Conformal Nature of the Universe - 2012

TBA

This talk reviews the idea of quantum gravity with anisotropic scaling, and presents a scenario in which this theory of gravity is coupled to matter, described by the standard model or beyond.This "multicritical universe" scenario predicts systematic, energy-dependent, calculable Lorentz-violating…

The tremendous empirical success of Einstein's relativity has pushed Aether into a chapter in the history books, for nearly a century. However, a phenomenologically consistent quantum mechanical treatment of gravity has motivated a revival of aether, by taming its UV-divergences, or the cosmological…

I review the best-matching construction, and the striking properties of a Jacobi-type action first introduced by Baierelein, Sharp and Wheeler. The simplest theories compatible with such an action principle must have a universal light-cone and gauge symmetry. I also describe the implementation of…

I will start by showing that gravity, with positive cosmological constant in 2+1 dimensions, can be formulated as a theory of dynamic conformal spatial geometry. Exploiting the isomorphism between the isometry group of de Sitter space in D+1 dimensions and the conformal group in D dimensions, I will…

I shall describe Relationalism, especially in the Leibniz-Mach-Barbour sense of the word and my variations on that theme. My presentation shall give five extensions to Barbour's work: (more or less) phase space, categorization, subsystems analysis, quantization, and physics as a propositional logic…

TBA

In 2-dim it is known that a unitary, well defined quantum field theory, if scale invariant must also be invariant under conformal transformations. Whether this is also true in dimensions higher than two has been an open question for decades. We have discovered renomalization group flows in 4-epsilon…

Evidence from several approaches to quantum gravity hints at the possibility that spacetime undergoes a "spontaneous dimensional reduction" at very short distances. If this is the case, the small scale universe might be described by a theory with two-dimensional conformal symmetry. I will summarize…

The Conformal Method (as well as the closely related Conformal Thin Sandwich Method) has proven to be a very useful procedure both for constructing and for parametrizing solutions of the Einstein initial data constraint equations, for initial data sets with constant mean curvature (CMC). Is this…