Testing Quantum Gravity: from wishful thinking to excitement and then ...?

por Nick E. Mavromatos ((King's College London))

lunes 12 jun. 2006 12:00 → 13:00 Europe/Madrid

Sala Seminarios (Dpto. de Física Teórica (UVEG))

This talk is meant to provoke some active discussion on the possibility of experimentally accessing signatures of quantum gravity. After reviewing current theoretical models and approaches to the (still eluding) theory of quantum gravity, I will try to describe various experimental tests, terrestrial, astrophysical and even cosmological, and discuss various sensitivities of current and immediate-future experimental facilities. In recent years the possibility of performing such tests (with sensitivity close to that expected by Quantum Gravity) in current and immediate-future experiments caused some excitement, especially in view of the fact that in certain approaches of quantum gravity CPT and/or Lorentz symmetries appear to be violated at high-energy (Planckian) scales, but with "effective'' signatures that could be visible at a much lower energy scale. In the talk I will discuss how certain one could be that such effective signatures really represent quantum gravity effects. I will claim that some effects of quantum gravity appear at present to be unique, but the sensitivity of the respective tests is still an open issue and is highly model dependent.

Diapositivas transpis555.pdf