Research in General Relativity and Quantum Gravity

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The bulk of this research program will concern the "causal sethypothesis", which states that the deep structure of spacetime is thatof an extended "family tree", known technically as a "partial order".Prof. Sorkin will develop this approach further by advancing theunderlying theory, while at the same time applying it to questions likethat of the cosmological constant, which recently has been shown tocontribute the greater part of the effective energy density of theuniverse. The remainder of the research will continue the study ofclosely related questions about the fine structure of black holehorizons and questions concerning what happens when the topology ofspacetime changes or deviates from flatness on small scales. All these questions are important as part of the larger problemof quantum gravity, which is how physicists refer to the task ofunifying the two main pillars of physical theory in its currentstate of development: Quantum Theory and General Relativity. Atheory of quantum gravity is generally expected to tell us aboutthe deep structure of spacetime on the smallest length scalesand, at the same time, to help answer questions about how thecosmos came to be as it is on the largest length scales.