Conformal symmetry in gravity and particle physics
by
Tomislav Prokopec(Utrecht University)
→
Europe/Berlin
seminar room 2, building 2A (DESY Hamburg)
seminar room 2, building 2A
DESY Hamburg
Description
I will discuss prospects of formulating simple extensions of the standard model and gravity that exhibit local Weyl symmetry in the ultraviolet. The principal advantage of such constructions is that they naturally address gauge hierarchy problem. Furthermore, I will discuss the fate of conformal anomalies in theories in which gravity is also conformal at the classical level. Finally, I will show that Cartan-Einstein gravity provides the natural framework for conformal symmetry, as this theory contains torsion vector which can be interpreted as the Weyl vector. One of the main predictions of conformal theories of gravity are torsion waves which can be in principle detected by gravitational wave observatories.
