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.

On Spectral Triples in Quantum Gravity

Thursday May 29, 2008
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This talk is concerned with the existence of spectral triples in quantum gravity. I will review the construction of a spectral triple over a functional space of connections. Here, the *-algebra is generated by holonomy loops and the Dirac type operator has the form of a global functional derivation operator. The spectral triple encodes the Poisson structure of General Relativity when formulated in terms of Ashtekars variables.

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Affine Quantum Gravity: A Different View of a Difficult Problem

Thursday May 15, 2008
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For quantum gravity, the requirement of metric positivity suggests the use of noncanonical, affine kinematical field operators. In view of gravity\'s set of open classical first class constraints, quantization before reduction is appropriate, leading to affine commutation relations and affine coherent states. The anomaly in the quantized constraints may be accommodated within the projection operator approach, which treats first and second class quantum constraints in an equal fashion.

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Observables in perturbative de Sitter gravity

Thursday May 08, 2008
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TBA

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Renormalization in Noncommutative Quantum Field Theory

Thursday May 08, 2008
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This talk presents some recent results in renormalizable noncommutative quantum field theory. After introducing the renormalization group approach in the commutative setting I will procede to its generalization to the simplest noncommutative model, $phi_4^{star 4}$ on the Moyal space. The well known phenomenon of ultraviolet/infrared mixing is cured by adding a harmonic potential term to the free action. Under the new renormalization group, adapted to the noncommutative geometry, this model turns out to be renormalizable to all orders in perturbation theory.

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Trans-Planckian physics and renormalization

Thursday Apr 24, 2008

We analyze the trans-Planckian problem and its formulation in the context of cosmology, black-hole physics, and analogue models of gravity. In particular, we discuss the phenomenological approach to the trans-Planckian problem based on modified, locally Lorentz-breaking, dispersion relations (MDR). The main question is whether MDR leave an detectable imprint on macroscopic physics. In the framework of the semi-classical theory of gravity, this question can be unambiguously answered only through a rigorous formulation of quantum field theory on curved space with MDR.

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Emergent Time in Barbour and Bertotti\'s Timeless Mechanics

Thursday Apr 10, 2008
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The problem of time is studied in a toy model for quantum gravity: Barbour and Bertotti\'s timeless formulation of non-relativistic mechanics. We quantize this timeless theory using path integrals and compare it to the path integral quantization of parameterized Newtonian mechanics, which contains absolute time. In general, we find that the solutions to the timeless theory are energy eigenstates, as predicted by the usual canonical quantization.

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Quantum Spacetime

Thursday Feb 14, 2008
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The principles of Quantum Mechanics and of Classical General Relativity imply Uncertainty Relations between the different spacetime coordinates of the events, which yield to a basic model of Quantum Minkowski Space, having the full (classical) Poincare\' group as group of symmetries.

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Loop Quantum Gravity and Deformation Quantization

Thursday Feb 07, 2008
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Loop Quantum Gravity and Deformation Quantization

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Braid-like Chiral States in Quantum gravity

Thursday Jan 31, 2008
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There has been a dream that matter and gravity can be unified in a fundamental theory of quantum gravity. One of the main philosophies to realize this dream is that matter may be emergent degrees of freedom of a quantum theory of gravity. We study the propagation and interactions of braid-like chiral states in models of quantum gravity in which the states are (framed) four-valent spin networks embedded in a topological three manifold and the evolution moves are given by the dual Pachner moves. There are results for both the framed and unframed case.

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Emergent gravity from noncommutative gauge theory

Thursday Jan 24, 2008
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We show that the matrix-model for noncommutative U(n) gauge theory actually describes SU(n) gauge theory coupled to gravity.
The nonabelian gauge fields as well as additional scalar fields couple to a dynamical metric G_ab, which is given in terms of a Poisson structure. This leads to a gravity theory which is naturally related to noncommutativity, encoding those degrees of freedom which are usually interpreted as U(1) gauge fields. Essential features such as gravitational waves and the Newtonian limit are reproduced correctly.

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