CERN THEORY INSTITUTE

The goal of this TH Institute is to investigate problems associatedwith perturbative and
nonperturbative gravity, particularly in the context of scattering, black holes,
and cosmology. Much work on quantum gravity has focussed on short-distance problems
such as non-renormalizability and singularities. However, it has become increasingly
clear that quantization of gravity raises important long-distance issues,
which may be more important guides to the conceptual advances required.
These include the problems of black hole information and gauge invariant observables,
and those of inflationary cosmology. These questions pose quandaries with a local
quantum field theory description of physics at large distances. We plan for
the workshop to investigate how existing perturbative and non-perturbative approaches
address these questions, and how newer or future proposals might provide the
necessary ingredients for a consistent quantum theory of gravity.

Week 1: Sept 5-9 Conceptual issues, scattering and finiteness

The information paradox and other conceptual issues;
Approaches to gravitational scattering: perturbative, supergravity, string/AdS-CFT,
resummations, the gravitational S-matrix, "self-completeness," etc.
Information theoretic aspects?

Week 2: Sept 12-16 Local dynamical spacetime, inflation, and infrared issues

Infrared issues in inflationary cosmology: manifestations in physical observables?
Resummation; connection to self reproduction; perturbative incompleteness?
Quantum de Sitter space
The problem of gauge invariant observables; relational observables; the measure problem
Connections with the black hole evolving state?

Week 3: Sept 19-23 Quantization of gravity: old and new approaches

Review of various approaches to quantum gravity and their implications for these and related questions.

Coffee will be served in the TH Common Room before the morning lecture (9:30am) and after the afternoon discussion (3:30m).

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The current list of participants, including the weeks of their presumed attendance, is here.

For practical information about arrival, locations etc, see here

For any inquiries, our email adress is:  QG11.THinstitute at cern.ch