Talks

Recent experimental evidence suggests that living organisms are using quantum mechanics in a sophisticated fashion to enhance the efficiency of photosynthesis. Bacteria are essentially performing a quantum computation to extract energy from light. I will show how plants and bacteria perform quantum information processing, and will discuss how living creatures engage in all sorts of quantum hanky-panky in their efforts to survive and reproduce.

In the context of loop quantum gravity and spin foam models, the simplicity constraints are essential in that they allow to write general relativity as a constrained topological theory. I will first recall the spin foam quantization procedure and focus more particularly on the step consisting in implementing the simplicity constraints. Then, I will present the U(N) framework initially developed for SU(2) intertwiners. Finally, I will show how we can apply this new framework to impose the simplicity constraints in the context of 4d Euclidean gravity and present new solutions defined in term of U(N) coherent states.

The gravitational observatory LISA will detect radiation from massive black hole sources at cosmological distances, accurately measure their luminosity distance and help identify the electromagnetic counterparts that such sources may generate. I will describe various astrophysical scenarios for the generation of electromagnetic counterparts and discuss observational strategies aimed at identifying them. Successful identifications will enable novel studies of black hole astrophysics and cosmological physics.