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Tomasz Konopka QG approach---undergrad boost
Konopka graduated from Hamilton College in 2002 and went to Perimeter Waterloo for graduate study.
As undergrad at Hamilton he worked with Seth Major. This could be a good plan----people who want to get into QG can see if it worked out well. Seth may be a good coach for beginning researchers. Creative/supportive etc.
Konopka has just posted what impressed me as an excellent paper
http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0601030
A Field Theory Model With a New Lorentz-Invariant Energy Scale
Tomasz Konopka
20 pages
A framework is proposed that allows to write down field theories with a new energy scale while explicitly preserving Lorentz invariance and without spoiling the features of standard quantum field theory which allow quick calculations of scattering amplitudes. If the invariant energy is set to the Planck scale, these deformed field theories could serve to model quantum gravity phenomenology. The proposal is based on the idea, appearing for example in Deformed Special Relativity, that momentum space could be curved rather than flat. This idea is implemented by introducing a fifth dimension and imposing an extra constraint on physical field configurations in addition to the mass shell constraint. It is shown that a deformed interacting scalar field theory is unitary. Also, a deformed version of QED is argued to give scattering amplitudes that reproduce the usual ones in the leading order. Possibilities for experimental signatures are discussed, but more work on the framework's consistency and interpretation is necessary to make concrete predictions."
It is interesting to see how quickly one can get to the forefront in QG. Of course almost all the credit should go to Konopka. But favorable circumstances count too, I guess.
Here is a "Seth's Students" page that has photos of Tomasz and others and summaries of their undergraduate research.
http://academics.hamilton.edu/physics/smajor/students.html
Several others besides Tomasz evidently were doing undergrad research in QG and DSR. Pretty good show.
Judge for yourself. Seth Major may have talent as a teacher and there are not many miles between Hamilton (upstate NY) and Perimeter (Waterloo, Ontario Province) so one can drive over and hear talks. One could take Interstate 90 to Buffalo and then Waterloo is across the border.
Konopka already has several papers on arxiv including something about Loll CDT. But I did not notice until this most recent one. Now I see he coauthored last year with Etera Livine and Jerzy Kowalski-Glikman
Konopka graduated from Hamilton College in 2002 and went to Perimeter Waterloo for graduate study.
As undergrad at Hamilton he worked with Seth Major. This could be a good plan----people who want to get into QG can see if it worked out well. Seth may be a good coach for beginning researchers. Creative/supportive etc.
Konopka has just posted what impressed me as an excellent paper
http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0601030
A Field Theory Model With a New Lorentz-Invariant Energy Scale
Tomasz Konopka
20 pages
A framework is proposed that allows to write down field theories with a new energy scale while explicitly preserving Lorentz invariance and without spoiling the features of standard quantum field theory which allow quick calculations of scattering amplitudes. If the invariant energy is set to the Planck scale, these deformed field theories could serve to model quantum gravity phenomenology. The proposal is based on the idea, appearing for example in Deformed Special Relativity, that momentum space could be curved rather than flat. This idea is implemented by introducing a fifth dimension and imposing an extra constraint on physical field configurations in addition to the mass shell constraint. It is shown that a deformed interacting scalar field theory is unitary. Also, a deformed version of QED is argued to give scattering amplitudes that reproduce the usual ones in the leading order. Possibilities for experimental signatures are discussed, but more work on the framework's consistency and interpretation is necessary to make concrete predictions."
It is interesting to see how quickly one can get to the forefront in QG. Of course almost all the credit should go to Konopka. But favorable circumstances count too, I guess.
Here is a "Seth's Students" page that has photos of Tomasz and others and summaries of their undergraduate research.
http://academics.hamilton.edu/physics/smajor/students.html
Several others besides Tomasz evidently were doing undergrad research in QG and DSR. Pretty good show.
Judge for yourself. Seth Major may have talent as a teacher and there are not many miles between Hamilton (upstate NY) and Perimeter (Waterloo, Ontario Province) so one can drive over and hear talks. One could take Interstate 90 to Buffalo and then Waterloo is across the border.
Konopka already has several papers on arxiv including something about Loll CDT. But I did not notice until this most recent one. Now I see he coauthored last year with Etera Livine and Jerzy Kowalski-Glikman
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