Speaker
Description
One of the very many open problems in theoretical physics is that of quantising gravity, which is the attempt to successfully combine general relativity and quantum theory. In this talk I will give a broad overview of the problem of quantum gravity and the choices that we can make, along the routes we take. This will lead me to the poset-based "causal set" approach to quantisation. This is a discrete, Lorentzian, sum-over-histories formulation which combines the "essence" of Lorentzian geometry with UV finiteness. In the continuum approximation of the theory, the order relation corresponds to causality while cardinality or number corresponds to spacetime volume. I will describe elements of this theory and where it has led us in our search for a non-perturbative theory of quantum gravity.
