Tom Hartman, Cornell
Monday, October 16, 2023 - 4:00pm
PAA A-102
Black holes provide a window into quantum gravity through their thermodynamic properties. Recently, it has been discovered that higher topology solutions provide additional information about the ultraviolet theory and play an essential role in its consistency. I will describe the interplay between topology, entanglement, and quantum gravity, and how the path integral is used to study statistical properties of black holes. Recent calculations point toward the surprising conclusion that General Relativity is the low-energy limit of a quantum theory that is "maximally random," subject to certain physical consistency conditions such as locality and unitarity.