General Relativity & Quantum Cosmology

Tensor models appear as the higher dimensional extension of the so-called matrix models describing 2D quantum gravity through the sum over triangulations of surfaces. In the light of the recent $1/N$ expansion for these tensor models, we uncover a new class of tensor models for 4D and 3D gravity which are renormalizable at all orders of perturbation theory. An overview of two papers, [arXiv:1111.4997 [hep-th]] and [arXiv:1201.0176 [hep-th]], on the renormalization of these tensor models and their beta function will be given.

Group field theories show up as a higher dimensional generalization of matrix models in background independent approaches to quantum gravity.
Their Feynman expansion generates simplicial complexes of all topologies weighted by spin foam amplitudes.
In this talk, we will present a dual formulation of these theories as non-commutative quantum fields theories, whose variables have a clear interpretation in terms of simplicial geometry. We will show that it gives a geometrically clear ways to define spin foam models for gravity which can be cast as

To study the continuum limit of a microscopic model of gravity we need microscopic observables that have a clear interpretation in terms of continuum geometry. In general the construction of such observables is notoriously difficult. In the model of causal dynamical triangulations (CDT) it is clear what the microscopic observables are, but at present the only known well-behaved observables with a continuum interpretation are spatial volumes. In this talk I will demonstrate what it takes to go beyond these by introducing the moduli as observables for CDT in 2+1 dimensions with spatial topology of the torus. Measurements of these observables using computer simulations provide valuable clues concerning the effective action describing CDT in the continuum. In particular I will present numerical evidence indicating that the effective kinetic term is well described by a modified Wheeler-De Witt metric like the one appearing in Horava-Lifshitz gravity.

After overviewing the fundamentals of magnetized relativistic jets production, I present the results of new global 3D general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations of jet formation by black hole (BH) accretion systems. The simulations are designed to transport a large amount of magnetic flux to the center, more than the accreting gas can force into the BH. The excess magnetic flux remains outside the BH, impedes accretion, and leads to a magnetically arrested disc. We find powerful outflows. For a BH with spin parameter a = 0.5, the efficiency with which the accretion system generates outflowing energy in jets and winds is eta ~ 30%. For a = 0.99, we find eta ~ 140%, which means that more energy flows out of the BH than flows in. The only way this can happen is by extracting spin energy from the BH. Thus the a = 0.99 simulation represents an unambiguous demonstration, within an astrophysically plausible scenario, of the extraction of net energy from a spinning BH via the Penrose-Blandford-Znajek mechanism.

Entanglement is a paradigmatic example of quantum correlations, a presumed reason for the superior performance of quantum computation and an obvious divider of states and processes into classical and quantum. In the last decade all these notions were challenged. Entanglement does not capture the totality of non-classical behavior. Quantum discord (in its different versions) is a more general measure of quantum correlations. It can be related to the advantage in some tasks like the extraction of work from a Szilrad heat engine using Maxwell's demons with various resources. The discord turns out to be the difference between the work extracted from a given bipartite system using a a global and a local strategy. Different strategies relate to different definitions of discord, but all definitions agree on zero, so "classical" systems are universal to all heat engines. One way of identifying a task as quantum or classical is by examining the quantum resources required to implement it. This can be done by examining the entanglement required for a LOCC implementation of the task. Creation (or non-creation) of entanglement as a result of its implementation is not enough to identify these resources. An example is a bi-local implementation of an entangling quantum gate (C-NOT) by LOCC with unentagled input and output states. This lack of entanglement does not guarantee the LOCC implementability. A method to determine if entanglement resources are required is to track the change in quantum discord during the process.

We construct the q-deformed spinfoam vertex amplitude using Chern-Simons theory on the boundary 3-sphere of the 4-simplex. The rigorous definition involves the construction of Vassiliev-Kontsevich invariant for trivalent knot graph. Under the semiclassical asymptotics, the q-deformed spinfoam amplitude reproduce Regge gravity with cosmological constant at nondegenerate critical configurations.

In general relativity, the fields on a black hole horizon are obtained from those in the bulk by pullback and restriction. In quantum gravity, it would be natural to obtain them in the same manner. This is not fully realized in the quantum theory of isolated horizons in loop quantum gravity, in which a Chern-Simons phase space on the horizon is quantized separately from the bulk. I will outline an approach in which the quantum horizon degrees of freedom are simply components of the quantized bulk degrees of freedom. A condition is imposed on the quantum states to encode the existence of a horizon. I will present evidence that solutions to this condition have properties on the horizon that are remarkably similar to those of Chern-Simons theory. Instrumental in formulating the horizon condition are novel flux operators that use the Duflo isomorphism and seem to represent some type of quantum deformed SU(2). I will review their definition and summarize what I know about their properties.