Speaker
Nikolaos Mavromatos
Description
In the first part of the talk I will review the status of
searches of Quantum Gravity (QG) models that entail
non trivial ``optical'' properties of the vacuum, such as
a refractive index and/or birefringence, which may be
consequences of quantum fluctuating space times during
the propagation of high energy cosmic photons from
distant astrophysical sources. I will be careful in
explaining why recent arrival-time-of-photons
measurements from FERMI LAT do not necessarily
exclude QG models with induced modifications in the
photon's dispersion relation suppressed by a single
power of Planck mass.
In the second part of the lecture, I will discuss other
potential aspects of quantum gravity models, such as
Lorentz and CPT Violations, and/or decoherence effects
on matter, which do not necessarily lead to the
aforementioned energy dependent effective speed of
light in the QG medium. In the framework of CPT
Violation (CPTV), I will discuss prospects for constraining
QG-induced CPTV in entangled states of neutral mesons
in future facilities such as DA NE 2, as well as
prospects for precision measurements in atomic
transitions, and comparison of properties of atoms vs
those of anti-atoms, especially in view of the recently
available antimatter ``factories''. I will finish the talk
with some discussion on using neutrinos from intense
astrophysical sources, such as supernovae, as probes of
such Lorentz and/or CPT Violating and Decoherening
models of QG.