Classical Spacetime from Quantum Field Theory

Speaker

Eric Perlmutter

Abstract

Many, and perhaps all, quantum field theories have alternative descriptions as theories of gravity. Originally born from string theory, this duality, known as the AdS/CFT correspondence, has come to bear on a variety of questions in physics and mathematics, most of all on the way we view quantum gravity and quantum field theory themselves. Certain classes of quantum field theories have especially simple dual descriptions as classical general relativity coupled to matter; others are dual to more complicated theories of gravity, governed by stringy or Planck-scale physics. In this talk, I will describe efforts to chart this AdS/CFT landscape, and to understand what features of quantum field theory give rise to emergent classical spacetime.