28th Meeting of the North British Mathematical Physics Seminar
The 28th meeting of the North British Mathematical
Physics Seminar took place on Wednesday 27 October
2010 in Nottingham, in rooms C04-C05 of the Mathematics and Physics Building, School of
Mathematical Sciences, University of Nottingham.
These
people have come to the meeting.
Programme
10:30-11:00
Coffee (in the Physics and Maths common room)
11:00-11:55
Antonio Padilla
(Nottingham)
I review the good, the bad and the ugly of the non-projectable
versions of Horava gravity. I explain how this non-relativistic theory
was constructed and why it was touted with such excitement as a
quantum theory of gravity. I then review some of the issues facing the
theory, explaining how strong coupling occurs and why this is such a
problem for both phenomenology and the question of renormalisability.
Finally I comment on possible violations of Equivalence Principle, and
explain why these could be an issue for Blas et al's "healthy
extension".
13:00-13:55
Simon Ross
(Durham)
I will discuss the description of field theories with an anisotropic scaling symmetry in terms of gravitational duals. I will focus on theories with Lifshitz symmetry, and discuss the calculation of the stress tensor from the spacetime.
14:00-14:25
Christoph Noelle
(Edinburgh)
I will discuss heterotic supergravity on coset manifolds. These admit
a canonical solution of the heterotic Bianchi identity, whereas the
gravitino equation turns into a representation-theoretic problem.
14:30-14:55
Ian Kimpton
(Nottingham)
I look at the advantages and disadvantages of forcing Horava Gravity to
be projectable. In particular, I focus on the ill-behaviour of the
additional degree of freedom in this variant of the theory, and possible
attempts to resolve the related issues.
15:00-15:30
Coffee (in the Physics and Maths common room)
15:30-16:25
Bernd Schroers
(Heriot-Watt)
In this talk I will address a little-studied regime of quantum gravity: the limit where the speed of light is infinite, but Planck's constant and Newton's constant take finite values. I will work in 2+1 dimensions, introduce a Chern-Simons formulation of Galilean gravity with cosmological constant and discuss the quantisation. Somewhat surprisingly, the non-commutative geometry of space-time in this limit is related to the q-deformed harmonic oscillator algebra or, equivalently, the q-deformed Nappi-Witten Lie algebra.
Practical Information
Train information can be obtained here.
If you come from Durham, you should plan to take the 08:40 train, change in Sheffield, and arrive to Nottingham at 11:30. You will miss the first lecture, but an earlier train does not seem to be practical. If you come from York, you should plan to take the 08:36 train arriving to Nottingham at 10:18. You should then take a taxi to the (central) University of Nottingham campus.
For flight information (from Edinburgh) see here.
There is a flight from Edinburgh to East Midlands airport departing at 08:40. You should then take a taxi to the (central) University of Nottingham campus. The cost of a single/one way taxi journey is approximately 20 pounds. You can return the same day with the flight at 17:05 or stay in Nottingham overnight. If this is what you prefer please let the organiser know and a hotel will be booked for you.
For directions to the School of Mathematical Sciences
click here.
Tea, coffee and biscuits were provided free of charge. There
was also a free sandwich lunch.
Limited funds are available to help with travel expenses of
participants with no other source of funding. We hope that this
will encourage postgraduate students and postdocs to attend the
meeting. Please email Kirill Krasnov
in advance if you would like to apply for support and please
book early to take advantage of the cheaper fares.