QGQG-One School | Zakopane | 22nd March - 4th April

[marcus]

http://www.fuw.edu.pl/~kostecki/school.html

The First Quantum Geometry and Quantum Gravity School

The workshop at Zakopane has started and will run thru 3 April. We may hear something about it from people who are attending.
These are some of the people there whose names you might recognize from participation or threads here at PF:Ambjorn Jan 27th March 30th March

Bengtsson Ingemar 23rd March 28th March

Budd Timothy 23rd March 3rd April

Engle Jonathan 22nd March 4th April

Fernandez-Borja Enrique 22nd March 4th April

Freidel Laurent 24th March 2nd April

Giesel Kristina 22nd March 4th April

Hellmann Frank 22nd March 4th April

Kowalski-Glikmann Jerzy 23rd March 31st March

Lewandowski Jerzy 22nd March 4th April

Livine Etera 27th March 4th April

Ma Yongge 22nd March 4th April

Okołów Andrzej 22nd March 4th April

Pawłowski Tomasz 23rd March 3rd April

Pereira Roberto 22nd March 4th April

Pushkina Irina 22nd March 4th April

Reuter Martin 22nd March 31st March

Rovelli Carlo 22nd March 4th April

Sahlmann Hanno 23rd March 3rd April

Satz Alejandro 22nd March 4th April

Smerlak Matteo 23rd March 3rd April

Thiemann Thomas 22nd March 4th April

Vidotto Francesca 21st March 3rd April

Williams Ruth 22nd March 26th March

more participants listed here:
http://www.fuw.edu.pl/~kostecki/school/partlist.html

 

[marcus]

Tomorrow, Tuesday 27 March is a free day and in the evening there is an overview talk

(18:00-19:30) Carlo Rovelli: Where are we in the path toward quantum gravity?

On Saturday 31 March also at the same time---6PM to 7:30PM, there will be an evening discussion to follow up on this.

In the second evening session I suppose that others besides Rovelli will give their views on how the project is progressing.

I would very much like to read a summary of what Rovelli says. I think that this QGQG school is one of the year's defining events for this research field.
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One of the things which it seems likely that Rovelli will point out is the appearance of the correct classical limit
in several cases reported during the past year or two.
I have been noticing this coming up increasingly during 2006 and 2007.

There is also a shift, it seems to me, in the direction of LQC phenomenology---that one sees for example in the recent paper of Magueijo and Singh.
And also in the direction of DSR phenomenology---scattering amplitudes, S matrix stuff---one sees this in the Freidel-Girelli-Livine paper. FGL aim to rebuild a DSR-QFT and derive some corrections to Standard particle physics that can be tested. (see the abstract of their paper.)

So that is my guess as to some things that Rovelli will be talking about in his overview: progress having been made on the "correct classical limit" business and a shift of priorities to QGQG phenomenology. (apparently one has to say QGQG to make sure that everyone hears "quantum geometry" as well as "quantum gravity" )

Oh, also there is a tendency for people to include matter as a facet of the geometry that they study. QGQG has stopped being a "pure" pursuit and space has become more noticeably integrated with matter (Freidel, Baez, Perez, Livine, Fairbairn, more people than I can remember right now or list). Perhaps Rovelli will mention that as well.

 

[Kea]

Marcus, there are also some interesting talks at this conference:

http://plato.tp.ph.ic.ac.uk/conferences/cosmology/

 

[marcus]

Marcus, there are also some interesting talks at this conference:

http://plato.tp.ph.ic.ac.uk/conferences/cosmology/

Kea there is a nice blog report on that cosmology conference you mentioned:
http://dorigo.wordpress.com/2007/03/27/the-miserable-near-future-of-cosmology/

Dorigo was attending and took pictures of slides to illustrate his summaries of some of the talks. He also has some amusing anecdotal stuff.

 

[jal]

Kea there is a nice blog report on that cosmology conference you mentioned:
http://dorigo.wordpress.com/2007/03/27/the-miserable-near-future-of-cosmology/

Dorigo was attending and took pictures of slides to illustrate his summaries of some of the talks. He also has some amusing anecdotal stuff.

Darn! ... It sure hard not to mix threads up in this forum.
Just wanted to add a little bit of info (off the topic)

I followed your link to http://dorigo.wordpress.com/2007/03/27/the-miserable-near-future-of-cosmology/ further and found more
http://astro.ic.ac.uk/~jaffe/
Andrew Jaffe
http://astro.ic.ac.uk/~jaffe/teaching/LHC.pdf
Discovering new particles with the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)
p. 7
Beyond the Standard Model
 The standard model is rather complex:
 SU(3)xSU(2)xU(1)
 strong + electroweak forces
 lots of fundamental particles, each with its own mass
 no unifying principle or mathematical structure (“gauge group”)
 (we already are pretty sure it’s not even right: massive neutrinos)
 Can we simplify, extend, complete, correct?

http://boombox.ucs.ed.ac.uk/physicspodcasts/genint/Jaffe Edinburgh 2007.pdf
page 45 & 46 shows that he does not reject the tetra in order to be able to have a connected topology.
jal

 

[marcus]

The ESF (European Science Foundation, remember those letters! ) has become a major QG player.

http://www.maths.nottingham.ac.uk/qg/

I've been reflecting on this and getting it into focus.
Besides this QGQG school that is currently happening, they have something else for November 2007 in the works

Their advisory board decided to support a workshop in Vienna: Noncommutative quantum field theory, Vienna, November 2007.

that doesn't JUST mean Alain Connes

I reckon you can count Laurent Freidel and John Barrett in there. Probably also Jerzy Kowalski-Glikman and Etera Livine.

In the spinfoam sector of the Loop community the most important thing happening right now is DSR and you can read Freidel's goal of a DSR-QFT in one of the papers in our "Most Influential Paper" forecast poll.

I would advise anyone who wants to watch the leading QG edge to take a hard look at the papers in the First Quarter 2007 MIP poll.

they also have plans to sponsor QGQG Conferences

QGQG is a good term because it doesn't have all the outdated associations that LQG has in people's minds.
Same community, different handle.

The important thing is that it is Quantum Geometry and Quantum Gravity----the quantum physics of spacetime geometry--that takes care of letting people know that it is background independent approaches where the whole geometry of spacetime is quantized---instead of having a prior chosen fixed space in which things are supposed to happen. It is the idea that QG people are always trying to get across, that distinguishes them from perturbative background-dependent approaches---basically it characterizes the LQG community.

 

[josh1]

I would advise anyone who wants to watch the leading QG edge...

It`s hardly fair to hold yourself out as an advisor to other members unless you can explain the physics that`s involved in this "leading QG edge". So please explain.

 

[marcus]

I think we should try to understand the makeup of the QGQG steering committee, of which John Barrett is chairman.

Harald Grosse (Austria)
Marc Henneaux (Belgium)
Larisa Jonke (Croatia)
Hermann Nicolai (Germany)
Jerzy Kijowski (Poland)
Roger Picken (Portugal)
Victor Aldaya (Spain)
Ingemar Bengtsson (Sweden)
Juerg Froehlich (Switzerland)
John Barrett (UK), Chair
Thomas Thiemann (advisory expert)

Ingemar Bengtsson is this nice funny downtoearth guy who just wrote a nice piece supporting Kirill Krasnov "non-metric gravity" idea. He is attending the Zakopane QGQG school that is going on currently. In effect someone who can report how it went, up the ESF chain.

John Barrett does spinfoam and Connes-style Noncommutative Geometry.
Thiemann used to do LQG and now does AQG.
Hermann Nicolai is a stringtheorist who knows something about non-string QG approaches and heads a wing of the Albert Einstein Institute at Potsdam.
I heard something interesting about Roger Picken but I forget what it is. Mabye someone more knowledgeable can fill in perpective on the interests and talents of this steering committee.

Its funny the different styles and institutional arrangements by which different groups of nations support scientific research.

Somehow Renate Loll at Utrecht got a lot of money for Quantum Geometry research networking---I think back in 2005. Then in 2006 they set this QGQG up with John Barrett as chairman. it looks to me as if the Europeans have seen an opportunity to TAKE THE LEAD away from the US in an essential area of fundamental physics theory. QGQG seems to be getting starved out in the US and prospering in Europe.

 

[marcus]

I just noticed that one of the QGQG steering committee is
Marc Henneaux

he is the co-author of an important 1986 paper

M. Henneaux and C. Teitelboim, p-form Electrodynamics
Foundations of Physics, number 16, page 593 (1986)

I have been hearing about some Henneaux and Teitelboim paper for some years but never looked at it---I don't think it is online. This is probably it.
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It is really exciting to see the ESF in action, and especially this QGQG wing.

I am a little familiar with the US version called NSF (national science foundation). Have sat in committee rooms. Was awarded NSF fellowship. helped with a NAS study for several years. NSF directs a lot of the research funding.

For some reason NSF has not set up a special branch to fund quantum geometrical Quantum Gravity. Europe is investing in future Nobel laureates and I do not see the US following suit. As yet.

It is going to be exciting to watch.
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WHOAH! here are Marc Henneaux articles on arxiv
http://arxiv.org/find/grp_physics/1/au:+Henneaux/0/1/0/all/0/1

I wonder if he is teaching at this year's QGQG school.
No. I just checked and he is not. But there is this guy Schlenker who might be doing similar stuff,
and Schlenker is teaching at the school. Here are his papers (some written with Kirill Krasnov)
http://arxiv.org/find/grp_physics/1/au:+Schlenker_J/0/1/0/all/0/1

I am getting a feel for there being a kind of mathematical maturity in this school and in the organization backing it.