20.10.2004 (Wednesday)

Unitarity in the presence of closed timelike curves, and charge quantization

Triangular Seminar Lorenzo Cornalba (ITFA)

at:
15:00 KCL
room 1B27
abstract:

Motivated by string theory arguments, we analyse quantum field theory in a specific space time with closed timelike curves. We conjecture and partly show that, for discrete values of the gravitational coupling constant, the resulting theory is unitary. These discrete values are obtained in two independent ways, using high energy scattering in quantum gravity and using string dualities to rephrase the quantization condition as quantization of charge of certain extended objects.