Observables in Quantum Gravity: from Theory to Experiment

Aspen Center for Physics

January 12-17, 2025

The fundamental ingredients of quantum gravity remain mysterious despite decades of attention. Many approaches seek to identify nonperturbative effects associated with a UV-complete description, including black hole evaporation, the quantum nature of spacetime singularities, and the emergence of spacetime from microscopic degrees of freedom.  However, far less attention has been paid to what an experimentalist in a lab would actually measure—even in principle—in the presence of quantum gravity effects.  The proposed conference aims to address this deficiency, confronting head-on the questions of what are the observables in quantum gravity, and how are they defined, computed, and measured in experiment.  This conference seeks to convene members of many different communities working on different aspects of these questions, identifying pipelines between formal ideas and experiment, and critically assessing longstanding proposals. We aim to incorporate a diverse array of approaches, from algebras of observables, dressing, and relational observables to measurable systems including gravitational wave memory, cosmology, black holes, quantum simulation, and tabletop tests.  A successful conference would compare and contrast approaches to observables in quantum gravity, connect researchers working on the same topics but in disparate communities, and galvanize progress by spelling out concrete problems for experimentalists and theorists to study in a language widely understood across communities.

List of speakers:

• Trond Anderson
• Markus Aspelmeyer
• Eugenia Colafranceschi
• Daine Danielson
• Ben Freivogel
• Elliott Gesteau
• Steve Giddings
• Daniel Green
• Philip Hoehn
• Molly Kaplan
• Bryce Kobrin
• Hong Liu
• Andrew Lucas
• Geoff Penington
• Monika Schleier-Smith
• Julian Sonner
• Brian Swingle
• Jake Taylor
• Mark Van Raamsdonk
• Sander Vermuleun
• Jordan Wilson-Gerow
• Kathryn Zurek

Organizers:

Daniel Carney (LBNL) 
Thomas Faulkner (UIUC)
Cynthia Keeler (Arizona State University)
Nima Lashkari (Purdue University)
Allic Sivaramakrishnan (Caltech)
Antony Speranza (University of Amsterdam)