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Quantum Gravity

This series consists of talks in the area of Quantum Gravity.

Seminar Series Events/Videos

Currently there are no upcoming talks in this series.

Jeudi nov 13, 2014
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It is by now well established that black holes emit a thermal radiation and undergo an evaporation process. The original Hawking evaporation scenario, based on quantum fields on a classical background geometry, has been vastly extended and improved, in order to take into account in particular the backreaction of the radiation on the geometry. This can be done for example in a semiclassical setup, where the Einstein equations are sourced by an effective stress energy tensor.

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Worldline formalism for covariant loop gravity

Jeudi nov 06, 2014
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I present a proposal for a worldline action for discretized gravity with the same field content as loop quantum gravity. The proposal is defined through its action, which is a one-dimensional integral over the edges of the discretization. Every edge carries a finite-dimensional phase space, and the evolution equations are generated by a Hamiltonian, which is a sum over the constraints of the theory.

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Worldline formalism for covariant loop gravity

Jeudi nov 06, 2014
Speaker(s):

I present a proposal for a worldline action for discretized gravity with the same field content as loop quantum gravity. The proposal is defined through its action, which is a one-dimensional integral over the edges of the discretization. Every edge carries a finite-dimensional phase space, and the evolution equations are generated by a Hamiltonian, which is a sum over the constraints of the theory.

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Complex Loop Quantum Cosmology

Jeudi oct 30, 2014
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We study in the context of loop quantum cosmology the effect of the analytic continuation that sends the Barbero-Immirzi parameter to a purely imaginary value. We show that this construction leads once again to a bouncing scenario, in which however the contracting and expanding phases on each side of the bounce are not symmetrical. Moreover, the minimal volume reached by the universe and the critical matter density become naturally independent of the Barbero-Immirzi parameter.

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Is B-Mode Polarization of the CMB the Holy Grail of Inflation?

Jeudi oct 16, 2014

I will discuss why the search for B-Mode Polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) is very important for early universe cosmology, but that a discovery of such a polarization mode is in no way a confirmation of inflationary cosmology.

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Observables and Change in Totally Constrained Systems

Jeudi sep 18, 2014
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We isolate an important physical distinction between gauge symmetries which exist at the level of histories and states, and those which exist at the level of histories and not states. This distinction is characterised explicitly using a generalized Hamilton-Jacobi formalism within which a non-standard prescription for the observables of classical totally constrained systems is developed. These ideas motivate a relational quantization' procedure which is different from the standard Dirac quanization'.

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Firewalls- A GR perspective

Jeudi sep 04, 2014
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This talk will examine the Firewall argument and a number of possible approaches to it, with a variety of simple examples to try to clarify various aspects of the arguments.

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Towards construction of a Wightman QFT in four dimensions

Mardi aoû 19, 2014
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We prove that the $\lambda\phi^4_4$ quantum field theory on noncommutative Moyal space is, in the limit of infinite noncommutativity, exactly solvable in terms of the solution of a non-linear integral equation. The proof involves matrix model techniques which might be relevant for 2D quantum gravity and its generalisation to coloured tensor models of rank $\geq 3$.

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Physical Hilbert space for the affine group formulation of 4D, gravity of Lorentzian signature.

Jeudi juil 31, 2014
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The authors have revealed a fundamental structure which has been hidden within the Wheeler-DeWitt (WDW) constraint of four dimensional General Relativity (GR) of Lorentzian signature in the Ashtekar self-dual variables. The WDW equation can be written as the commutator of two geometric entities, namely the imaginary part of the Chern-Simons functional Q and the local volume element V(x) of 3-space.

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Gravity, an unexpected journey: from thermodynamics to emergent gravity, Lorentz breaking and back...

Jeudi juin 19, 2014
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Thermodynamical aspects of gravity have been a tantalising puzzle for more than forty years now and are still at the center of much activity in semiclassical and quantum gravity. We shall explore the possibility that they might hint toward an emergent nature of gravity exploring the possible implications of such hypothesis. Among these we shall focus on the possibility that Lorentz invariance might be only a low energy/emergent feature by discussing viable theoretical frameworks, present constraints and open issues which make this path problematic.

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RECENT PUBLIC LECTURE

Mario Livio: Brilliant Blunders

Speaker: Mario Livio