Experimental Search for Quantum Gravity VI

University Of New Hampshire, Durham NH

Investigators

Abstract

The search for quantum gravity, the merger of general relativity and quantum mechanics, has been ongoing for eight decades and will never be finished until we have a complete and experimentally verified theory. While direct, detailed tests of quantum gravity are currently out of reach, there have been numerous proposals for experimental tests that indirectly shed light on one quantum gravity model or another. Many of these proposals rely on re-purposing technology and techniques originally developed for other scientific endeavors. The Experimental Search for Quantum Gravity meetings provide the critical cross-disciplinary environment so that experimentalists with expertise outside quantum gravity and quantum gravity theoreticians can discuss and make progress on both improving existing experimental tests of quantum gravity related physics and creating new ones. The meeting for 2020 will be held at the University of New Hampshire for one week in spring/summer. It will draw between 40-60 faculty and postdocs and have sessions on (1) quantum gravity signatures in cosmology, (2) prospective laboratory tests of aspects of quantum gravity, (3) analog gravity and Hawking radiation in condensed matter systems, (4) strong field observations, including those of black hole-black hole and black hole-neutron star mergers and horizon scale measurements, and corresponding constraints on black hole thermodynamics and quantum gravity motivated modified gravitational theories, and (5) tests of spacetime symmetries. There will two public talks: one on the theoretical and philosophical problems presented by quantum gravity, and one on the experimental tools used to test gravitational physics. Meeting talks and slides will be recorded, collected, and posted online for a period of three years after the meeting. The meeting will connect researchers from disparate theoretical and experimental fields, stimulating work on synthesizing existing techniques, multi-messenger astronomy, and quantum information approaches in quantum gravitational tests, and train younger scientists and students in the varied state of the art approaches. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.