Congratulations to Professor Joaquin Turiaci for winning a 2025 Early Career Award from the Department of Energy. The award will support his work on Advancing the Gravitational Path Integral to Probe Quantum Spacetime. The abstract of the project follows.
The unification of quantum mechanics with special relativity led to the development of quantum field theory. This had a profound impact on fundamental physics since, for example, it is the framework in which the Standard Model is formulated. A satisfactory combination of quantum mechanics with general relativity has been more elusive and remains a central open problem in fundamental physics. This issue becomes particularly pressing in two circumstances: the interior of a black hole and the early universe. The goal is to develop the laws of quantum gravity through a theoretical analysis of such extreme situations and uncover their implications for our world.
Work in string theory inspired the holographic principle, a conjecture that black holes behave as unitary
quantum systems with finite entropy. Growing evidence, arising from the application of quantum information
techniques to black hole physics, suggests that the gravitational path integral offers a framework for
quantizing gravity in a manner consistent with holography. However, the fundamental principles underlying
this approach remain poorly understood. In this project, we will compute the gravitational path integral in
novel settings, aiming to clarify the structure of spacetime in regimes where classical intuition breaks down.
These investigations will help lay the foundation for identifying concrete, potentially observable signatures
of quantum gravity in black hole physics and cosmology.