Entanglement and chaos play a central role in the study of isolated quantum systems. Recently, these ideas have had a profound impact in the study of condensed matter systems, both at the theoretical and the experimental level. This project investigates the role played by entanglement and chaos in quantum gravitational systems. Methods from condensed matter physics and ideas on entanglement and chaos are applied to gravitational systems: a) Loop quantum gravity and the entanglement structure of space; b) Entanglement production by quantum fields in dynamical space-times. The results of this research are expected to have a direct impact on the development of loop quantum gravity, quantum field theory in curved spacetimes, and the transition between the two in a phase of the evolution of the very early universe.
In the context of loop quantum gravity, new methods will be developed for encoding the architecture of spacetime into correlations and entanglement of the quantum geometry. The objective is to identify approximate solutions of the dynamics that encode the geometry of a semiclassical spacetime and support perturbative field theoretical fluctuations. At the perturbative level, the entanglement production by quantum fields in cosmological spacetimes will be studied, with focus on instabilities in the reheating phase, in the inflationary phase, and in a candidate BKL-like phase that precedes inflation. The objective is to bridge the gap between loop quantum gravity and perturbative quantum fields. The long-term goal is to combine results of the two lines of work in order to investigate models of quantum gravity where the pre-inflationary state of the universe is characterized by its entanglement structure and identify the imprints that such entanglement structure can leave in cosmological observables, such as anisotropy correlations in the cosmic microwave background and density correlations in the large-scale structure of the universe.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
