Quantum Foundations

Recent discoveries suggest that semiclassical gravity is more consistent with unitarity than previously believed. I will argue that it makes predictions for the measurements of asymptotic observers that are in complete accord with the idea that black holes are ordinary quantum systems, with states counted by the Bekenstein-Hawking formula. The argument uses the semiclassical gravitational path integral, incorporating newly discovered `spacetime wormhole' topologies. These new ideas revive an old paradigm, relating the information problem to the physics of baby universes.

I will review advances for gravity in asymptotically flat spacetimes arising from investigations into their structure in the infrared. The recently-discovered infinite-dimensional symmetries of the scattering problem is the central result underlying much of the progress. Key examples include symmetry-based explanations for the previously-observed universal nature of infrared phenomena including soft theorems and memory effects. Moreover, the appearance of a Virasoro symmetry among the symmetries of four-dimensional gravity has led to a proposal for holography in which the scattering amplitudes in quantum gravity are dual to correlation functions of a two-dimensional conformal theory. The other infinite-dimensional symmetry groups place additional non-trivial constraints on the dual theory.

I will highlight cosmological consequences of models inspired from string theory or non-perturbative approaches to QG. In particular, I will address the initial singularity, inflation and the late-time accelerated expansion. I will then briefly discuss how recent gravitational waves data can provide a test for some QG models.

A quantum theory of gravity is expected to be described by a Hilbert space endowed with additional mathematical structure appropriate for describing gravitational physics. I discuss aspects of this structure that can be inferred perturbatively, along with connections to arguments for holography and nonperturbative questions.

The study of scattering amplitudes has uncovered extraordinary dualities linking real-world particles such as gravitons, gluons, and pions. We discuss how these developments have been amalgamated with classic tools from effective field theory to derive new results relevant to the search for gravitational waves at LIGO. This approach has produced now state-of-the-art results on conservative orbital dynamics of binary black holes in the post-Minkowskian expansion. We also comment on recent work extending this framework to include tidal effects and spin.

Analogue gravity summarises an effort to mimic physical processes that occur in the interplay between general relativity and field theory in a controlled laboratory environment. The aim is to provide insights in phenomena that would otherwise elude observation: when gravitational interactions are strong, when quantum effects are important, and/or on length scales that stretch far beyond the observable Universe. The most promising analogue gravity systems up-to-date are fluids, superfluids, superconducting circuits, ultra-cold atoms and optical systems. While deepening our understanding of the laboratory systems at hand, the long term vision of analogue gravity studies is to advance fundamental physics through interdisciplinary research, by establishing and nurturing a new culture of collaboration between the various communities involved. I will discuss recent efforts to explore the quantum origin of the Universe, accelerated observer radiation, and rotating black hole physics in the laboratory.

I will begin with a short review of causal set theory (CST) focusing on the features that distinguish it from other approaches to quantum gravity. Most striking is a characteristic non-locality due to the Lorentz non-violating Poisson-discreteness in the continuum approximation. The discrete causal structure is rich enough, however, to extract local continuum geometric information, with geometric and topological observables corresponding to order-invariants in the causal set. These observables provide the necessary equipment in our search for a suitable quantum dynamics of causal sets. I will focus the rest of the talk on recent progress on this journey and the choices and challenges that lie ahead.