Seminar: "Lorentzian Structures on Branching Spacetimes" by Mr. David O'Connell

Speaker: Mr. O'Connell is currently a Ph.D. student at OIST.

Abstract. "Branching Spacetimes" are a class of order-theoretic models that have interested philosophers and logicians for several decades. As it stands, the name is slightly misleading – the intended models of the theory do indeed branch, but they only partially represent spacetimes in the physicists’ use of the word. In this talk we will bridge this terminological gap by introducing a class of models that naturally enrich Branching "Spacetimes" with topological, differentiable and Lorentzian structures. As we will see, these models are interesting not only from a logical point of view, but also from geometric and physical perspectives as well.