Prof. Dr. Daniele Oriti, Professor of Theoretical Physics, Universidad Complutense de Madrid
What is time? What is space? Our best current theory of gravity, i.e. General Relativity, teaches us that gravity is spacetime geometry, thus that spacetime itself is a physical system. Moreover, we have by now many reasons to believe that we need to go beyond General Relativity, and towards an even more radical quantum framework in which space and time themselves are not fundamental.
After introducing the motivation for considering spacetime, gravity and geometry as emergent notions, I discuss the general (formal and conceptual) steps that should be climbed for showing the emergence of space and time from non-spatiotemporal quantum structures. I illustrate an example of such emergence in the context of the tensorial group field theory formalism for quantum gravity, leading to an effective cosmological dynamics. Finally, I emphasize a number of conceptual issues that are implied in such emergent spacetime programme and some lessons that we can learn from the known examples of it.
Article
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2112.02585
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1612.09521
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1302.2849
Recording
The talk will be streamed and there will be a recording.