Quantum relativity at the Marcel and grg

[marcus]

francesca has taught me to keep aware of the triannual rhythm of the two main international General Relativity and Gravitation conferences.
The Marcel Grossmann[/color] meetings that have been or will be held in 2000, 2003, 2006, ...
and the grg[/color] or "International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation" happening 2001, 2004, 2007,...

I want to note any trend in the impact of QR at these major international meetings.

The particular thing that sparked my interest was reading Ashtekar's paper that he gave in Berlin at the 2006 Marcel Grossmann.
It is extremely good. and has a kind of 'remedial education' role. The organizers insisted that he give a "recent advances" survey and a FAQ where he addressed the questions that non-LQG people had. I am glad the organizers did insist because he produced an excellent paper

Ashtekar's "LQG for string theorists" paper
http://arxiv.org/abs/0705.2222

Maybe that is the wrong term for it, but something like that. Very effective paper useful for wider-than-usual audience.

What I notice just looking at recent years (esp. 2006-2007) is the growing prominence of the Quantum Relativity people at the Marcel and the GRG. This may or may not be a trend and I want to check it out by inspecting

2000[/color] Marcel Rome
2001[/color] grg Durban (S.A.)
2002
2003[/color] Marcel Rio
2004[/color] grg Dublin (big Hawking black hole hoopla)
2005
2006[/color] Marcel Berlin---Ashtekar's invited talk giving survey, examples, and FAQ
2007[/color] grg Sydney---Renate Loll and Laurent Freidel among featured speakers (simplex gravity, spinfoam gravity-and-matter)
2008
2009[/color] Marcel...
2010[/color] grg...

 

[marcus]

You can see that the years 2005 and 2008 are significant gaps. 2005 was the year chosen by Hermann Nicolai's Potsdam Albert Einstein Institute to host a major international Quantum Relativity conference: Loops '05.
Potsdam Loops '05 turned out to be the biggest QR conference in many years. It had Renate Loll talk on simplex gravity and Martin Reuter talk about asymptotic safe quantum GR. Laurent Freidel gave a plenary talk. Rovelli reported on the spinfoam LQG graviton propagator. A whole day was devoted to Quantum Cosmology (i.e. replacing big bang singularity with a bounce.)
Memorable conference even for outsiders who watched the videos.

So what happens in 2008? This is another gap year. It turns out that John Barrett has scheduled a QGQG (Quantum Geometry and Quantum Gravity) conference at Uni Nottingham in the UK. And for a couple of weeks before the conference there will be a QGQG school in Denmark, for grad students and postdocs getting into quantum relativity research. That Nottingham conference could, in effect, be the Loops '08.