Emergent Gravity IV

About Emergent Gravity IV

Dates: 24th-28th of August 2009

Location: University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

This conference is the fourth in a series of conferences that focus on bringing together researchers working in condensed matter physics and quantum gravity. The first of these conferences was held at the Perimeter Institute in 2005. The second and third conferences were held at the Lorentz Center in Leiden in 2007 and the MIT in 2008.

The condensed matter and gravity communities have traditionally worked on different problems, with little reason to interact. In recent years, this has changed for a number of reasons. The condensed matter community has, for some time now, observed emergent phenomena that look very much like the high energy phenomena that we see around us and has made the logical step to ask whether our world is also emergent from an underlying condensed matter like theory. It is natural to investigate the role of gravity in this context, and several attempts have been made to show how gravity could arise in a condensed matter theory. In the quantum gravity community the interest in condensed matter physics grew out of the realization that one is dealing with a system with a very large number of degrees of freedom, i.e., one finds oneself in a situation not unlike the one encountered in solid state physics.

The aim of this conference series is to bring together these two communities. The subjects covered will include kinematical (emergent spacetimes) and dynamical (emergent gravity, non- commutative spacetimes, quantum graphity) aspects of gravity as they arise within initially non- gravitational contexts. An additional important focus of this fourth conference is to facilitate an interface between emergent gravity and other quantum gravity programmes, such as discrete spacetime geometry (causal dynamical triangulation, causal sets), string-inspired candidates (fluid-gravity correspondence), effective field theories (quantum gravity phenomenology), and theories that go beyond standard gravity (modified general relativity).

The format will be a combination of talks by leading experts in both fields and ample time for discussion.