Hamburg 2016 – scientific programme

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GR: Fachverband Gravitation und Relativitätstheorie

GR 17: Quantum Gravity IV

GR 17.1: Talk

Friday, March 4, 2016, 11:15–11:35, VMP6 HS A

Testing the necessity of quantum gravity — •André Großardt — Department of Physics, University of Trieste, Italy

What evidence do we have that the gravitational field must be quantised? I briefly review some of the most common arguments for quantum gravity and discuss an experimental proposal that could shed some light on this matter.

The experiment -- a detailed analysis of the spectrum of a macroscopic oscillator -- is feasible with existing technology, and is supposed to test the Schrödinger-Newton equation, a nonlinear, self-gravitating modification of quantum mechanics. This equation can be derived from the hypothesis that space-time is fundamentally classical and its curvature is sourced by the expectation values of quantum fields, which appears to be one of the most natural alternatives to a quantisation of the gravitational field.