Emil Mottola

Emil Mottola

Adjunct Professor of Physics and Astronomy, University of New Mexico. APS Fellow (Division of Gravitational Physics, 2024). Affiliate, New Mexico Consortium.

I earned my Ph.D. from Columbia University in theoretical physics in 1979, with Norman H. Christ. I was a postdoctoral member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton from 1979 to 1982, then a research fellow at the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara from 1982 to 1986. In 1986 I joined the High Energy Physics group T-8 of the Theoretical Division at Los Alamos National Laboratory, and remained based there until 2021.

I work on particle physics, quantum field theory, non-equilibrium and condensed matter physics, general relativity, cosmology, and the physics of black holes. About 100 publications, more than 13,000 citations. The list is on Google Scholar.

The central interest is reconciling Einstein’s classical general relativity at macroscopic scales with the quantum Standard Model at the smallest scales. The tension becomes acute in black holes, and in the paradoxes they pose for quantum theory, as Hawking emphasized. The history of physics says that is where the hidden assumptions live.

With Pawel O. Mazur I proposed that black holes are not holes, but gravitational vacuum condensate stars: equally compact, with a physical surface and a non-singular dark energy interior. The basis for that has since been developed from quantum effective theory — the conformal anomaly and a dynamical theory of vacuum energy — relevant both to gravastars and to cosmological dark energy. The present work is the observational signatures that could distinguish the two in gravitational-wave and multi-messenger astronomy, and dynamical dark energy in cosmology.

The faculty stub remains at UNM. Office: PAIS 3314. Email: emottola@unm.edu · mottola.emil@gmail.com.