- #1
leo.
- 96
- 5
I have a major in Mathematics and Mathematical Physics and I'm finishing a masters in Physics (just finishing to write down the dissertation really). I have also already enrolled the PhD course so that I need now to pick an advisor and a theme before june.
My main interest since the early days of the undergraduate course have always been in three major themes: quantum gravity (QG), general relativity (GR) and quantum field theory (QFT) as well as its variant in curved spacetimes.
Now, in my masters I decided to give a try to these new ideas of bringing quantum information and gravity together. Because of that I have worked on quantum information aspects of a free Klein-Gordon field on an eternal black hole background. It was nice but to be honest I decided that I don't feel like continuing with information theory on the PhD.
Since saying "QG, GR and QFT" is absurdly vague I tried to find something more concrete and found the paper "Lectures on the Infrared Structure of Gravity and Gauge Theories" by Andrew Strominger. I actually am interested in this since 2017 and I have reasons to believe this is a good idea for a PhD. Although I think this is highly subjective, a few "objective points" I have in mind are:
The issue is that I imagine that to be able to say: "well this has potential to be applied to this theoretical problem and I foresee that this is a possible result" requires a huge amount of experience that I don't have by now. In fact, I've enrolled a PhD course exactly to end with such a huge amount of experience in the involved themes!
For instance, Strominger wrote the section "Echoing triangles" showing a lot that can be done. I must be honest though that it is a bit overwhelming. In fact there seems to be many options (the black hole triangles, SUGRA, cosmology, superrotation symmetry, just to mention a few) and I actually don't know what is still open, what has already been exhausted and what can concretely be done.
So how could I come up with a "concrete objective" to write a research project? What are possible yet open questions fit for a PhD inside this formalism that I could consider?
Could someone point some viable research projects in this which lie in the intersection of quantum gravity, GR and QFT?
My main interest since the early days of the undergraduate course have always been in three major themes: quantum gravity (QG), general relativity (GR) and quantum field theory (QFT) as well as its variant in curved spacetimes.
Now, in my masters I decided to give a try to these new ideas of bringing quantum information and gravity together. Because of that I have worked on quantum information aspects of a free Klein-Gordon field on an eternal black hole background. It was nice but to be honest I decided that I don't feel like continuing with information theory on the PhD.
Since saying "QG, GR and QFT" is absurdly vague I tried to find something more concrete and found the paper "Lectures on the Infrared Structure of Gravity and Gauge Theories" by Andrew Strominger. I actually am interested in this since 2017 and I have reasons to believe this is a good idea for a PhD. Although I think this is highly subjective, a few "objective points" I have in mind are:
- It brings together all the things I'm interested in, there's QG, GR and QFT as well as QFT in curved spacetimes, so I have the opportunity to work and gain experience with the three things I have interest and that I want to follow a carreer on;
- Strominger says that the area is on "its infancy" and "there's a lot to be done". So surely this is good for starting a career;
- Since it has so much to be done if one of these possibility fails there are several others; This makes me more comfortable since as far as I know having original results in a PhD is mandatory, so that not getting anything isn't an option;
- There seems to be a large community working on this;
The issue is that I imagine that to be able to say: "well this has potential to be applied to this theoretical problem and I foresee that this is a possible result" requires a huge amount of experience that I don't have by now. In fact, I've enrolled a PhD course exactly to end with such a huge amount of experience in the involved themes!
For instance, Strominger wrote the section "Echoing triangles" showing a lot that can be done. I must be honest though that it is a bit overwhelming. In fact there seems to be many options (the black hole triangles, SUGRA, cosmology, superrotation symmetry, just to mention a few) and I actually don't know what is still open, what has already been exhausted and what can concretely be done.
So how could I come up with a "concrete objective" to write a research project? What are possible yet open questions fit for a PhD inside this formalism that I could consider?
Could someone point some viable research projects in this which lie in the intersection of quantum gravity, GR and QFT?