IGC Inaugural Conference (Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos)

[marcus]

There will be an inaugural conference to celebrate the opening of the new
Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos, on 9 - 11 August at Penn State

http://www.gravity.psu.edu/igc/
http://www.gravity.psu.edu/igc/conf_files/prelim_agenda.html

Here's a sample from the program. I'll skip most of Thursday, all of Friday, and give the complete program for Saturday (which has some of the best talks.)

THURSDAY, AUGUST 9, 2007
First parallel session:

Cosmology: Physical Aspects
Chair: Mark Trodden

2:15 – 2:45 Cosmology – The Road Ahead
Mark Trodden (Syracuse)
2:45 – 3:05 “An Emergent Universe from Chiral Gravity”
Stephon Alexander (Penn State)
3:05 – 3:25 “Generating Inflation and Hierarchy in Supergravity Models”
Tirthabir Biswas (Penn State)
3:25 – 3:45 “The Closed k=+1 FRW Model in Loop Quantum Cosmology”
Kevin Vandersloot (Portsmouth)

...
...
...
SATURDAY, AUGUST 11, 2007

PLENARY SESSION:
Chair: Abhay Ashtekar

9:00 – 10:00 Roger Penrose (Oxford and Penn State)
“Conformal Cyclic Cosmology, Dark Matter, and Black Hole Evaporation”
10:00 – 11:00 Karsten Danzmann (Albert Einstein Institute)
"Multi-Wavelength Gravitational Wave Astronomy: A Dream Will Soon Be Reality”"
11:15 – 11:30 Coffee Break (Lobby, Life Sciences Building)
Chair: Hideo Kodama
11:30 – 12:30 Trevor Weekes (Whipple Observatory, Smithsonian)
"The Universe as Seen in TEV Gamma Rays"

PARALLEL SESSIONS

First Session: 2:00 - 3:30

Origins of High Energy Particles
Chair: John Beacom

“TeV Gamma Ray and Neutrino Sources in the Milky Way”
John Beacom (Ohio State)
“The Evolving Cosmic GRB Rate and Cosmogenic Neutrinos”
Matthew Kistler (Ohio State)
“Gamma Ray Bursts as VHE Sources “
Peter Mészáros
“UHE Cosmic Rays from Semi-Relativistic Hypernovae “
Xiang-Yu Wang

Black Holes and Gravitational Waves I
Chair: Deirdre Shoemaker

2:00 – 2:30 “Gravitational Waves from Neutron Stars”
Ben Owen (Penn State)
2:30 – 2:50 “Mergers of BH-NS Binaries”
Emmanouela Rantsiou (Northwestern)
2:50 – 3:10 TBA
Yi Pan (Maryland)
3:10 – 3:30 “The Cause and Consequence of the Mass Inflation Instability Inside Realistic Black Holes”
Andrew Hamilton (Colorado)

Approaches to Quantum Gravity III
Chair: Laurent Freidel

2:00 – 2:30 TBA
Laurent Freidel (Perimeter)
2:30 – 2:50 “Topological Aspects of Ashtekar-Barbero Formulation of General Relativity”
Simone Mercuri (CPT, Marseille)
2:50 – 3:10 “Contrasting LQC and WDW Theory Using an Exactly Solvable Model”
Parampreet Singh (Penn State)
3:10 – 3:30 “Universe with Cosmological Constant in Loop Quantum Cosmology”
Tomasz Pawlowski (Penn State)

SATURDAY, AUGUST 11, 2007, CONTINUED
Second Session: 4:00 – 5:30

Astroparticle Physics Beyond the Standard Model
Chair: Elena Aprile

TBA
Elena Aprile (Columbia)
“AUGER versus Z-Burst and UHE SUSY Signals”
Daniele Fargion ( )
“Neutrinos as Probes of Dark Matter”
Hasan Yuksel (Ohio State)
“A Generic Test of Modified Gravity Models which Emulate Dark Matter”
Emre Kahya (Florida)

Black Holes and Gravitational Waves II
Chair: Ben Owen

4:00 – 4:20 “Status of Initial LIGO”
Gregory Harry (MIT)
4:20 – 4:40 “Gravitational Wave Research at Hannover and Potsdam”
Peter Aufmuth (AEI, Hannover)
4:40 – 5:00 “The Roadmap to Advanced LIGO”
Paradeep Sarin (MIT)
5:00 - 5:20 “Can We Test Effective Quantum Gravity with Gravitational Waves?”
Nicolas Yunes (Penn State)

Approaches to Quantum Gravity IV
Chair: Laurent Freidel

4:00 – 4:20 “Simplicial Matter in Quantum Gravity”
Jonathan McDonald (Florida Atlantic)
4:20 – 4:40 “Computing the Lorentzian 10J Symbol”
Joshua Willis (Abilene)
4:40 – 5:00 “Quantum Extensions of Classical Singular Spacetimes – The CGHS Model”
Victor Taveras (Penn State)
5:00 – 5:20 “Time and M-Theory”
Djordje Minic (Viriginia Tech)
5:20 – 5:40 “Cosmological Vector Modes and Quantum Gravity Effects”
Golam Hossain (Penn State)

 

[jimgraber]

Hi Marcus,
I am registered and planning to attend this conference. “Best talks” is definitely a matter of your taste, and what you know something about, and what you are interested in. I will probably attend mostly gravitational wave and astronomically oriented talks and will probably miss most of the LQG ones. Even if I do go to an LQG talk, I probably won’t understand most of what’s said. Nevertheless, I may try to go to some of the easier ones, depending on what the competition is. I always try to learn what I can about topics other than my main interests if time and mental fatigue permit. I expect to be pretty close to being maxed out by Saturday afternoon, though.
Jim Graber

 

[marcus]

Hi Marcus,
I am registered and planning to attend this conference. “Best talks” is definitely a matter of your taste, and what you know something about, and what you are interested in. I will probably attend mostly gravitational wave and astronomically oriented talks...

this great news. I'm glad to know someone who will be there.
I'd like to hear your impressions and not just of the LQG part! The scope is very broad, the aim seems to be in part synergy ----productive interaction between specialties (including quite a lots of different kind of observational as well as theory)

...if I do go to an LQG talk, I probably won’t understand most of what’s said. Nevertheless, I may try to go to some of the easier ones, depending on what the competition is.

hope to hear about the general mood ambience, and also of new results (not simply LQG related!) it's all of real interest---cosmology is manyways hot.
glad you will be there.

 

[jimgraber]

Mark Trodden over at Cosmic Variance has now posted on this conference, and I have put up my long messy and mostly uneditted notes on my new blog at jgraber.wordpress.com

Jim Graber

 

[marcus]

Mark Trodden over at Cosmic Variance has now posted on this conference, and I have put up my long messy and mostly uneditted notes on my new blog at jgraber.wordpress.com

Jim Graber

thanks! for me it's always helpful to get any report and viewpoint from a conference that relates to quantumgravity in one way or another, and
there will be others looking for what you have to say about gravity wave astronomy, neutrino, cosmicray, gammaburst astronomy as well.
I will check it out immediately
http://jgraber.wordpress.com/