Vacuum state for LQC perturbations

 Tuesday, March 23rd

Rita Neves, Universidad Complutense

Vacuum state for LQC perturbations
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by Jorge Pullin

One of the main achievements of the model of cosmology known as Inflation, in which the universe after the Big Bang expands exponentially, is that it predicts the spectrum of cosmic microwave background radiation. This is radiation that comes to us directly from the earliest moments when the universe stopped being a primordial soup and became transparent to light. If one looks in different directions, the frequency of the radiation is not exactly the same. It differs in parts in a million. And the differences are not random. If one looks in a given direction and then looks at a circle in the sky centered in that direction and averages out the frequencies, if things were random, the result would be the same no matter what size the circle. It turns out it does, mathematically one says the signals are correlated. 

If one assumes one starts inflation with a quantum field present, and one assumes the simplest possible state for the quantum field (the vacuum) and evolves the quantum state through inflation, the state develops correlations that correspond precisely to the ones observed in the cosmic microwave radiation. This model is remarkable in its simplicity and efficacy. 

In traditional cosmology, where things start with a Big Bang where the whole universe is concentrated at a point, it appears natural to place the quantum state of the field in the vacuum at the beginning of inflation, as it is impossible to place it at the Big Bang as the theory breaks down there (densities and curvatures are infinite). But in loop quantum cosmology, the Big Bang is replaced by a Big Bounce where everything is finite and there is dynamics of the universe prior to it. Why would then place the state in a vacuum at the beginning of Inflation, as that instant in time does not have any privileged meaning. Perhaps one should place it at the Bounce (now this is possible as the space-time is regular there). Or somewhere else. All that means that at the beginning of Inflation, the quantum field will not be in the vacuum state anymore. This talk addressed these issues.

Supergravity in loop quantum gravity

Tuesday, March 9th

Konstantin Eder, FAU Erlangen

Supergravity in LQG
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Audio+Slides of the talk (333M)
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By Jorge Pullin, LSU

Supersymmetry is a conjectured symmetry of nature in which to each particle corresponds a "superpartner" particle. The partners of bosons are fermions and vice-versa. So for instance, the electron (a fermion) has a boson superpartner known as the "selectron" and so on. No superpartner has ever been observed in reality so it is conjectured that this symmetry is broken in nature and can only be present at very high energies. Unfortunately, experiments at large accelerators like the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland, are putting tighter and tighter bounds on supersymmetry. Supersymmetry is usually incorporated into string theory, hence the name superstrings. 

If one incorporates this symmetry into gravity, one obtains supergravity. This theory potentially has interesting properties. It could avoid the infinities one faces in usual perturbative quantum gravity, although this is not entirely clear yet.

This talk was about applying loop quantum gravity techniques to supergravity. It updated the treatment with modern techniques (older results referred to techniques that are not used anymore, in particular the use of complex variables) and further insights on how supersymmetry can manifest itself in the form of a gauge symmetry, the kind of symmetry that is the basis for the description of the other forces in nature. Among other aspects it explored the behavior of the theory in cosmology and how one could use supersymmetric matter as a "clock" to study the evolution in time. It also considered calculations of black hole entropy and how it could lead to connections with similar calculations in string theory.