Thursday, March 4, 2004, 4:00pm, 277 Physics, String Theory Seminar at UNC
    Hanno Sahlmann (Penn State University)
    Loop Quantum Gravity
 

      Loop quantum gravity is an approach to quantization of gravity that is
minimalist in the sense that a priory no extra fields or dimensions are
required. Important features are a diffeomorphism invariant path integral
over connections and a quantization of three-geometry that is well
understood. Though questions about the implementation of dynamics remain,
there are already interesting physical applications to cosmological models
and the entropy of black holes.
In this talk, I will try to give a non-technical introduction to the
formalism and present some applications as well as important questions
that are still open and subject to investigation.