MS Seminar (Mathematics - String Theory)

Speaker: Manuel Kramer (KU Leuven)
Title: The semiclassical approximation to quantum gravity and its relation to cosmological observations
Date (JST): Tue, Nov 05, 2019, 15:30 - 16:45
Place: Seminar Room A
Related File: 2370.pdf
Abstract: A canonical quantization of general relativity leads to the Wheeler-DeWitt equation, a functional wave equation that does not contain an explicit time dependence. By performing a systematic semiclassical approximation to this equation, one can recover a notion of time at the semiclassical level and derive a modified Schrödinger equation with quantum-gravitational correction terms. Applied to a perturbed cosmological model, these correction terms encode the fact that not only the perturbations, but also the background geometry is quantized.

In this talk, I will present how to use the corrected Schrödinger equation to calculate quantum-gravity corrections to the anisotropy spectrum of the Cosmic Microwave Background, discuss their measurability and compare this method to other approaches of finding signatures of quantum gravity in the CMB.