Talks

This is an introduction to background independent quantum theories of gravity, with a focus on loop quantum gravity and related approaches. Basic texts: -Quantum Gravity, by Carlo Rovelli, Cambridge University Press 2005 -Quantum gravityy with a positive cosmological constant, Lee Smolin, hep-th/0209079 -Invitation to loop quantum gravity, Lee Smolin, hep-th/0408048 -Gauge fields, knots and gravity, JC Baez, JP Muniain Prerequisites: -undergraduate quantum mechanics -basics of classical gauge field theories -basic general relativity -hamiltonian and lagrangian mechanics -basics of lie algebras

The information spectrum approach gives general formulae for optimal rates of codes in many areas of information theory. In this talk I shall relate the information spectrum approach to Shannon information theory and explore its relationship to ``entropic'' properties including subadditivity, chain rules, Araki-Lieb inequlities, and monotonicity.

Up to 90% of matter in the Universe could be composed of heavy particles, which were non-relativistic, or 'cold', when they froze-out from the primordial soup. I will review current searches for these hypothetical particles, both via elastic scattering from nuclei in deep underground detectors, and via the observation of their annihilation products in the Sun, galactic halo and galactic center. The emphasis will be on most recent results, and on comparison with reaches of future particle colliders, such as the LHC and ILC.

The concept of entanglement plays a central role in the field of strongly correlated quantum systems: it gives rise to fascinating phenomena such as quantum phase transitions and topological quantum order, but also represents a main obstacle to our ability to simulate such systems. We will discuss some new developments in which ideas, originating from the field of quantum information theory, led to valuable insights into the structure of entanglement in quantum spin systems and to novel powerful simulation methods

Cosmic strings are a generic by-product of string theory models of the inflationary epoch. These new cosmic "superstrings," as they are called, are distinct from the grand unified strings once thought to generate large scale structure. I will discuss what limits the WMAP and SDSS data have already placed on the properties of networks of cosmic strings, as well as avenues for their direct detection. I will also introduce cosmic superstrings' distinctive properties: they can bind into a possibly infinite number of higher-tension states, leading to the possibility of network frustration and for a high- string-tension UV-catastrophe. An analytical model constructed by myself and others has shown that superstring networks can evade these catastrophes under certain assumptions for the dynamics of string binding. I will describe ongoing work to verify numerically these binding dynamics. Finally, I will characterize several observational signatures that I and collaborators have identified that could allow us to discriminate between cosmic superstrings and other kinds of cosmic strings.

Space-time measurements and gravitational experiments are made by the mutual relations between objects, fields, particles etc... Any operationally meaningful assertion about spacetime is therefore intrinsic to the degrees of freedom of the matter (i.e. non-gravitational) fields and concepts such as ``locality'' and ``proximity'' should, at least in principle, be definible entirely within the dynamics of the matter fields. We propose to consider the regions of space just as general ``subsystems''. By writing the Hilbert space of the matter fields as a generic tensor product of subsystems we analyse the evolution of a state vector on an information theoretical basis and discuss general principles to recover a posteriori the usual space-time relations. We apply such principles to generic interacting second quantized models with a finite number of fermionic degrees of freedom. Finally, we discuss the possible role of gravity in this framework.

This is an introduction to background independent quantum theories of gravity, with a focus on loop quantum gravity and related approaches. Basic texts: -Quantum Gravity, by Carlo Rovelli, Cambridge University Press 2005 -Quantum gravityy with a positive cosmological constant, Lee Smolin, hep-th/0209079 -Invitation to loop quantum gravity, Lee Smolin, hep-th/0408048 -Gauge fields, knots and gravity, JC Baez, JP Muniain Prerequisites: -undergraduate quantum mechanics -basics of classical gauge field theories -basic general relativity -hamiltonian and lagrangian mechanics -basics of lie algebras

This is an introduction to background independent quantum theories of gravity, with a focus on loop quantum gravity and related approaches. Basic texts: -Quantum Gravity, by Carlo Rovelli, Cambridge University Press 2005 -Quantum gravityy with a positive cosmological constant, Lee Smolin, hep-th/0209079 -Invitation to loop quantum gravity, Lee Smolin, hep-th/0408048 -Gauge fields, knots and gravity, JC Baez, JP Muniain Prerequisites: -undergraduate quantum mechanics -basics of classical gauge field theories -basic general relativity -hamiltonian and lagrangian mechanics -basics of lie algebras

We study the generation of cosmological perturbations during the Hagedorn phase of string gas cosmology. Using tools of string thermodynamics we provide indications that it may be possible to obtain a nearly scale-invariant spectrum of cosmological fluctuations on scales which are of cosmological interest today. In our cosmological scenario, the early Hagedorn phase of string gas cosmology goes over smoothly into the radiation-dominated phase of standard cosmology, without having a period of cosmological inflation. Furthermore, we find that string thermodynamics implies that the fluctuations are Gaussian, and that the spectrum of tensor perturbations will exhibit a scale-invariant spectrum as well. We contrast the predictions of string gas cosmology in the Hagedorn phase with that of scalar field driven inflation, and comment on the possibility of observationally distinguishing between the two scenarios in future experiments.

We place bounds on the future lifetime of the universe based on present and future Type Ia supernovae and CMB observations, and explain features in the constraints on the past. We give a review of our work done in the last few years and present mainly our current work using a new Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) code. The resulting constraints exhibit features which have been observed by other groups previously, but which have not been explained so far. Using our new code, we are able to explain them and show that the new first-year data of the Supernova Legacy Survey (SNLS) prefer the cosmological constant, despite the fact that probability distributions for model parameters generically seem to favor dark energy models with non-trivial dynamics. We also calculate the future lifetime of the universe in a model derived from supergravity and discuss the proper interpretation of the results

A definite prediction of string theory is the existence of a scalar field, the dilaton. The presence of the dilaton generally leads to strong violations of the equivalence principle and thus describe a kind of gravitational force radically different from what we experience. String loop corrections, however, may render phenomenologically acceptable the region of the theory characterized by large values of the dilaton field i.e. the region with a strong tree level-coupling. Interestingly, in this framework, violations of the (weak) equivalence principle should be observed in the next satellite-based generation of experiments. A dilaton running towards infinity can also play the role of coupled dark energy and ease the so-called "cosmic coincidence" problem.