28.01.2015 (Wednesday)

Euclidean Quantum Supergravity

Regular Seminar David Tong (Cambridge)

at:
14:00 IC
room H503
abstract:

I'll revisit some old of ideas of Euclidean quantum gravity, in which manifolds of different topology are summed in the path integral. I'll show that, in certain circumstances, gravitational instantons can destabilise supersymmetric Kaluza-Klein compactifications. We'll also see how one-loop divergences in quantum gravity can be subsumed into a new RG-invariant topological scale.