Cosmology from quantum information theory

Student: Emanuele Panella

First Supervisors: Jonathan Oppenheim (AMOPP), Andrew Pontzen (Astro)

Second Supervisor: Christian Boehmer (Department of Mathematics)

Entry year: October 2021

Project description: The goal of this project will be to explore the back-reaction of quantum fields on space-time, in the context of cosmology and black hole physics. Recently, it has been shown that one can consistently treat space-time classically, while still coupling it to the quantum fields which live on the space time (https://arxiv.org/abs/1811.03116). The techniques use ideas from quantum information theory and open quantum systems to construct evolution laws which do not suffer from the pathologies of the semi-classical Einstein’s equation. This enables us to consistently study large scale quantum effects in the context of cosmology and the black hole information problem. The project is likely to involve numerical simulations, and requires a strong familiarity with general relativity and quantum field theory.

Funding source: “Cosmoparticle” funding from Physics and Astronomy