Theory Working Group

The Doubled Geometry of String Theory

by Felix Rudolph (Max Planck Institute for Physics, Munich)

Europe/Stockholm
Nordita 132:028

Nordita 132:028

Description
The arena of quantum gravity can be constructed as a doubled geometry which incorporates principles of classical and quantum mechanics, general relativity and string theory. This doubled space can be viewed as the phase space of a string or as the doubled target space that appears in Double Field Theory. Extended symmetries such as the O(d,d) group associated with T-duality of the string are an integral part of the construction. Such a setup has been dubbed "Born Geometry" and is an extension of Riemannian geometry to capture some features of quantum gravity. I will give a pedagogical introduction to this doubled geometry which can be formulated as a para-Hermitian space with a generalized metric. I will discuss what geometric structures appear and present a unique torsionfree connection for Born geometry in analogy to the Levi-Civita connection for Riemannian geometry.