Christine's basic curriculum for Quantum Gravity

[marcus]

http://christinedantas.blogspot.com/2006/02/basic-curriculum-for-quantum-gravity.html

QG continues to gain definition as a field. Lee Smolin is currently teaching an online video course---two lectures a week---that some of us are following.

Today Christine Dantas, who has a QG blog, posted her reading list for people who want to find out about QG. It is arranged in various categories including easy popular level, academic prerequisites, and textbook level. A substantial portion of her list is available online.

If you have any good additions to the list that you want to suggest, I think you could contribute them in the comments to the above posting.

 

[selfAdjoint]

I read her list this morning, and if you hadn't posted about it here, I was going to. I'm wondering if her selection of Wald for GR and QM in curved spacetime is crucial or accidental (i.e., the book she happened to have). What do our knowledgeable posters here think? I have and use MTW, but am open to suggestions.

 

[f-h]

Wald beats MTW for a preparation for QG, simply because of age. Wald uses a much more modern language that put's you in a good starting position to go all out fibre/framebundle, gaugefield/tetrad/triad. It is in terms of these that GR can be quantized.

However, there's only so much detailed GR you need to know for QG, and lot's of what you need to know isn't in either book, so I think it's not essential.

 

[selfAdjoint]

Thanks. I have a background in topology for the bundles, and I am cool with Nakahara for the other. So I think I can do without it.