Quantum theory, black holes and quantum gravity

寻找一种将引力与量子力学相结合的理论是当今理论物理学中最重要的课题之一。尽管弦理论和环圈量子引力取得了实质性进展，但仍有许多有待理解的地方，黑洞的热力学性质似乎提供了有价值的线索。黑洞热力学最显著的特性之一是它明显的普适性：它对所有黑洞都有相同的定性特征，无论你认为哪种引力理论或哪种基本的微观理论。正是这种普遍的性质激发了我使用一类统称为二维伸缩引力的理论来研究一般黑洞的经典和量子力学。这些理论生活在一个空间维度上，它们足够简单，易于处理，但也足够复杂，可以洞察黑洞热力学的微观起源。我将承担的项目之一是在这个普遍的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.