Dynamics and Symmetry in Quantum Gravity

Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton FL

Investigators

Abstract

Many of the deepest problems in theoretical physics revolve around combining Einstein's theory of general relativity with quantum theory, two of the major intellectual achievements of the twentieth century. The resulting theory is called "quantum gravity" and is needed to better understand the origin of the universe, the nature of space and time on small scales, what happens inside black holes, and the very origin of our universe, the big bang. By enabling graduate students and post-docs to participate in frontier physics, and to interact with other research groups, this award will have a broad and long-term impact on the development of future scientists. The results of the research will be disseminated to the scientific community through peer reviewed publication and scientific lectures, as well as to the general public through public lectures and other means. Much remarkable progress in understanding the big bang has occurred through the use of loop quantum cosmology, a simplified version of loop quantum gravity which models the universe as a whole. This award seeks to bridge the gap between this simplified model and full loop quantum gravity in order to solidify confidence in the predictions of the former. This involves a number of interesting conceptual questions for which the principal investigator already has preliminary answers. A second part of this research aims to answer key questions regarding the Feynman sum-over-histories formulation of loop quantum gravity, in which space and time are treated in a more unified way, and to bring this formulation closer to completion.