Seminar: "Probing the Phase Structure of Quantum Gravity" Dr. Reiko Toriumi

Speaker:

Dr. Reiko Toriumi

Institute for Mathematics, Astrophysics, and Particle Physics

Faculty of Science

Radboud University Nijmegen

Title: Probing the Phase Structure of Quantum Gravity

Abstract

In this talk, we will examine the phase structure of quantum gravity, using discrete approaches. I will first discuss the lattice quantum gravity in the Regge formulation, where the edge lengths are dynamical variables replacing the metric in the continuum. The emphasis in the analyses will be placed on the discretized Hamiltonian of quantum gravity. We then conclude with the several results including Euclidean lattice gravity indicating that the strong coupling phase is the physical regime.

I will next discuss another discrete approach which suggests the emergence of space-time, i.e., tensor models and their field theory versions. I will present an overview of the tensor model program, including the tensorial renormalization group methods.

Biography

Reiko Toriumi is a native of Tokyo, Japan. She has completed her doctoral study in Physics at University of California Irvine, USA in December 2013. Her thesis was on “Quantum Field Theoretic Methods on the Study of Gravitation”. Currently, she is a postdoctoral researcher at Institute for Mathematics, Astrophysics and Particle Physics at Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands. As a researcher, she worked at Centre de Physique Theorique, Marseille, France and at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Waterloo, Canada . As a teacher, she worked at University of California Berkeley and at San Francisco State University. Her research is on quantum gravity using discrete approaches and quantum field theories (especially Wilsonian approaches), including lattice Regge calculus, tensor models and tensor field theories.