Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies
Project Title
Spacetime Defects
Project Summary
Quantum gravity is necessary to understand what space and time fundamentally are. One of the central questions in the research area is whether this fundamental structure is discrete, ie whether there are `atoms' of space-time. The aim of this project is to identify the most promising experimental tests for space-time discreteness. The tests subject of study here rest on the realization that if space-time is discrete, then its discrete structure should have imperfections much like crystals have imperfections. While directly testing the discreteness is beyond our experimental possibilities, detecting the defects may be possible because the defects can affect how particles travel through space-time. To make reliable predictions, it is necessary to develop a theory for space-time defects from which the observable consequences can be derived. The purpose of the here proposed project is to develop such a theory and investigate the possibility to experimentally test it.
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