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SYET: Symposium Emergent Time

SYET 2: Emergent Time II

SYET 2.2: Plenary Talk

Monday, March 3, 2008, 14:45–15:30, KGI-HS 1199

Time in Emergent Gravity — •Olaf Dreyer — Dept. of Physics, MIT

In canonical gravity the Hamiltonian evolution is replaced by a constraint equation. This leads to the dreaded problem of time: how is one to reconstruct a notion of time in such a theory? I will present a new approach to quantum gravity that has the potential to circumvent this problem. I trace the the problem of time to the unphysical idealization of geometry without matter. I will show how in a quantum mechanical many-body system the notions of geometry and matter arise simultaneously and why their interplay is described by Einstein's equations. I will discuss the novel promises and challenges of this approach.