Raphael Bousso (/ˈbuːsoʊ/) (born 1971) is atheoretical physicist andcosmologist. He is a professor at theBerkeley Center for Theoretical Physics in the Department of Physics,UC Berkeley. He is known for theBousso bound on the information content of the universe.[1][2][3] WithJoseph Polchinski, Bousso proposed thestring theory landscape as a solution to thecosmological constant problem.[4][5]
Bousso was born inHaifa, Israel, the son of late scientistDino Bousso. He grew up nearAugsburg, Germany,[6] where he studied physics from 1990 until 1993. Bousso earned hisPh.D. atCambridge University in 1997; his doctoral advisor wasStephen Hawking. Bousso didpostdoctoral research atStanford University until 2000, and at theKavli Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara until 2002. In 2002/03, Bousso was a fellow at theHarvard University physics department and theRadcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Since 2002, he has been a professor in the physics department at theUniversity of California, Berkeley. In 2012, Bousso was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society "for fundamental discoveries in the field of quantum cosmology, including the covariant entropy bound and the string landscape."[7]
Bousso's research is focused onquantum gravity andcosmology, particularly through the study ofquantum information.[8] His 1999 covariant entropy bound[1] (Bousso bound) established a general relation between quantum information and the geometry of spacetime (i.e.,gravity).[9] The Bousso bound has since been refined and strengthened, leading to provable new results in quantum field theory, such as the quantum null energy condition.[10][11][12][13] Bousso has also worked on theblack hole information paradox (firewall problem).[14] Since 2018, he has led a consortium of theoretical and experimental physicists exploring and developing the relations between quantum gravity, quantum information, and quantum computing.[15][16]
In 2000, Bousso andJoseph Polchinski argued thatstring theory has many long-livedvacua, including solutions compatible with the observed positive value of thecosmological constant (vacuum energy).[4] This came to be called the "landscape of string theory."[17][5] Bousso has developed an approach to the cosmological measure problem,[18] with the ultimate goal of testing the string theory landscape.[19]
