We review the status of recent investigations on validating the gauge-gravity duality conjecture through numerical simulations of strongly coupled maximally supersymmetric thermal gauge theories. In the simplest setting, the gauge-gravity duality connects systems of D0-branes and black hole geometries at finite temperature to maximally supersymmetric gauged quantum mechanics at the same tempera...

We examine the relations between observables in twoand three-dimensional quantum gravity by studying the coupling of topologically massive gravity to matter fields in non-trivial representations of the three-dimensional Lorentz group. We show that the gravitational renormalization of spin up to one-loop order in these theories reproduces the leading orders of the KPZ scaling relations for quant...

The quantum space-time model which accounts material Reference Frames (RF) quantum effects considered for flat space-time and ADM canonical gravity. As was shown by Aharonov for RF-free material object its c.m. non-relativistic motion in vacuum described by Schrodinger wave packet evolution which modify space coordinate operator of test particle in this RF and changes its Heisenberg uncertainty...

The quantum space-time model which accounts material Reference Frames (RF) quantum effects considered for flat space-time and ADM canonical gravity. As was shown by Aharonov for RF-free material object its c.m. non-relativistic motion in vacuum described by Schrodinger wave packet evolution which modify space coordinate operator of test particle in this RF and changes its Heisenberg uncertainty...

A central feature of general relativity is that gravity is encoded in the very geometry of space-time. Loop quantum gravity is a non-perturbative approach to unifying general relativity with quantum physics while retaining this interplay between geometry and gravity [1, 2, 3]. There is no background space-time; matter as well as geometry are ‘quantum from birth’. Effects of quantum geometry are...

Suppose the usual description of spacetime as a 3+1 manifold breaks down at the scale where a quantum theory of gravity is expected to describe the world, generally agreed to be the Planck scale, lp = 10 m. Can we still construct sensible theoretical models of the universe? Are they testable? Do they lead to a consistent quantum cosmology? Is this cosmology different than the standard one? The ...

Physical states in canonically quantized, finite, 4 dimensional quantum gravity. Quantized constraints of the full theory. Abstract This is the first in a series of papers outlining an algorithm to explicitly construct a finite quantum theory of gravity in Ashtekar variables. The algorithm is based upon extending some properties of a special state, the Kodama state for pure gravity with cosmolo...

In this paper we study the gravitational collapse in loop quantum gravity. We consider the space-time region inside the Schwarzschild black hole event horizon and we divide this region in two parts, the first one where the matter (dust matter) is localized and the other (outside) where the metric is Kantowski-Sachs type. We calculate the state solving Hamiltonian constraint and we obtain a set ...

The task of creating a quantum theory of gravity is compared with Einstein's creation of a relativistic theory of gravity. The philosophical and physical foundations of this theory are briefly reviewed. The Ehlers-Pirani-Schild scheme of operationally determining the geometry of space-time, using freely falling classical particle trajectories, is done using operations in an infinitesimal neighb...

Black Holes have always played a central role in investigations of quantum gravity. This includes both conceptual issues such as the role of classical singularities and information loss, and technical ones to probe the consistency of candidate theories. Lacking a full theory of quantum gravity, such studies had long been restricted to black hole models which include some aspects of quantization...