General Relativity & Quantum Cosmology

Across different scales, symmetries shape physical systems: for example, in effective theories in condensed matter, various global symmetries are realized; at higher energy scales, the local symmetries of the Standard Model of particle physics take over. But what is the fate of symmetries at the Planck scale, where quantum gravity fluctuations kick in?

In this talk, I will focus on this question mainly from the perspective of asymptotic safety and will highlight a number of results about the role of symmetries in the interplay of asymptotically safe quantum gravity with matter. I will then mainly focus on particular discrete global symmetries, which have the attractive feature of generating mass-hierarchies without extra fine-tuning, and discuss whether or not these could be realized in quantum-gravity-matter models.

The Hartle-Hawking-Vilenkin state is defined on mini-superspace and is semiclassically related to inflationary theory.  However, the state suffers a few problems connected to the path integral of Euclidean or the Lorentzian measure of metrics.  In this talk, we will explore a way around these issues by working in the (Ashtekar) connection representation, a real Kodama-Chern-Simons state.  We find a generalized "Fourier Transform" that related the Chern-Simons-Kodama state to the Hartle-Hawking state beyond mini-superspace.  We end with some discussion and open ended questions for cosmology and quantum gravity.

LIGO's successful detection of gravitational waves has revitalized the theoretical understanding of the angular momentum carried away by gravitational radiation. An infinite-dimensional supertranslation ambiguity has presented an essential difficulty for decades of study. Recent advances were made to quantify the supertranslation ambiguity in the context of binary coalescence. In this talk, we will present the first definition of angular momentum in general relativity that is completely free from supertranslation ambiguity. The new definition of angular momentum is derived from the limit of the quasilocal angular momentum we defined previously.

I will consider the phase space at null-infinity from the r\rightarrow\infty limit of a quasi-local phase space for a finite box with a boundary that is null. This box will serve as a natural IR regulator. To remove the IR regulator, I will consider a double null foliation together with an adapted Newman--Penrose null tetrad. The limit to null infinity (on phase space) is obtained in the limit where the boundary is sent to infinity. I will introduce various charges and explain the role of the corresponding balance laws. The talk is based on the paper: arXiv:2012.01889.

The talk will be based on my latest two papers 2103.02616 and 2103.05700. 
In the first part, I will present my GRMHD simulation of a neutron-star post-merger disk with neutrino fast flavour conversion included dynamically. The fast conversion of neutrinos can lead to flavour space equipartition ubiquitously on the time scale as short as 1ns. Due to the reduction of the number density of electron and anti-electron neutrino, the ejecta becomes more neutron rich. The final r-process nucleosynthesis sees an enhanced abundance of heavy elements close to the solar values. A similar effect may allow for increased lanthanide production in collapsars.
In the second part, I will present fast magnetic energy dissipation through the collision of Alfven waves with anti-aligned magnetic fields. The collision produces a current sheet sustained by an electrical field breaking the MHD condition. Particles entering the current sheet are accelerated following a relativistic variation of Speiser orbit and escape with higher energy. This mechanism can dissipate a large fraction of wave energy, nearly 100% when the wave magnetic field equals the background magnetic field. The fast dissipation may occur in various objects, including magnetars, jets from accreting black holes, and pulsar wind nebulae.

A remarkable aspect of 4-dimensional complexified General Relativity (GR) is that it can be non-trivially deformed: there exists an infinite-parameter set of modifications with the same degree of freedom count. It is trivial to impose reality conditions that lead to real theories with Euclidean or split signature, but the situation is more complicated and not yet fully understood in the Lorentzian case, which is the subject of this talk. I will first show that the choice of potentially consistent reality conditions is essentially unique and boils down to the reality of the underlying 3-metric at the canonical level, as in the case of GR. For simplicity, I will focus on a subset of modified theories that correspond to a natural extension of Ashtekar's Hamiltonian constraint, namely, a linear combination of EEE, EEB, EBB and BBB. Interestingly, the evolution equations for the 3-metric and its first time-derivative take the same form as in GR, but with an effective stress tensor source which cannot be expressed in terms of these two fields. Modified theories therefore appear as essentially "non-metric" in that they do not admit a closed geometrodynamics form. In particular, this obstructs the conservation of the reality conditions, because the effective source remains complex. Alternatively, if we insist on reality, we obtain extra reality conditions which then leave no room for degrees of freedom. I will finally argue that this should be a generic feature of the Lorenzian modified theories, in stark contrast to their Euclidean and split-signature counterparts.

Combining information from the first gravitational wave detected gamma-ray burst, GRB 170817 with observations of cosmological GRBs holds important lessons for understanding the structure of GRB jets and the required conditions at the emitting region. It also re-frames our understanding of more commonly observed phenomena in GRBs, such as X-ray plateaus, and sets our expectations for future observations. I will present different lines of argument suggesting that efficient gamma-ray emission in GRBs has to be restricted to material with Lorentz factor > 50 and is most likely confined to a narrow region around the core. GRB jets viewed slightly beyond their jet cores, result in X-ray plateaus that are consistent with observed light-curves and naturally reproduce correlations between plateau and prompt emission properties. For jets viewed further off-axis (that are expected to be detected as future GW triggered events) we provide new analytical modelling that reveals two different types of light-curves that could be observed (single or double peaked) and outlines how the underlying physical properties can be recovered from such observations.

I describe the non-relativistic c→∞ and ultra-relativistic c→0 limits of the kappa-deformed symmetries, with and without a cosmological constant.  The corresponding kappa-Newtonian and kappa-Carrollian noncommutative spacetimes are also obtained. These constructions show the non-trivial interplay between the quantum deformation parameter kappa, the curvature parameter Lambda and the speed of light parameter c.

Motivated by Feynman's early proposal, several schemes have been proposed recently to explore the quantum nature of gravity using table-top experiments. The key idea behind them is to study whether gravity can lead to non-classical quantum correlations between two objects. These experiments, if successful, can test different models of quantum gravity in the Newtonian limit. In this talk, I will discuss one such scheme based upon optomechanics that couples light to mechanical oscillators mediated by quantum radiation pressure. The non-classicality of gravity is witnessed by the quantum squeezing of light.

There are three distinct regions where quantum gravity becomes non-negligible in a black hole spacetime.  There is a precise sense in which these three regions are causally disconnected, and therefore arguably independent.   I illustrate a number of indications we have about what happens in each of them, coming both from the classical Einstein equations and from loop quantum gravity.  These point all to an interesting scenario: long living remnants stabilized by quantum gravity, formed by a large and slowly decreasing interior enclosed into a small anti-trapping horizon. Contrary to what too often stated, the scenario offers also a proof of principle that there is no tension between unitarity and the equivalence principle: the tension comes from postulating a version of holography which is too strong: a fad, for which there is no solid physical evidence.

Light rays can orbit the photon shell of a black hole many times before escaping to infinity.  This means that a distant observer can see a successive series of "echo"  images, each separated in time by the photon shell orbital period, and each dimmer than the previous.  I will present a study of light echos using coherent autocorrelation functions sourced by fluctuating matter in accretion flows.  I will demonstrate that coherent autocorrelation functions are peaked at integer multiples of the photon shell orbital period.  Furthermore, I will argue that the power in echos from supermassive black holes is too small to be observed on Earth.

Zoom Link: https://pitp.zoom.us/j/92751681169?pwd=V0hQeUMwaWtTQjQ3UzdxekJiT0lmQT09