Midisuperspace Laboratories for the Dynamics of Loop Quantum Gravity

对黑洞如何蒸发的研究也许是当今理论物理学中最重要的悬而未决的问题。它要求我们理解现代物理学的两大支柱，引力和量子场论，在它们最极端的状态下的行为。在过去，理解物理学理论如何在具有挑战性的体系中组合在一起，导致了对壮观后果的洞察。这方面的一个例子可能是麦克斯韦对电和磁如何结合在一起的理解导致了无线电波的发现，以及随后在我们的社会中引发的转型变化。这类工作的第二个非常重要的目标是形成非常高质量的人力资源。在这些学科中受过训练的物理学家在工业和金融领域都很有价值。该奖项支持在球对称背景下研究圈量子引力，最终目标是理解黑洞蒸发。这包括对生活在球对称量子时空上的量子场的反反应的研究。量子时空的离散性自然地规范了量子场论的无限性。要研究逆反应，需要比迄今为止所考虑的更现实的量子时空，包括动力学演化。该工作将试图找到一个坍缩壳的量子时空，并计算产生的霍金辐射和最终生活在其上的场的反反应。除此之外，PI的小组将研究量子时空的结构，特别是在极端和超极端带电黑洞的情况下它们的奇点结构以及出现在解中的柯西视界。最后，将研究标量场的半经典坍缩，以了解量子效应如何改变Choptuik首次发现的普适性和标度。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The study of how black holes evaporate is perhaps the most important outstanding problem in theoretical physics today. It requires that we understand the behavior of two of the pillars of modern physics, gravity and quantum field theory, in their most extreme regimes. Understanding how physical theories fit together in challenging regimes has in the past led to insights of spectacular consequences. An example of this could be Maxwell's understanding of how electricity and magnetism fit together led to the discovery of radio waves, with the ensuing transformational changes they induced in our society. A second very important objective of this type of work is the formation of human resources of very high quality. Physicists trained in these disciplines have proved valuable in industry and in finance.This award supports studies of loop quantum gravity in spherically symmetric contexts with the ultimate goal of understanding black hole evaporation. This includes work on the back-reaction of quantum fields living on spherically symmetric quantum space-times. The discreteness of the quantum space-time naturally regularizes the infinities of quantum field theory. To study the back reaction will require quantum space-times more realistic than the ones considered so far, including dynamical evolution. The work will attempt to find the quantum space-time of a collapsing shell and compute the Hawking radiation produced and eventually the back reaction of fields living on it. In addition to this, the PI's group will study the structure of the quantum space-times, in particular their singularity structure in the case of extremal and super extremal charged black holes and the Cauchy horizons that appear in the solutions. Finally, the semiclassical collapse of a scalar field will be studied to understand how quantum effects change the universality and scaling first discovered by Choptuik.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.