Quantum Gravity:

• What is it? There are a variety of sources on web.
• For a taste try John Baez's amusing intro to quantum gravity, this short blurb from the Max Planck Institute, and the Wikipedia online encyclopedia entry.
• In the popular press there are a handful of articles on quantum gravity and loop quantum gravity (lQG). The January 2004 Scientific American had an article by Lee Smolin (the author of Three Roads to Quantum Gravity). James Glanz published a NYT profile on Abhay. In 1999 George Johnson of the NYT wrote a "dual profile" of Steve Giddings and Carlo Rovelli. Carlo wrote a piece on lQG published in Physics World. On the archives there is an english translation of an article by Rudiger Vaas on lQG published in Bild der Wissenschaft.
• There is a richer set of texts with more technical introductions:
• Norbert Bodendorfer's "An elementary introduction to loop quantum gravity" arXiv:1607.05129
• Abhay Ashtekar and Jerzy Lewandowski teamed up to write a status report.
• Some time ago Carlo Rovelli wrote a review of lQG in living Reviews in Relativity.
• Thomas Thiemann has a quite accessible set of lecture notes.
• There are now several book-length introductions, including with advanced undergraduate/begining graduate students in mind:
• Rovelli and Vidotto, Covariant Loop Quantum Gravity
• Gambini and Pullin, A First Course in Loop Quantum Gravity
• Upper level discussions are found in
• Carlo Rovelli's Quantum Gravity (a version of Carlo's is online) and
• Thomas Thiemann's Modern Canonical Quantum General Relativity.
• Here is a (quite dated) reading guide.

Relativity links:

• The best overall site devoted to web info on special and general relativity is Relativity on the World Wide Web created by Chris Hillman and maintained by mmJohn Baez. Among many, many other wonderful things it contains an annotated list of lecture notes and books online at both undergraduate and graduate levels.

Places:

• Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at UC Santa Barbara.
• Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute).
• The Institute for Gravitational Physics and Geometry at PennState
• The Perimeter Institute. Physically located in Waterloo, Canada, PI focuses on foundational issues in quantum theory, quantum gravity, string theory, and cosmology.
• In Vienna, the Institute for Theoretical Physics and the Relativity Group.
• The International lQG Seminar - A research seminar that takes place most Tuesdays at 9am (US Central Time). Audio is distributed via telephone. Slides of the talks and audio are posted.
• Gravitational wave detectors all over the world! In the US, liGO (Hanford, WA and livingston, LA). Here's a short introduction by a student at Macalester. In Italy VIGO. In Japan TAMA. In Germany GEO.
• It has been called a quantum gravity observatory (!), the Pierre Auger cosmic ray observatory in the Andes.
• The NSF Gravitational Physics Program home page

  Papers

• The online eprint archive papers for many fields of physics and mathematics. In particular, here's gr-qc and the form interface. These archives only contain recent papers (since 1991).
• At SLAC, the SPIRES bibliography search . This contains published papers, too.
• More online mania - a citebase for physics papers.
• Hosted here, there is also a reading guide to the new variables.

  Theoretical Physics:

• t'Hooft's advice for young (of mind) students sparked by theoretical physics.
• A new society for theorists at primarily undergraduate institutions! The Anacapa Society website.

Spin Network links:

• A link for the Spin Network Primer
• From Greg Egan, an explanation of spin networks. And if you are tickled as some of the rest of us with seeing spin networks and rules for dynamics in a novel, check out Schild's Ladder available from your local net or street bookstore.
• net delights Bar Natan's Rolfsen table of knots

© S. Major 1993-2018 Last modified 18 June 2018