QG '05 the other quantum gravity conference

[marcus]

QG '05 was held in September, on the island of Sardinia
Here is the program
http://www.phy.olemiss.edu/GR/qg05/program.html

There is a sampling of the abstracts here:
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=842631#post842631
and a little discussion, comparing this conference with Loops '05Here are the people who gave talks at QG '05

R. Jackiw (MIT, Cambridge MA, USA)

D. Seminara (Univ. Florence, Italy

P. Menotti (Univ. Pisa, Italy)

R. Williams (DAMTP, Cambridge, UK)

E.-J. Ahn (Univ. Chicago, USA)

M. Bento (IST, Lisbon, Portugal)

M. Bouhmadi-Lopez (Univ. Portsmouth, UK)

G. De Risi (Univ. Bari, Italy)

R. Garattini (Univ. Bergamo, Italy)

P. Klepac (U. Masaryk, Brno, Czech R.)

V. Melnikov (CGFM, Moscow, Russia)

W. Piechocki (Soltan Inst., Warsaw, Poland)

C. Stornaiolo (INFN Napoli, Italy)

B. Cvetkovic (Inst. Physics, Belgrade, Serbia)

C. Dappiaggi (Univ. Pavia, Italy)

M. Katanaev (Steklov Inst., Moscow, Russia)

J. Klauder (U. Florida, Gainesville, USA)

E. Melas (QMW College, London, UK)

A. Mikovic (U. Lusofona, Lisbon, Portugal)

D. Oriti (DAMTP, Cambridge, UK)

J.B. Pitts (Univ. Notre Dame, USA)

C. Wang (Univ. Aberdeen, UK)

M. Bianchi (Univ. Rome Tor Vergata, Italy)

A. Sagnotti (Univ. Rome Tor Vergata, Italy)

S. Carlip (UC Davis, USA)

J. Zanelli (CECS, Valdivia, Chile)

D. Cho (Raman Inst., Bangalore, India)

T. Christodoulakis (Univ. Athens, Greece)

C. Chryssomalakos (UNAM, Mexico City, Mexico)

D. Comelli (INFN Ferrara, Italy)

D. Fursaev (JINR, Dubna, Russia)

F. Girelli (Perimeter Inst., Canada)

S. Horata (GUAS, Hayama, Japan)

G.A. Mena Marugan (CSIC, Madrid, Spain)

J. Ryan (Univ. Cambridge, UK)

S. Alexeyev (U. Lomonosov, Moscow, Russia)

L. Cornalba (Univ. Rome Tor Vergata, Italy)

A. Fabbri (Univ. Bologna, Italy)

D. Grumiller (Univ. Leipzig, Germany)

J.-C. Lee (Nat. Chiao-Tung Univ., Taiwan)

S. Liberati (SISSA, Trieste, Italy)

M. Ortaggio (Charles Univ., Prague, Czech R.)

M. Tanabe (Waseda Univ., Tokyo, Japan)

S. Weinfurtner (Victoria Univ., New Zealand)

A. Marzuoli (Univ. Pavia, Italy)

L. Lusanna (INFN Florence, Italy)

O. Bertolami (IST, Lisbon, Portugal)

R. Maartens (Univ. Portsmouth, UK)

D. Anselmi (Univ. Pisa, Italy)

A. D'Adda (INFN Torino, Italy)

H.-T. Elze (U. Federal Rio de Janeiro, Brasil)

A. Feo (Univ. Parma, Italy)

D. Galehouse (Univ. Akron, USA)

C. Leiva (Univ. Tarapacá, Arica, Chile)

A. Nesterov (Univ. Guadalajara, Mexico)

M. Pavsic (Stefan Inst., Ljubljana, Slovenia)

A. Rogers (King's College London, UK)

R. Casadio (Univ. Bologna, Italy)

M. Cvitan (Univ. Zagreb, Croatia)

S. Fagnocchi (C. Fermi and INFN Bologna, Italy)

S. Farese (Univ. Valencia, Spain)

S. Mignemi (Univ. Cagliari, Italy)

J. Navarro-Salas (Univ. Valencia, Spain)

V. Pravda (Math. Institute, Prague, Czech R.)

W. Santiago-German (Univ. California, Davis, USA)

D. Terno (Perimeter Inst., Canada)

F. Markopoulou (Perimeter Institute, Canada)

J. Louko (Univ. Nottingham, UK)

R. Bousso (UC and LBL Berkeley, USA)

H. Nicolai (AEI, Golm, Germany)

I. Antoniadis (CERN, Geneva, Switzerland)

K.S. Stelle (Imperial College, London, UK)

I count 72 people giving talks, of which 7 were from the USA. This is slightly under 10 percent, about the same as at the October quantum gravity conference Loops '05.
Although the two conferences were organized by different people around different topics, with only partial overlap, it is interesting that the US participation was about the same at each. At Loops '05 there were 156 registered participants, of whom about 7 percent were from the USA.

 

[marcus]

Daniele Oriti begins his presentation with a quote from Homer Simpson and concludes by quoting Groucho Marx

he gives an overview of the Group Field Theory (GFT) approach to quantum gravity----its progress to date, its immediate goals for the future, and its relation to other QG strategies: Loops, Spinfoam, Dynamical Triangulations, Quantum Regge, Causal Sets

Daniele is from Cambridge. There seemed to be a fair number from there at QG '05. Ruth Williams of Cambridge chaired some of the sessions.

the development of GFT in QG has been led chiefly by Laurent Freidel, who was not at the conference (he only went to Loops '05) so in a sense Oriti was functioning as a stand-in. I think the talk is helpful. I have been puzzled by GFT, especially by how it relates to other QG, and it now seems a little clearer.