The Physics

Exploring black holes, quantum information, gravitational scattering, cosmology, and emergent spacetime.

Some questions for the workshop include:

1) Does AdS/CFT furnish a complete description of quantum bulk physics? If so, how do we see this? If not, what bulk information is missing in the boundary theory?

2) What features are present in a consistent quantum theory of black hole evolution? Do horizons become singular, or are other nonlocal dynamics relevant?

3) What is the role of entanglement in producing emergent spacetime? What other structure is necessary to derive spacetime?

4) Do simplifying properties of perturbative amplitudes extend to properties governing nonperturbative amplitudes?

5) What are relevant gauge-invariant observables in quantum gravity, and how are they formulated?

6) How do we describe quantum cosmology and its observables, in a gauge-invariant theory of emergent spacetime?

Some closely related questions were raised in the preceding workshop, see 2007 questions. While we seem to have made progress in understanding general features of some of the answers, and in particular seem to have reached a broader consensus on the role of nonlocality, it is interesting to contemplate the extent to which we have or have not answered these, and the appearance of new questions ...

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