| |
|
photograph
F. Buis, www.fjodor.nl
|
Renate Loll is Professor for Theoretical Physics at the
Institute for Theoretical Physics
of
Utrecht University. She received her Ph.D. from Imperial College, London, in 1989.
In 2001 she joined
the permanent staff of the ITP, after spending several years
at the Max-Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Golm, Germany, where
she also held a Heisenberg Fellowship.
|
|
Loll works on developing a theory of quantum gravity, reconciling the beautiful geometric
description of space and time laid out in Einstein's theory of General Relativity
with the insight that all of physics at its most fundamental level must be described by
quantum laws of motion. She is one of the pioneers of a new approach to the nonperturbative
quantization of gravity, that of Causal Dynamical Triangulations which recently
has produced a number of remarkable results. These include a dynamical derivation
of the fact that
space-time is four-dimensional (something that can be taken for granted
only in classical gravity)
and that
it has the shape of a de Sitter Universe (like our own universe in the absence
of matter),
and of the so-called wave function of the universe
which plays an important role in understanding the quantum behaviour of the very early universe.
Remarkably, one also finds that the dimensionality of spacetime reduces smoothly to two
at short distances, indicative of a highly nonclassical behaviour of spacetime geometry
near the Planck scale.
These results are obtained by superposing elementary quantum excitations of geometry
which have a notion of causality ("cause preceding effect") built into them at the very smallest scale.
Loll is recipient of a prestigious VICI award by the
Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) which has
allowed her to pursue
investigations into the quantum structure of space-time and strengthen her research group
on nonperturbative quantum gravity.
Between 2005 and 2009 she was in charge of
the European Research and Training Network
ENRAGE,
bringing together 13 European research groups working on
theories of random geometry, with applications ranging from quantum gravity and string theory
to dynamical networks in biology and econophysics.
Selected Publications
-
J. Ambjørn, A. Görlich, J. Jurkiewicz and R. Loll:
Planckian Birth of the Quantum de Sitter Universe,
Physical Review Letters 100 (2008) (2008) 091304
[arXiv: 0712.2485, hep-th].
- J. Ambjørn, J. Jurkiewicz and R. Loll:
Emergence of a 4D World from Causal Quantum Gravity,
Physical Review Letters 93 (2004) 131301 [arXiv: hep-th/0404156].
- A. Dasgupta and R. Loll:
Proper-Time Cure for the Conformal Sickness in Quantum Gravity,
Nuclear Physics B 606 (2001) 357-379
[arXiv: hep-th/0103186].
- J. Ambjørn and R. Loll:
Non-perturbative Lorentzian Quantum Gravity, Causality and Topology Change,
Nuclear Physics B 536 (1998) 407-434
[arXiv: hep-th/9805108].
- R. Loll:
Volume Operator in Discretized Quantum Gravity,
Physical Review Letters 75 (1995) 3048-51
[arXiv: gr-qc/9506014].
|
|
|
| |
