Speaker
Daniel Becker
(Gymnasium Herkenrath)
Description
What should a fundamental theory of quantum gravity look like? While the theories united in the Standard Model of particle physics fulfill a standard set of requirements, gravity is special in the sense that spacetime itself becomes dynamical.
The independence of any preset background geometry is thus at the root of every quantum generalization of general relativity, as is (nonperturbative) renormalizability. The latter started the long ongoing discussion on a suitable approach to quantum gravity, for it was shown, that standard "quantization" of the classical Einstein-Hilbert action led is not renormalizable. Higher derivatives might be the cure, however unitarity seems to be lost.
In this talk, the aspects of background independence and unitarity are investigated within the Asymptotic Safety program to quantum gravity. While technically challenging, the studied cases indicated that instead of being a burden, both concepts might help as "standard candles" in the sky of all possible theories.
