Probing the quantum nature of spacetime

by Dr Astrid Eichhorn (Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics)

Thursday 16 May 2013, 13:30 → 14:30 Europe/Stockholm

122:026

In this talk I will discuss how to test asymptotically safe quantum gravity. After a brief review of the main conceptual ideas of the asymptotic safety program, I will discuss how the existence of a low-energy limit described by General Relativity can be used to distinguish a unimodular version of the theory from the standard one. I will then discuss the random walk of a fictitious probe particle as a means to access quantum properties of spacetime, and discuss new results on the spectral dimension and the underlying stochastic process in asymptotic safety as well as other approaches to quantum gravity. Finally, I will point out how particle scattering processes change at high energies in the asymptotic-safety scenario, and what the corresponding experimental signatures are.