1-5 July 2019
The University of Manchester
Europe/London timezone
- pascos2019@manchester.ac.uk
- +44 (0)161 275 4171
The Local Organising Committee
The universe as a condensate of spacetime atoms
Presented by Dr. Steffen GIELEN
on
2 Jul 2019
from
14:30
to
14:50
Content
In the standard picture of cosmology, the Universe began at the Big Bang; the Big Bang itself is a singularity where the laws of physics break down. A quantum theory of gravity should resolve this singularity and help in understanding the initial state of the Universe needed to account for present observations. I will present some progress towards this goal in the group field theory approach to quantum gravity, using the idea of a universe formed as a "condensate", i.e. a very homogeneous quantum configuration, from a large number of discrete building blocks of geometry. I will show how this setting produces new cosmological models without an initial singularity, and how it can suggest a new mechanism for the generation of cosmological perturbations through quantum gravity vacuum fluctuations.
Place
Location: Schuster
Room: Rutherford Lecture Theatre