Observables and locality in gravitational physics

by Giddings, S. (UCSB)

Monday 24 Apr 2006, 14:00 → 15:00 Europe/Zurich

TH Auditorium (CERN)

It is well known that there are no local observables in a theory with gravity, which opens the question of how to describe real-world experiments. This talk will describe construction of operators that do respect the diffeomorphism symmetries of gravity, and approximately reduce to expected local observables in certain states. However, there are inherent limitations on this reduction, which suggest fundamental limitations on locality and state counting, possibly shedding light on the origin of holography.

Note: Please note unusual day!