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.

Application of the black hole-ﬂuid analogy: identiﬁcation of a vortex ﬂow through its characteristic waves

Thursday Jan 10, 2019
Speaker(s):

Black holes are like bells; once perturbed they will relax through the emission of characteristic waves. The frequency spectrum of these waves is independent of the initial perturbation and, hence, can be thought of as a `fingerprint' of the black hole. Since the 1970s scientists have considered the possibility of using these characteristic modes of oscillation to identify astrophysical black holes. With the recent detection of gravitational waves, this idea has started to turn into reality.

Collection/Series:
Scientific Areas:

Defining Spatial geometry via Spacetime Causal Structure

Thursday Oct 25, 2018
Speaker(s):

We  find an  approximation of  the induced spatial distance on a Cauchy hypersurface using only the causal structure and local volume element. The approximation can be made arbitrarily precise for a globally hyperbolic spacetime with compact Cauchy hypersurfaces.

Collection/Series:
Scientific Areas:

Null conservation laws for gravity

Thursday Oct 11, 2018
Speaker(s):

I discuss the canonical degrees of freedom of metric Einstein gravity on a null surface. The constraints are interpreted as conservation equations of a boundary current. Gravitational fluxes are identified, and the Hamiltonians of diffeomorphism symmetry are discussed. Special attention is given to the role of a modification of the phase space at the boundary of the null surface. Based on 1802.06135 with Laurent Freidel.

Collection/Series:
Scientific Areas:

Asymptotic analysis of spin foam amplitude with timelike triangles

Thursday Oct 04, 2018
Speaker(s):

The large j asymptotic behavior of 4-dimensional spin foam amplitude is investigated for the extended spin foam model (Conrady-Hnybida extension) on a simplicial complex. We study the most general situation in which timelike tetrahedra with timelike triangles are taken into account. The large j asymptotic behavior is determined by critical configurations of the amplitude. We identify the critical configurations that correspond to the Lorentzian simplicial geometries with timelike tetrahedra and triangles. Their contributions to the amplitude are phases asymptotically, whose exponents equal

Collection/Series:
Scientific Areas:

Thursday Sep 20, 2018
Speaker(s):

I will discuss certain irrelevant operator deformations of holographic conformal field theories that define a one parameter family of quantum field theories which are thought to be dual to quantum gravity in finite regions.
Some examples include the "$T\bar{T}$ deformation of two dimensional holographic CFTs, its generalisations and higher dimensional cousins.

Collection/Series:
Scientific Areas:

Thursday Aug 02, 2018
Speaker(s):

Despite being broadly accepted nowadays, temperature gradients in thermal equilibrium states continue to cause confusion, since they naively seem to contradict the laws of classical thermodynamics. In this talk, we will explore the physical meaning behind this concept, specifically discussing the role played by the university of free fall. We will show that temperature, just like time, is an observer dependent quantity and discuss why gravity is the only force capable of causing equilibrium thermal gradients without violating any of the laws of thermodynamics.

Collection/Series:
Scientific Areas:

Boundary contributions to (holographic) entanglement entropy

Thursday Jun 28, 2018
Speaker(s):

The entanglement entropy, while being under the spotlight of theoretical physics for more than ten years now, remains very challenging to compute, even in free quantum field theories, and a number of issues are yet to be explored.

Collection/Series:
Scientific Areas:

Towards the top quark mass from asymptotic safety

Friday Jun 08, 2018
Speaker(s):

I will discuss a proposed mechanism to fix the value of the top quark mass from asymptotic safety of gravity and matter, and will review the status of the proposal.

Collection/Series:
Scientific Areas:

Beyond isotropic & homogeneous loop quantum cosmology: theory and predictions

Thursday Jun 07, 2018
Speaker(s):

In this talk I will discuss several recent advances in loop quantum cosmology and its extension to inhomogeneous models. I will focus on spherically symmetric spacetimes and Gowdy cosmologies with local rotational symmetry in vacuum. I will discuss how to implement a quantum Hamiltonian evolution on these quantizations. Then, I will focus on how we can extract predictions from those quantum geometries, and finally analyze a concrete example: cosmological perturbations on Bianchi I spacetimes in LQC.

Collection/Series:
Scientific Areas:

The shape of a more fundamental theory?

Thursday May 31, 2018
Speaker(s):

I suggest a minimal practical formal structure for a more fundamental theory than the Standard Model + GR and review a mechanism that produces such a structure.  The proposed mechanism has possibilities of producing non-canonical phenomena in SU(2) and SU(3) gauge theories which might allow conditional predictions that can be tested.

The slides and other writings are posted on my web page

Collection/Series:
Scientific Areas: