SFB 676 Colloquium

# Relative locality of quantum spacetime

## by Prof. Laurent Freidel (Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics)

Wednesday, April 25, 2018 from to (Europe/Berlin)
at DESY Hamburg ( Room 2, Building 2a )
 Description In this talk I will describe the fundamental tension that forbids us in my view to reconcile gravity with the quantum. I will explain how this tension forces us to profoundly revise the concept of locality and that this can be done by letting go of the hypothesis of Absolute locality. I will formulate what relaxing this hypothesis means and will describe our attempts to flesh out the concept of relative locality. I will also exemplify what relative locality is into specific examples. In particular, we will show how these ideas allow us to natural interpret geometrically the T-duality symmetry of string theory. This symmetry will be seen as relativistic change of frame in a modular space, a notion of space that replaces Minkowski for quantum geometry. I will also show how the geometry of relative locality is intimately linked with generalized geometry and the geometry of quantum mechanics via a natural structure on phase space called Born geometry. Finally, and if time permits, I will comment how relative locality can shade a bright new light on the problem of unification.