Proceedings

EPJ H Highlight - Quantum Gravity, Effective Field Theory, and Strings

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A historical overview of different approaches to the quantum theory of gravitation from the early twentieth century shows how they have been combined to set our modern view of a unified ‘theory of everything’.

Gravity is one of four fundamental interactions. The most precise description of this force is still provided by Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, published in 1915, an entirely classical theory. This description sets gravity apart from the other three forces - strong, weak, and electromagnetism - all described by quantum fields. Therefore, any attempt to unify the four forces must depend on a description of gravity that uses the principles of quantum mechanics. This has been an active area of theoretical physics since the 1930s. A historian and a physicist, Alessio Rocci from VUB in Brussels and Thomas Van Riet from KU Leuven in Belgium have set out a historical overview of the development of quantum theories of gravity to explain our current view on a future unified theory of the four forces. This work has now been published in the journal EPJ H: Historical Perspectives on Contemporary Physics.

Physicists began to investigate the quantum theory of gravitation in the 1930s, taking a perturbative approach, convinced that there should be no fundamental difference between the gravitational force and the other interactions. However, finding a description of the gravitational interaction according to the laws of quantum mechanics is still a very complex task.

Later in the century, Steven Weinberg, a pioneer of both Effective Field Theory and the Standard Model of particle physics, began a process of cross-fertilization between these areas and the research area of quantum gravity that produced our current view on Einstein’s theory. From the mid-1980s, string theory set up a possible framework to approach quantum gravity using a ‘top-down’ approach. The effective field theory approach to strong forces drove the development of the ‘bottom-up’ perspective, culminating in the mid-1990s.

Recently, physicists have started a new program called Swampland to overcome the criticism of string theory that arose in the 2000s. Van Riet says: “The ultimate hope is that the Swampland program can lead to general patterns with observational consequences.”

This was our first experience of publishing with EPJ Web of Conferences. We contacted the publisher in the middle of September, just one month prior to the Conference, but everything went through smoothly. We have had published MNPS Proceedings with different publishers in the past, and would like to tell that the EPJ Web of Conferences team was probably the best, very quick, helpful and interactive. Typically, we were getting responses from EPJ Web of Conferences team within less than an hour and have had help at every production stage.
We are very thankful to Solange Guenot, Web of Conferences Publishing Editor, and Isabelle Houlbert, Web of Conferences Production Editor, for their support. These ladies are top-level professionals, who made a great contribution to the success of this issue. We are fully satisfied with the publication of the Conference Proceedings and are looking forward to further cooperation. The publication was very fast, easy and of high quality. My colleagues and I strongly recommend EPJ Web of Conferences to anyone, who is interested in quick high-quality publication of conference proceedings.

On behalf of the Organizing and Program Committees and Editorial Team of MNPS-2019, Dr. Alexey B. Nadykto, Moscow State Technological University “STANKIN”, Moscow, Russia. EPJ Web of Conferences vol. 224 (2019)

ISSN: 2100-014X (Electronic Edition)

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