Quantum theory, black holes and quantum gravity

寻求一种将引力与量子力学统一起来的理论是当今理论物理学中最重要的问题之一。尽管在弦理论和环量子引力方面取得了重大进展，但仍有许多有待了解的地方，黑洞的热力学性质似乎提供了有价值的线索。黑洞热力学最引人注目的特性之一是其明显的普适性：无论考虑哪种引力理论或潜在的微观理论，它对所有黑洞都具有相同的定性特征。正是这种普遍的性质激发了我对一般黑洞的经典和量子力学的研究，使用了一类统称为二维膨胀引力的理论。这些理论存在于一个空间维度中，足够简单，易于处理，但也足够复杂，可以深入了解黑洞热力学的微观起源。我将承担的一个项目是在这个大背景下研究黑洞形成的量子动力学。

The quest for a theory that unifies gravity with quantum mechanics is one of the most important in theoretical physics today. Despite substantial progress in string theory and loop quantum gravity, much remains to be understood and the thermodynamic properties of black holes seem to provide valuable clues. One of the most striking properties of black hole thermodynamics is its apparent universality: it has the same qualitative features for all black holes, irrespective of which theory of gravity or which underlying microscopic theory one considers. It is this universal nature that motivates my study of the classical and quantum mechanics of generic black holes using a class of theories known collectively as two dimensional dilaton gravity. These theories live in one spatial dimension, and are sufficiently simple to be tractable but also sufficiently complex to provide insight into the microscopic origins of black hole thermodynamics. One of the projects I will undertake is a study of the quantum dynamics of black hole formation in this general context.