QG2 2008: International Conference on Quantum Geometry and Quantum Gravity

[marcus]

The dates are already set June 30 - July 4, 2008
This time it will be correctly called the Conference on Quantum Geometry and Quantum Gravity---more accurate than just saying "Loops"---
and will be hosted at the University of Nottingham.

http://www.maths.nottingham.ac.uk/qg/Meetings.html

Loops '04 Marseille http://www.lpta.univ-montp2.fr/users/philippe/quantumgravitywebsite/
Loops '05 Potsdam http://loops05.aei.mpg.de/
Loops '07 Morelia http://www.matmor.unam.mx/eventos/loops07/index.html
QGQG '08 Nottingham

The ESF (European Science Foundation) set up its QGQG branch in Autumn 2006. The first official funding decision was taken in December 2006, to fund the first QGQG school, which took place March-April in Zakopane.
The first deadline for submitting QGQG workshop proposals was this month, April 2007.
A workshop in Non-Commutative Field Theory will take place in Vienna later this year.

 

[francesca]

I don't know if it will be the "Loops '08", it would be just the conference of the QGQG network...
And if we follow the path of past years, in 2008 there will be also the Marcel Grossman Meeting.
Well, btw Barrett gave in Zakopane some appointments for the future...

 

[marcus]

good about giving appointments. unless there is a reason not to pass along the information, please let us know the essentials of what he said.
glad to see you back, Francesca. Hope the school went well for you.

 

[francesca]

Barrett gave a list of future appointmantsin 2008, but I noted down only the few ones of my interest...

• next QGQG in Denmark in June
• the Nottingham conference in July
• another appointments in Madrid in October

I spent some great days in Poland... Thiemann was good but he almost present the same of his incoming book, Livine was very interesting but I had some problems to understand him at all because of my ignorance and because Freidel who told before about spinfoam was not so clear. Maybe my favorite speaker has been Schlenker, he prepared good slides and I enjoyed to know more about pants decomposition. Reuter lecture made a deep discussion arising. What about Rovelli? I have a lot to say, but today is holiday in Italy so you have to wait!
Cheers, F

 

[ccdantas]

(...) I have a lot to say, but today is holiday in Italy so you have to wait!
Cheers, F

Hi Francesca,

Thanks for briefly sharing your impressions about that very interesting school. I very much wanted to attend it, but it was impossible.

Will the slides become available?

Thanks
Christine

 

[f-h]

The organizers promised that slides will be made available on the web page.

It was a great school with lots of ideas and lots to be learned, most importantly it was a great way for all of us beginners to get to know the other people who are studying and beginning to work in this field.

 

[marcus]

The organizers promised that slides will be made available on the web page.

It was a great school with lots of ideas and lots to be learned, most importantly it was a great way for all of us beginners to get to know the other people who are studying and beginning to work in this field.

Thanks to both of you francesca and f-h! Please tell us more as time permits.
In fact it does seem like an excellent idea to have a QGQG school where the young generation (grad students and postdocs) can meet each other face-to-face and begin to form working contacts. I was glad to hear that there will be a QGQG-TWO school in 2008. Francesca says in Denmark in June 2008.

Having a school in June is a good preparation for getting more out of the July 2008 general QGQG conference in Nottingham UK.

 

[francesca]

Hi Frank the Great! nice to see you here again ;-)

Well, as Frank wrote we were told that all the notes would be disponible as soon as possible, so I preferred listening well than writing down everything. I saw that some of the speakers had already written notes, while the most interesting people hadn't: Freidel, Livine, Rovelli... so we have to wait a lot. Richard, one of the organizers who is also a PF guy, will advise us... He also thought to create a forum for all tha partecipants of these schools, cool!
Rovelli didn't give lectures. The former was a general discussion, most of us were beginners, so we asked him to show us how all the different subjects we were studing are related each other: Regge calculus, LQG, TQF, CDT... deal with spinfoam that is based on the Barrett-Crane model, so Rovelli is working on a modification of it in order to resolve some problems in the graviton propagator development.
Some questions that we tried to understand were:

1. what are states if they are not located in spacetime?
2. what is time if H\psi=0 ?
3. linearization?
4. how are 1 and 2 related? Why do we need both?

We also pointed out positive and negative values in LQG:

• - computation: it's impossible to pass from Plank computation to scattering computation
• - the actual Hamiltonian operator is too mach complicated: is it really the right one?
• + definition of state (spinnetwork): we know quantum exitations of state
• + the theory is unbelively conservative in its constituents: QM and GR
• + it's ultraviolet finite

The latter was the time for questions: he made a paper passing in order to receive questions from everyone. It was actually of great interest. The pity was that most of the other speakers were left yet.
I think that one of the most interesting things that happened there was the dialog between Rovelli and Reuter and their relative equipes of students. For example I had again a deep positive impression of Eugenio Bianchi.
Actually I had a lot of good impression from most of people there!
Unfortunately in my university I'm the only one interested in QG, so it was a great occasion for me to meet other guys who are going to work on it!
My only problem is that I will feel so loonely at home

 

[f-h]

Hi francesca, likewise nice to see you (or rather your writing...) :) Not quite back yet but shall be soon...

Also prevail, QG tends to be lonely and even in a bigger group you're bound to be quite alone with the problem you work on... At the moment there is one PhD student in the entire UK working on GFTs to my knowledge... *g*

I completely agree with your impression of Eugenio Bianchi, we ended up discussing Reuters approach and the propagator over dinner with Alejandro one day (see his blog). His criticism was extremely sharp and to the point, and he clarified some crucial points of the propagator calculation. I know that some people took notes during Freidel/Livine and I will definitely try to get my hands on them...

 

[francesca]

At the moment there is one PhD student in the entire UK working on GFTs to my knowledge...

I hope to join you soon ;-)​

... Alejandro one day (see his blog) ...

Does he have a blog?​

 

[f-h]

Fingers crossed!

Alejandros Blog is at: http://realityconditions.blogspot.com/

He already has two posts up, on LQG and Asymptotic Safety respectively...

 

[francesca]

Actually a good review!

 

[marcus]

Hi francesca,...
I completely agree with your impression of Eugenio Bianchi, we ended up discussing Reuters approach and the propagator over dinner with Alejandro one day (see his blog). His criticism was extremely sharp and to the point, and he clarified some crucial points of the propagator calculation...

A trivial thing I noticed.

I just glanced at the list of participants who have registered for Loops '07 and happened to see that Eugenio Bianchi, whom you mention, will be there.

As well as Alejandro Satz----quite a few of the same people in fact. It looks like it will be a good conference. I hope very much that we will get some reports

 

[marcus]

Information about the July 2008 QGQG conference is beginning to become available.

http://www.maths.nottingham.ac.uk/conferences/qgsquared-2008/

It is called QG² 2008

that is, the "QG-squared" conference of 2008.

These are the conference topics listed:
Quantum geometry, quantum gravity. Non-commutative geometry, quantum groups, and their application to quantum physics.

Quantum groups application to quantum physics implies DSR.

So far I have not seen any indication that it will be mainly limited to scholars from participating (EU) countries.
Hopefully my impression is right and it will be a major international conference on the scale of Loops '05 Potsdam and Loops '07 Morelia.