Physics (Internal)

Quantum Gravity and the Standard Model

This event is part of the Physics Department Colloquia Series.

I describe recent progress in background independent quantum theories of gravity.  These are theories whose formulation requires no classical metric or fields and no global symmetries. The presentation begins with an introduction to the basic ideas, hypotheses and results of loop quantum gravity and related models of quantum spacetime.  I first review how such models may be tested by upcoming experiments that test Poincare invariance at Planck scales.  I then describe recent work by Markopoulou and Kribs based on the application of methods from quantum information theory which shows that a large class of these models have emergent degrees of freedom that carry conserved quantum numbers not related to general relativity.  In one class of such models the simplest such emergent excitations can be mapped to a composite model of the quarks and leptons.