ICGC-07: International Conference on Quantum Gravity in December

[marcus]

The sixth International Conference on Gravitation and Cosmology will be held in December.
Here is the homepage
http://meghnad.iucaa.ernet.in/~icgc07/index.html
Here is the list of plenary speakers.
http://meghnad.iucaa.ernet.in/~icgc07/sub/plenary.htm
There are 21 plenary speakers listed of which SEVEN are discussing (non-string and string) Quantum Gravity.

Parampreet Singh--- Big Bang Singularity Resolution in Loop Quantum Cosmology
...
Sumit Das--- Black Holes and Hawking Evaporation in String Theory

Alejandro Corichi--- Black Holes in Loop Quantum Gravity

Madhavan Varadarajan--- Black Hole Information Loss Puzzle in LQG

Carlo Rovelli--- Graviton Propagator

Laurent Freidel--- Low Energy imprints of Quantum Gravity
...
Martin Reuter--- Asymptotic safety

This is a broad spectrum conference covering all areas---observational, Xray BH study, numerical work, classic GR, gravity wave, CMB, Gravity Probe B---the whole shebang.
So the range of topics is similar to the Marcel Grossmann meetings and the GRG: big international conferences which are held every three years and give an idea of what cosmologists are interested in these days.

The remarkable thing about ICGC-07 is that one THIRD of the plenary talks are (non-string and string) QUANTUM GRAVITY.
This same balance of interest is reflected in the focus of the parallel sessions, where contributed talks will be presented. There will be three parallel sessions, one of which is focused on QG.

Parallel Workshop Sessions

I Classical General Relativity and Gravitational Waves

II Cosmology

III Quantum Gravity
============
Here are some links for future reference (schedule and abstracts are not posted yet).
http://meghnad.iucaa.ernet.in/~icgc07/sub/plenary.htm
http://meghnad.iucaa.ernet.in/~icgc07/sub/schedule.htm
http://meghnad.iucaa.ernet.in/~icgc07/sub/submitted_abs.htm

 

[marcus]

This conference is now only about six weeks off----starts 17 December.
It would be nice to hear from anyone who plans to attend.
A lot of people may not know where Pune is. It is on the northern half of the West Coast and used to be called Poona.
Same general region as Bombay (which is now named Mumbai).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pune
==============================

I suspect some of the active research posting we have been seeing lately is run-up to this conference.
Notice that Corichi and Singh are both on the list of those giving invited plenary talks. Just in the past week we got a couple of new papers from them and heard of more in the works.
Discussed here:
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=194678

Both Rovelli and Freidel are giving invited talks, and their recent posting (especially from Rovelli's Marseille group) is discussed here:
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=194651
===============================

One of the plenary talk titles has been changed since my initial post

Sumit Das: Cosmological Singularities in String Theory and Gauge-Gravity Duality

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EDIT TO REPLY to the next post:
Garrett, it is even stranger because Thanu is based at Pune, where they are holding the conference.
He is Professor and Dean of Core Academic Studies at the center for astrophysics there. It's on his turf.
http://www.iucaa.ernet.in/~paddy/

 

[garrett]

Odd that Thanu Padmanabhan is nowhere to be seen in relation to this conference... anyone have a clue why not?

 

[marcus]

Schedule change. Rovelli had to cancel but in his place Sami Mathur will talk on fractional branes.

So there are still going to be 7 invited talks related to quantum gravity. Five will be non-string QG (Freidel, Reuter, Corichi, Singh, Varadarajan) and two will be string people (Sumit Das, Sami Mathur).