in the context of $$ \mathcal{N} $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mi>N</mml:mi> </mml:math> = 2, 4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills scattering amplitudes with spin less than two [1], we propose an alternative viewpoint that stems from d -dimensional spinor helicity variables avoiding the decomposition of a massive momentum into the sum of two massless momenta. By enumerating all possible independent little group tensors, we systematically build the full space of five-dimensional three-point tree-level scattering amplitudes for any configuration of spins and masses. Furthermore, we provide a prescription for computing the high energy limit of scattering amplitudes written in our spinor helicity variables. We also expect that our formalism will be applicable to effective field theories with higher spin, in particular, the scattering of highly spinning black holes in five dimensions.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Landau singularities of the 7-point ziggurat. Part I

  Journal of High Energy Physics · 2024-07-03 · 5 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  A bstract We compute the leading (first-type Landau) singularities of a certain four-loop 7-point graph that is related to the 7-point “ziggurat” graph by the graphical moves familiar from equivalent circuit theory. We find perfect agreement with a subset of the “heptagon symbol alphabet” that has appeared in the context of planar $$ \mathcal{N} $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mi>N</mml:mi> </mml:math> = 4 super-Yang-Mills theory. The remaining heptagon symbol letters are found in its subleading Landau singularities, which we address in a companion paper.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Supersymmetry and the celestial Jacobi identity

  Journal of High Energy Physics · 2024-04-18 · 9 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  A bstract In this paper we study the simplifying effects of supersymmetry on celestial OPEs at both tree and loop level. We find at tree level that theories with unbroken supersymmetry around a stable vacuum have celestial soft current algebras satisfying the Jacobi identity, and we show at one loop that celestial OPEs in these theories have no double poles.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• From Feynman diagrams to the amplituhedron: a gentle review

  arXiv (Cornell University) · 2024-10-15

  reviewOpen accessSenior author

  In this article we review, for a mathematical audience, the computation of (tree-level) scattering amplitudes in Yang-Mills theory in detail, in order to bridge the gap in understanding of the subject between mathematicians and physicists. In particular we demonstrate explicitly how the same formulas for six-particle NMHV helicity amplitudes are obtained from summing Feynman diagrams and from computing the canonical form of the $n=6, k=1, m=4$ amplituhedron.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• CAREER: QCD and String Theory

  NSF · $400k · 2007–2012

Frequent coauthors

• Marcus Spradlin

  240 shared

• Akshay Yelleshpur Srikant

  Brown University

  53 shared

• Congkao Wen

  Queen Mary University of London

  33 shared

• Jorge Mago

  Brown University

  32 shared

• Anders Schreiber

  Max Planck Institute for Physics

  30 shared

• Lecheng Ren

  28 shared

• Chrysostomos Kalousios

  University of Southampton

  26 shared

• Shounak De

  23 shared

Labs

• Brown University Physics DepartmentPI

Education

• M.A.

  Moscow State University

  1999

• Ph.D., Theoretical Physics

  Harvard University

  2002

Awards & honors

• NSF CAREER Award
• White House PECASE Award
• DOE Early Career Research Award
• Sloan Research Fellowship
• Simons Investigator Award