COLL 166: QUANTUM GRAVITY
Spring 2027 · Section 001 · CRN 26924
Have you ever wondered whether physics can provide a theory that describes everything as we know of the universe and reality itself? Every intellectual endeavor: physics, chemistry, biology, coming from a single theory? If so, this is for you! This course provides a conceptual and practical introduction to String Theory and Holographic Duality, one of the most surprising connections in modern theoretical physics. General Relativity describes gravity through the geometry of spacetime, while Quantum Mechanics describes nature at the smallest scales. Bringing these ideas together raises difficult questions, especially when we study black holes. String Theory offers a framework for quantum gravity in which the fundamental objects are vibrating strings rather than point particles. One of the remarkable ideas to emerge from String Theory is holographic duality, also known as gauge/gravity duality or the AdS/CFT correspondence. In certain settings, a theory of gravity is proposed to be equivalent to a quantum field theory in one fewer dimension. This means that a difficult problem involving strongly interacting quantum particles can sometimes be studied using gravity, and questions about black holes can be approached through a quantum theory without gravity!
- Credits
- 1
- Instructors
- Carissa Zimmerman, Ignacio Quiroz Vargas