Events

Meeting with students

The meeting with students takes place on Monday February 13 at 13.00 in the A945 room (big lecture room on the 9th floor). All interested ones in the study of the Particle and Nuclear Physics program are kindly invited. Information in English will be given individually, the meeting is planned in Czech.

A brief introduction to loop quantum gravity’s spin networks and quanta of space

Prof. Simone Speziale

Aix Marseille Univ., Univ. de Toulon, CNRS, CPT, Marseille, France
https://www.cpt.univ-mrs.fr/~speziale/index.html

October 31st – November 11th, Auditorium T1,
Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University
V Holešovičkách 2, 180 00 Prague 8

Abstract
Indicative program for an introductory course to loop quantum gravity.
Individual lectures: 2 × 45 minutes.
Recommended background: classical general relativity, Hamiltonian structure of gauge theories,
basics of group representation theory, quantum field theory.

Program
Lecture 1 Introduction: why QG? Why is it hard? Basics of perturbative quantum gravity and motivations
for a background-independent approach.
Lecture 2 Canonical gravity: brief review of ADM formalism including surface terms, the problem of time
and Dirac observables, difficulties with the Wheeler-De Witt approach
Lecture 3 General relativity as an SU(2) gauge theory: derivation of the Ashtekar-Barbero variables
Lecture 4 Gauge-invariance, Wilson loops and tools from lattice gauge theory
Lecture 5 SU(2) invariants and Penrose’s spin networks states
Lecture 6 Holonomy-Flux algebra, area and volume operators; quanta of space
Lecture 7 Semiclassics on a fixed graph: coherent states, spin networks as a collection of fuzzy polyhedra
Lecture 8 Approaches to the dynamics: brief overview of canonical and covariant models
Lecture 9 More on covariant spin foam models: Regge calculus, SL(2, C) unitary irreps and the EPRL model;
Conclusions: what have we achieved so far, and we are we trying to achieve next

Lecture recordings:
http://utf.mff.cuni.cz/vyuka/NTMF080/

Lectures, schedule:

Mo   31.10. 18:10
Tue  1.11. 18:10
We   2.11. 17:20
Thu  3.11. 16:30
Fri    4.11. 14:00

Mo   7.11. 18:10
Tue  8.11. 18:10
We   9.11. 16:30
Thu 10.11. 16:30
Fri   11.11. 14:00

Meeting with students

The meeting with students takes place on Monday October 3 at 11.30 in the T2 lecture room. All interested ones in the study of the Particle and Nuclear Physics branch are kindly invited.

Amplitudes 2022

Amplitudes 2022, the 14th in a series of annual meetings, brings together a community of researchers in this fast-growing field of theoretical physics, interested in both formal and practical aspects of scattering amplitudes, and wide range of applications from pure mathematics to collider and gravitational wave physics.

Amplitudes Summer School will take place the week prior to the conference, August 1-6, 2022.