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SUMMARY:The Emerging Story of Gravity - Thomas Laird
DTSTART:20180316T170000Z
DTEND:20180316T180000Z
UID:TALK103168@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Loren E. Held
DESCRIPTION:What if gravity is not a fundamental interaction? Well known r
 esults due to Hawking and Bekenstein establish an analogy between the mech
 anics of black holes and the laws of thermodynamics. It is instructive to 
 see how far this analogy can be pursued beyond the rather restricted domai
 n of black holes. At its logical conclusion\, this analogy-turned-equality
  would lead us to reinterpret general relativity as a purely thermodynamic
  theory\, much like how the ideal gas law was initially formulated without
  reference to any statistical microphysics. Upon reviewing the results of 
 black hole mechanics\, we will begin our investigation by asking how the n
 otion of an event horizon can be generalised to any local patch of spaceti
 me. Consequently we will be able to show how minimal thermodynamic assumpt
 ions can be used to derive the Einstein equations\, thus expressing the dy
 namical content of GR as an emergent description of our reality. Time perm
 itting\, we may investigate how several approaches differ in their underst
 anding of this thermodynamic description\, and we may even touch upon how 
 a few of the contemporary theories of quantum gravity claim to provide a d
 escription of the microphysics from which GR emerges.
LOCATION:MR13
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