Description:

Recent years have seen enormous progress in our ability to compute
elementary-particle scattering processes in quantum field theory.
These ideas include applications of unitarity, a powerful relation
between gravity and gauge theory scattering amplitudes and advanced
integration methods. In this colloquium we will focus on applications
of the new ideas to understanding perturbative quantum gravity in the
ultraviolet. Although this problem has long been declared as well
understood, every new calculation has shown that the story is much
more interesting than seemed possible, revealing new surprising
structure. Not only are certain highly supersymmetric supergravity
theories free of predicted ultraviolet divergences in four space-time
dimensions, at least as far as we have calculated, but when we do find
divergences, their structure is bizarre and appear to be linked to
quantum anomaly-like behavior.

Seminar Speaker: Zvi Bern, UCLA

 Host: Carrasco

Keywords: Physics, Astronomy, Seminar, Colloquium