Inaugural Workshop on Emergent Geometries

17 Nov 2025, 09:00 → 21 Nov 2025, 17:00 Europe/Stockholm

Albano Building 3

Andrea Di Biagio (IQOQI Vienna, BRCP), Eugenia Colafranceschi (University of Western Ontario), Florian Niedermann (Stockholm University, Nordita), Guilherme Franzmann (Stockholm University, Nordita), Jan Glowacki (ICTQT), Joakim Flinckman (Stockholm University), Niels Linnemann

Rationale and scope

The inaugural workshop of the EmerGe collaboration will bring together researchers in quantum gravity, and related fields to discuss emergent geometric structures in theoretical physics. This workshop aims to foster collaboration and exchange of ideas on how geometric concepts emerge from underlying physical principles.

The five-day program will feature a combination of invited talks, contributed presentations, and interactive discussion sessions. We have designed the schedule to allow ample time for informal discussions and collaborative work, recognizing that some of the most valuable exchanges happen outside formal presentations.

Our goal is to create an environment that encourages the exploration of new ideas and the formation of new research directions and collaborations. We welcome participants from diverse backgrounds and at all career stages who share an interest in understanding the fundamental nature of spacetime and geometry.

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Themes

The workshop will cover a wide range of topics related to emergent geometries, including but not limited to:

• Concepts of emergent geometry, spacetime, and gravity
• Emergent geometries from quantum entanglement
• Experimental and observational constraints on emergent geometry scenarios
• Holographic principles and AdS/CFT correspondence
• Mathematical foundations of quantum geometry

Invited speakers have been asked to focus on the conceptual foundations of their research in emergent geometries as much as on their concrete results.

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Format

The workshop will include:

• Keynote presentations by invited speakers 
• Moderated panel discussions on key open questions in the field
• Collaborative working sessions designed to spark new ideas and cross-disciplinary exchange
• Participants will engage in unconference sessions (self-organized but with two facilitators per group) in which they will initiate discussions or mini-workshops on topics they care about. Ideas will be proposed via Slido or directly during the workshop.
• Social events to encourage networking and community building
• Excursion and dinner: On Wednesday, we’ll take time off for a visit to the iconic Vasa Museum and a festive conference dinner in Östermalm.

 

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Invited speakers

We are pleased to announce the following invited speakers:

• Prof. Baptiste Le Bihan 

• Prof. Barbara Soda 

• Prof. Chunjun Cao

• Prof. Daniele Oriti 

• Prof. Emily Adlam

• Dr. Enrico Cinti

• Prof. Paolo Perinotti

• Prof. Richard Dawid 

• Prof. Sebastian de Haro 

• Prof. Stefano Liberati 

• Prof. Ziqi Yan

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Call for participation

Due to limited space, only a select number of additional participants can be admitted to the event. Applications for on-site participation will be accepted until May 30 2025, with notifications sent to successful applicants by June 10, 2025. There is the possibility for successful applicants to present a poster. As already stated above, we welcome participants from diverse backgrounds and at all career stages who share an interest in understanding the fundamental nature of spacetime and geometry.

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Venue

Nordita (Albano Building 3), Stockholm, Sweden.

Registration starts from 08:30, on Monday the 17^th of November, at Nordita, located in Albano Campus House 3, at Albanovägen 29, on floor 6.  Talks take place in the same building on floor 4, room 4205.

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Excursion and Dinner

On Wednesday, we’ll take time off for a visit to the iconic Vasa Museum. A group leaves after the poster session from Nordita around 4 pm. You can join spontaneously.
Entrance fee: 195 SEK

After that, we enjoy a festive conference dinner at Artilleriet in Östermalm at 19:30. The dinner is paid for workshop participants.

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Accommodation and travel support

Accommodation and travel support can unfortunately only be provided for the invited speakers.

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Organizers

The workshop is organised by members of the EmerGe Collaboration:

• Andrea Di Biagio (Postdoc at IQOQI Vienna - Austria)

• Eugenia Colafranceschi (Postdoc at Universidad Complutense de Madrid - Spain)

• Florian Niedermann (Assistant Professor at NORDITA, Stockholm - Sweden)

• Guilherme Franzmann (Assistant Professor at NORDITA, Stockholm - Sweden)

• Jan Głowacki (Postdoc at IQOQI Vienna - Austria)

• Joakim Flinckman (PhD Student at Stockholm University, Stockholm - Sweden)

• Niels Linnemann (Scientific collaborator at University of Geneva, Geneva - Switzerland)

 

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Sponsored by:

We are grateful for the financial support of the GTT and the financial and logistical support of Nordita.

Monday 17 November

09:00 Registration (Nordita floor 6)

1 Introduction

Talk: Prof Baptiste Le Bihan

2 Spacetime Emergence: Revolution or Footnote?

The idea that spacetime is not fundamental comes in several versions, depending on which aspects of space, time, or spacetime are called into question. Philosophically, such views can be framed as elimination, reduction, or derivativism — each offering a different metaphysical picture of how the world is structured. But what are the broader implications for physics, and for philosophy? A sceptic might dismiss them as technical details with little wider significance. An optimist might argue they carry far-reaching consequences. We will argue that spacetime emergence can indeed bear on several central areas of philosophy, including theories of consciousness, the philosophy of mathematics, accounts of causation, and conceptions of laws of nature. We will also suggest that it can significantly change how we view physics, both at the level of epistemology and methodology, but most importantly at the level of the overall metaphysical and ontological worldview that underlies physical theories. We will conclude cautiously: spacetime emergence does not automatically revolutionise philosophy, but in certain approaches it could genuinely reshape our understanding of fundamental questions across these domains.

Speakers: Prof. Baptiste Le Bihan, Dr Enrico Cinti

LeBihanCinti.pdf

10:30 Break

Talk: Prof. Daniele Oriti

3 Emergent space, emergent time: a template, an example, some conceptual implications

I discuss the general (formal and conceptual) steps that should be climbed for showing the emergence of space and time from non-spatiotemporal quantum structures. I illustrate an example of such emergence in the context of the tensorial group field theory formalism for quantum gravity, leading to an effective cosmological dynamics. Finally, I emphasize a number of conceptual/philosophical issues that are implied in such emergent spacetime programme and some lessons that we can learn from the known examples of it.

Speaker: Prof. Daniele Oriti

Talk-EmerGe-2025.pdf

11:45 Lunch

Panel

14:30 Fika

Unconference

16:00 Break

Discussion

17:15 Break

17:30 Reception

Tuesday 18 November

09:00 Coffee

Talk: Prof. Ziqi Yan

4 Emergent Gravity from Matrix Quantum Mechanics

I will give an introduction to how quantum gravity emerges from string theory and, furthermore, a relatively simple quantum system of an N x N matrix. In the large N limit, it was conjectured that matrix quantum mechanics describes full M-theory in eleven dimensions. This idea is closely related to the quantization of membranes in M-theory. I will then discuss recent progress on how non-Lorentzian quantum gravity emerges from decoupling limits of string theory that are associated with matrix quantum mechanics. Finally, I will comment on connections to holography in string theory.

Speaker: Prof. Ziqi Yan (Stockholm University, Nordita)

Ziqi.pdf

10:30 Break

Talk: Prof. Richard Dawid

5 Separating Ontology from Realist Commitment

The web of dualities encountered in the context of string theory creates a serious problem for scientific realism: how can a scientific realist about string theory anchor realist commitment, given that the dual theories seem to suggest vastly different ontologies? A response that has gained significant traction in recent years is the common core view: identify what is invariant under duality transformations and be realist about this common core of the dual representations. In this talk, we will propose a substantially different answer: detach ontology from realist commitment and be realist about the full theory as represented by any of the duals (or, in a sense, by all duals in conjunction). On this view, an ontology characterizes an observer’s perspective as represented by a near-classical limit of the theory, while (fundamental) realist commitment points at the observer-independent structure of the true theory. We argue that the separation of ontology from realist commitment not only accounts best for the message we get from string dualities but also provides an instructive perspective on realist commitment in quantum mechanics in general. The talk is based on joint work with Gui Franzmann.

Speaker: Prof. Richard Dawid

Richard_Dawid.pdf

11:45 Lunch

Panel

14:30 Fika

Unconference

16:00 Break

Discussion

Wednesday 19 November

09:00 Coffee

Talk: Prof. Paolo Perinotti

6 Quantum physics as quantum information (and just nothing more)

In the early 2000s the idea that quantum mechanics could be formulated starting from informational axioms broke the ground, as an outcome of the second quantum revolution. Since then, the formalism of Hilbert spaces, density matrices, quantum instruments and POVMs was successfully recovered in this perspective, marking an important milestone along the path. The next question regards the reconstruction of physical laws, in a context devoid of any mechanical notion from the outset. The computational model that is closest to the physical model of a quantum field is a quantum cellular automaton. We will discuss how dynamical equations of quantum field theories can be recovered along with space-time itself, from an abstract information processing scenario where elementary quantum systems form a cellular automaton. We will discuss some key aspects regarding the way in which geometry can emerge in the above illustrated scenario.

Speaker: Prof. Paolo Perinotti

Paolo_Perinotti.pdf

10:30 Break

Talk: Prof. Emily Adlam

7 Quantum Mechanics and the Large Reference Limit

Although there are good reasons to believe that quantum states are sometimes relativized to observers, there are difficulties for the view that quantum states can only be relativized to conscious macroscopic observers, and also for the view that quantum states can be relativized to any physical system. In this talk, I will argue for an alternative `emergence' approach such that we can indeed write down a description relative to any physical system, but the full formalism of quantum theory emerges only in the limit as the reference system becomes large. If this is true, it poses a challenge for attempts to understand the emergence of the classical regime from the quantum world, since our standard quantum descriptions may presuppose a classical system to which they are relativized. I will describe how this idea might give new insight into Extended Wigner's Friend paradoxes and the measurement problem, and then sketch some ideas for how we might generalize beyond quantum mechanics to characterize descriptions relative to other kinds of reference systems.

Speaker: Prof. Emily Adlam

Emily_Adlam.pdf

11:45 Lunch

Panel

14:30 Fika

Poster Session

16:00 Break

16:15 Excursion to Vasa Museum

Website: https://www.vasamuseet.se/en
A group leaves after the poster session from Nordita. You can join spontaneously.
Entrance fee: 195 SEK

19:30 Dinner

We go to Artilleriet in Östermalm.
Website: https://restaurangartilleriet.se/

Thursday 20 November

09:00 Coffee

Talk: Prof. Barbara Soda

8 Emergence of Spacetime from Fluctuations

In the first part of the talk, I will present a joint work with M. Reitz and A. Kempf. In the second part, I present new results, when we add interactions between the matter fields, and the physical process where an effective change in the signature occurs. We use a result of Hawking and Gilkey to define a Euclidean path integral of gravity and matter which has the special property of being independent of the choice of basis in the space of fields. This property allows the path integral to also describe physical regimes that do not admit position bases. These physical regimes are pregeometric in the sense that they do not admit a mathematical representation of the physical degrees of freedom in terms of fields that live on a spacetime. In regimes in which a spacetime representation does emerge, the geometric properties of the emergent spacetime, such as its dimension and volume, depend on the balance of fermionic pressure and bosonic and gravitational pull. That balance depends, at any given energy scale, on the number of bosonic and fermionic species that contribute, which in turn depends on their masses. This yields an explicit mechanism by which the effective spacetime dimension can depend on the energy scale. Finally, adding interactions between matter fields can lead to an effective signature change, and I will discuss in details the physical mechanism through which it occurs.

Speaker: Dr Barbara Soda

B_Soda_EmerGe Workshop.pdf

10:30 Break

Talk: Prof. Charles Cao

9 A Roadmap to Gravitizing Quantum Mechanics

Rather than seeking to quantize gravity, we explore how classical structures such as spacetime geometry and Einstein gravity can emerge from complex quantum systems. Guided by quantum error-correcting codes and the AdS/CFT correspondence, we show that while entanglement provides the scaffold for emergent geometry, an orthogonal resource—quantum magic—is essential for recovering gravitational features. We then present strategies and results that extend beyond anti-de Sitter space by leveraging the structure of general quantum codes. In particular, we highlight how the interplay between entanglement and magic in these codes can reproduce phenomena analogous to gravity and outline some open questions within this approach.

Speaker: Prof. Charles Cao

Towards Gravitizing Quantum Mechanics_short.pdf

11:45 Lunch

Panel

14:30 Fika

Unconference

16:00 Break

Discussion

Friday 21 November

09:00 Coffee

Talk: Prof. Stefano Liberati

10 From geometrodynamics to hydrodynamics and back: probing the nature of the spacetime river

Despite partial successes, our attempts to construct a consistent quantum theory of gravity remain incomplete. In recent years, however, the idea that spacetime itself may be an emergent concept has gained growing interest across a broad and diverse community. In this talk, I will outline some of the motivations for pursuing this perspective, and present a selection of toy models, largely inspired by analogue gravity, that highlight fundamental mechanisms potentially underlying gravitational phenomena. I will also discuss possible avenues for testing these ideas.

Speaker: Prof. Stefano Liberati

10:30 Break

Talk: Prof. Sebastian De Haro

11 String Theory and the Geometric View of Theories

In this talk, I will discuss the programme of viewing theories as geometric objects and its possible implications for quantum gravity. The talk aims to introduce, into philosophical discussions of quantum gravity and spacetime emergence, four elements from recent physics that I will argue are useful: namely, moduli spaces, metrics on spaces of theories, quasi-dualities, and the effective field theory perspective on string theory.
First, I develop the geometric view of theories, according to which a physical theory is a structured space of models equipped with topological and geometric structure, typically organised by a moduli space. Building on this, I propose a more specific framework, the model bundle, in which putative ‘theories’ are models (fibres) of a higher‑level structure. The fibres contain states and quantities, the base is a moduli space, and a structure group of quasi-dualities acts on the fibres; the total space thereby carries natural topological and algebraic‑geometric structure. I illustrate this with the Seiberg–Witten (1994) theory, where the moduli space is the complex plane with three punctures and the modular group acts as the structure group. Quasi‑dualities are local transition functions between fibres; when the bundle is trivial, dualities are recovered as global transition functions.
This geometric approach can be used to address two distinct philosophical issues. The first concerns the structure of scientific theories. In the recent literature on the semantic conception, it has been argued that a bare collection of models subject to kinematical or dynamical conditions is not sufficient to define a theory: additional structure on the space of models is required. The model‑bundle framework supplies precisely such structure and is motivated from the underlying physics. The second concerns the significance of metric distance between theories for the questions of reduction, emergence, and scientific realism. Since moduli-spaces metrics are derived from the underlying physics, they can be used to address these questions.
In the final part of the talk, I discuss one aspect of the significance of this geometric view for quantum gravity. The Swampland conjectures aim to distinguish the geometric and topological structure of moduli spaces of effective field theories that can, or cannot, be consistently coupled to gravity. I will argue that these conjectures, about distance in the moduli space and its volume, bear on the relation between low-energy information about the underlying quantum-gravity theory.

Speaker: Prof. Sebastian De Haro

11:45 Lunch

Panel

14:30 Fika

Unconference