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marcus
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MTd2, thanks for reminding us about the Loops 2009 conference that starts about one week from now in Beijing! In another thread you gave the current link to the main conference page:
http://www.mighty-security.com/loop/index.htm
(I imagine that the earlier website was hacked and so they were obliged to move the site to "mighty-security.com".)
Maybe we can learn something about the current state of Loop/Spinfoam research from looking at this conference.
I note right away that Loops 2009 is highly unusual in one respect: previous Loops conferences have had plenary speakers from outside the immediate Loops community:
Loops 2005 Potsdam had Robbert Dijkgraaf (string), Renate Loll (CDTriangulations), Martin Reuter (AsymSafe), and Roy Maartens (mainstream obs. cosmology). In each conference there are only a limited number of plenary talk slots so they are very precious, it is remarkable that the Potsdam organizers (Hermann Nicolai, Abhay Ashtekar and friends) gave four plenary slots away to outside Loop. I think that openness has paid off enormously to the community.
Loops 2007 Morelia had Ambjorn (CDTriangulations) and Reuter (AsymSafe). There was an unintended time-conflict with Strings 2007 Madrid so they could not get anybody good to give a string talk, but they tried. The did the best they could under the circumstances.
Loops 2008 (aka QG2 2008 Nottingham) carried on the openness tradition with several plenary speakers discussing CDTriangulations, AsymSafe, and one String speaker named Maloney (a former co-author with Witten now at U Toronto). If I remember right there were also CausalSets and or Graphity speakers. And most notably NonCommutativeGeometry was represented! Even Connes main collaborator Chamseddine was plenary speaker. So last year was very inclusive.
So the Loops conference has the tradition of being inclusive of all the major nonstring QG programs, and also some openness to String talks.
Now this year it is different. Loops 2009 Beijing is exclusively drawing from Loop/Spinfoam research. Maybe this is good to happen now and then, just for variety, but I hope it is not going to be a permanent change. I think that the Planck Scale conference in June that we have seen turned out to be an important landmark precisely because it brought people from a number of programs together to talk to each other and question each other.
=====================
The brief Preparatory School before the conference does include a series of lectures by Ruth Williams on Regge Calculus.
Here is the Prep School description:
==quote from the Prep School page==
Topics:
Loop quantum gravity, Loop quantum cosmology, Spin foams, Group field theory, Regge calculus
Lecturers:
Martin Bojowald (Penn State, USA)
Daniele Oriti (AEI, Germany)
Carlo Rovelli (Univ of Mediterranee, France)
Thomas Thiemann (AEI, Germany)
Ruth Williams (Cambridge Univ, UK)
==endquote==
Now for the main Loops 2009 conference, I estimate that the number of participants will be about 230. There are 6 pages and about 40 names on each page.
Let's look at the list of Plenary Speakers:
http://www.mighty-security.com/loop/plenary.htm
A.Ashtekar (Penn state)
J.Engle (CPT, Marseille)
M.Bojowald (Penn state)
A.Corichi (Morelia)
B. Dittich (Utrecht)
L.Freidel (Perimeter)
H.Y.Guo (ITP, CAS)
J.Lewandowski (Warsaw)
R.Maartens (Portsmounth)
J.Pullin (Louisiana)
V.Rivasseau (Paris-Sud XI)
C.Rovelli (Marseille)
H.Sahlmann (Karlsrahe)
P.Singh (Perimeter)
S.Speziale (Marseille)
T.Thiemann (AEI)
M.Varadarajan (Raman Inst)
K.Giesel(Nordita)
A.Perez(CPT, Marseille)
It does have some diversity: Roy Maartens is a top person in observational cosmology (how to test various QG theories by looking at the imprint of gravitational waves on the CMB and all kinds of early universe signals, he runs the Portsmouth center for obs. cosmo.)
And Vincent Rivasseau could be talking about Noncommutative field theory or about Renormalization stuff (loosely related to AsymSafe QG).
So it is not totally focussed on core Loop/Spinfoam research. Dittrich has a Loops background but she has recently been working on quantum Regge calculus. (That could indicate something.) Madhavan Varadarajan has worked outside but I think currently his main focus is in Loop/Spinfoam.
http://www.mighty-security.com/loop/index.htm
(I imagine that the earlier website was hacked and so they were obliged to move the site to "mighty-security.com".)
Maybe we can learn something about the current state of Loop/Spinfoam research from looking at this conference.
I note right away that Loops 2009 is highly unusual in one respect: previous Loops conferences have had plenary speakers from outside the immediate Loops community:
Loops 2005 Potsdam had Robbert Dijkgraaf (string), Renate Loll (CDTriangulations), Martin Reuter (AsymSafe), and Roy Maartens (mainstream obs. cosmology). In each conference there are only a limited number of plenary talk slots so they are very precious, it is remarkable that the Potsdam organizers (Hermann Nicolai, Abhay Ashtekar and friends) gave four plenary slots away to outside Loop. I think that openness has paid off enormously to the community.
Loops 2007 Morelia had Ambjorn (CDTriangulations) and Reuter (AsymSafe). There was an unintended time-conflict with Strings 2007 Madrid so they could not get anybody good to give a string talk, but they tried. The did the best they could under the circumstances.
Loops 2008 (aka QG2 2008 Nottingham) carried on the openness tradition with several plenary speakers discussing CDTriangulations, AsymSafe, and one String speaker named Maloney (a former co-author with Witten now at U Toronto). If I remember right there were also CausalSets and or Graphity speakers. And most notably NonCommutativeGeometry was represented! Even Connes main collaborator Chamseddine was plenary speaker. So last year was very inclusive.
So the Loops conference has the tradition of being inclusive of all the major nonstring QG programs, and also some openness to String talks.
Now this year it is different. Loops 2009 Beijing is exclusively drawing from Loop/Spinfoam research. Maybe this is good to happen now and then, just for variety, but I hope it is not going to be a permanent change. I think that the Planck Scale conference in June that we have seen turned out to be an important landmark precisely because it brought people from a number of programs together to talk to each other and question each other.
=====================
The brief Preparatory School before the conference does include a series of lectures by Ruth Williams on Regge Calculus.
Here is the Prep School description:
==quote from the Prep School page==
Topics:
Loop quantum gravity, Loop quantum cosmology, Spin foams, Group field theory, Regge calculus
Lecturers:
Martin Bojowald (Penn State, USA)
Daniele Oriti (AEI, Germany)
Carlo Rovelli (Univ of Mediterranee, France)
Thomas Thiemann (AEI, Germany)
Ruth Williams (Cambridge Univ, UK)
==endquote==
Now for the main Loops 2009 conference, I estimate that the number of participants will be about 230. There are 6 pages and about 40 names on each page.
Let's look at the list of Plenary Speakers:
http://www.mighty-security.com/loop/plenary.htm
A.Ashtekar (Penn state)
J.Engle (CPT, Marseille)
M.Bojowald (Penn state)
A.Corichi (Morelia)
B. Dittich (Utrecht)
L.Freidel (Perimeter)
H.Y.Guo (ITP, CAS)
J.Lewandowski (Warsaw)
R.Maartens (Portsmounth)
J.Pullin (Louisiana)
V.Rivasseau (Paris-Sud XI)
C.Rovelli (Marseille)
H.Sahlmann (Karlsrahe)
P.Singh (Perimeter)
S.Speziale (Marseille)
T.Thiemann (AEI)
M.Varadarajan (Raman Inst)
K.Giesel(Nordita)
A.Perez(CPT, Marseille)
It does have some diversity: Roy Maartens is a top person in observational cosmology (how to test various QG theories by looking at the imprint of gravitational waves on the CMB and all kinds of early universe signals, he runs the Portsmouth center for obs. cosmo.)
And Vincent Rivasseau could be talking about Noncommutative field theory or about Renormalization stuff (loosely related to AsymSafe QG).
So it is not totally focussed on core Loop/Spinfoam research. Dittrich has a Loops background but she has recently been working on quantum Regge calculus. (That could indicate something.) Madhavan Varadarajan has worked outside but I think currently his main focus is in Loop/Spinfoam.
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I am loosing hope. Also, won't you comment about 
for me) - I am quite suspicious of Rovelli unless Freidel or Reisenberger are coauthors.