2013 Zakopane slides (Bianchi, Ashtekar)

[marcus]

http://th-www.if.uj.edu.pl/school/2013/speakers.html

We've seen a series of QG-related one-or-two-week schools, over the years. This year a Zakopane school was held 28 June thru 7 July in the lead-up to the Warsaw GR20 conference.
Abhay Ashtekar and Eugenio Bianchi each gave a series of lectures. Zakopane lectures are primarily aimed at graduate students interested in starting research in any of the areas covered by that year's school.

The slides PDF for several of the talks are available online.

Lectures by Ashtekar:
A mini-course on: Quantum Gravity & the Very Early Universe
(Understanding emerged from the work of many researchers, especially:
Agullo, Barrau, Bojowald, Campiglia, Cailleatau, Corichi, Grain, Kaminski, Lewandowski, Mielczarek, Mena, Nelson, Olmedo, Pawlowski, Singh, Sloan, Thiemann, Velhinho, Wilson-Ewing ...)
Lecture 1
The Big Bang Singularity & Loop Quantum Cosmology
1. Introduction: Singularity Resolution?
2. Loop Quantum Cosmology: Basic Results 3. Novel features at the Foundation
Lecture 2
Cosmological Perturbations
1. Classical Perturbation Theory
2. Quantum Fields on classical FLRW Space-times
3. Quantum fields on Quantum FLRW geometries
Lecture 3
An Extension of the Inflationary Scenario to the Planck Regime
1. Success and Limitations of Inflation
2. The LQC Strategy
3. Results: Pre-inflationary dynamics and its implications.
http://th-www.if.uj.edu.pl/school/2013/talks/ashtekar1.pdf
http://th-www.if.uj.edu.pl/school/2013/talks/ashtekar2.pdf

Lectures by Bianchi:
http://th-www.if.uj.edu.pl/school/2013/talks/Bianchi1.pdf
http://th-www.if.uj.edu.pl/school/2013/talks/Bianchi2.pdf
http://th-www.if.uj.edu.pl/school/2013/talks/Bianchi3.pdf
Spinfoam gravity: progress and perspectives
Lecture 1:
Path integral and the Spinfoam amplitude
Lecture 2:
Quantum geometry in Spinfoams
Lecture 3:
- gravitons
- quantum cosmology
- black hole entropy

 

[yenchin]

I was there :-) Ashtekar actually didn't manage to come due to storm in the US and cancellation of flight :-( he did make it to GR20 though.