11/9/2017 String Theory Meets Loop Quantum Gravity | Quanta Magazine

P H YS I C S

String Theory Meets Loop

Quantum Gravity
By S A B I N E H O S S E N F E L D E R

January 12, 2016

Two leading candidates for a theory of everything, long thought incompatible,

may be two sides of the same coin.

12

E
ight decades have passed since physicists realized that the theories of
quantum mechanics and gravity dont t together, and the puzzle of
how to combine the two remains unsolved. In the last few decades,
researchers have pursued the problem in two separate programs string

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theory and loop quantum gravity that are widely considered incompatible
by their practitioners. But now some scientists argue that joining forces is the
way forward.

Among the attempts to unify

00:00 / 35:25
quantum theory and gravity,
string theory has attracted
the most attention. Its
premise is simple:
Everything is made of tiny strings. The strings may be closed unto
themselves or have loose ends; they can vibrate, stretch, join or split. And in
these manifold appearances lie the explanations for all phenomena we
observe, both matter and space-time included.

Loop quantum gravity, by contrast, is concerned less with the matter that
inhabits space-time than with the quantum properties of space-time itself.
In loop quantum gravity, or LQG, space-time is a network. The smooth
background of Einsteins theory of gravity is replaced by nodes and links to
which quantum properties are assigned. In this way, space is built up of
discrete chunks. LQG is in large part a study of these chunks.

This approach has long been thought incompatible with string theory.
Indeed, the conceptual di erences are obvious and profound. For starters,
LQG studies bits of space-time, whereas string theory investigates the
behavior of objects within space-time. Speci c technical problems separate
the elds. String theory requires that space-time have 10 dimensions; LQG
doesnt work in higher dimensions. String theory also implies the existence
of supersymmetry, in which all known particles have yet-undiscovered
partners. Supersymmetry isnt a feature of LQG.

These and other di erences have split the theoretical physics community
into deeply divergent camps. Conferences have segregated, said Jorge

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Pullin, a physicist at Louisiana State University and co-author of an LQG

textbook. Loopy people go to loopy conferences. Stringy people go to stringy
conferences. They dont even go to physics conferences anymore. I think
its unfortunate that it developed this way.

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Shmahalo.

But a number of factors may be pushing the camps closer together. New
theoretical ndings haverevealed potential similarities between LQG and

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string theory. A young generation of string theorists has begun to look

outside string theory for methods and tools that might be useful in the quest
to understand how to create a theory of everything. And a still-raw
paradox involving black holes and information loss has given everyone a
fresh dose of humility.

Moreover, in the absence of experimental evidence for either string theory or

LQG, mathematical proof that the two are in fact opposite sides of the same
coin would bolster the argument that physicists are progressing toward the
correct theory of everything. Combining LQG and string theory would truly
make it the only game in town.

An Unexpected Link

An e ort to solve some of LQGs own internal problems has led to the rst
surprising link with string theory. Physicists who study LQG lack a clear
understanding of how to zoom out from their network of space-time chunks
and arrive at a large-scale description of space-time that dovetails with
Einsteins general theory of relativity our best theory of gravity. More
worrying still, their theory cant reconcile the special case in which gravity
can be neglected. Its a malaise that befalls any approach reliant on
chunking-up space-time: In Einsteins theory of special relativity, an object
will appear to contract depending on how fast an observer is moving relative
to it. This contraction also a ects the size of space-time chunks, which are
then perceived di erently by observers with di erent velocities. The
discrepancy leads to problems with the central tenet of Einsteins theory
that the laws of physics should be the same no matter what the observers
velocity.

Its di cult to introduce discrete structures without running into

di culties with special relativity, said Pullin. In a brief paper he wrote in
2014 with frequent collaborator Rodolfo Gambini, a physicist at the

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University of the Republic in Montevideo, Uruguay, Pullin argued that

making LQG compatible with special relativity necessitates interactions that
are similar to those found in string theory.

That the two approaches have something in common seemed likely to Pullin
since a seminal discovery in the late 1990s by Juan Maldacena, a physicist at
the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. Maldacena matched up a
gravitational theory in a so-called anti-de Sitter (AdS) space-time with a
eld theory (CFT the C is for conformal) on the boundary of the
space-time. By using this AdS/CFT identi cation, the gravitational theory
can be described by the better-understood eld theory.

The full version of the duality is a conjecture, but it has a well-understood

limiting case that string theory plays no role in. Because strings dont matter
in this limiting case, it should be shared by any theory of quantum gravity.
Pullin sees this as a contact point.

T. Thiemann/Albert Einstein Institute/Milde Marketing/Exozet

Video: In this artists conception, the network underlying space-time in loop quantum gravity
is shown as a series of colored faces. The video shows the behavior of space-time at the Planck
scale, the smallest possible area. If we were to zoom out, quantum details would disappear, and
space-time would begin to resemble the smooth, continuous geometry of classical physics.
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Herman Verlinde, a theoretical physicistat Princeton University who

frequently works on string theory, nds it plausible that methods from LQG
can help illuminate the gravity side of the duality. In a recent paper, Verlinde
looked at AdS/CFT in a simpli ed model with only two dimensions of space
and one of time, or 2+1 as physicists say. He found that the AdS space can
be described by a network like those used in LQG. Even though the
construction presently only works in 2+1, it o ers a new way to think about
gravity. Verlinde hopes to generalize the model to higher dimensions. Loop
quantum gravity has been seen too narrowly. My approach is to be inclusive.
Its much more intellectually forward-looking, he said.

But even having successfully combined LQG methods with string theory to
make headway in anti-de Sitter space, the question remains: How useful is
that combination? Anti-de Sitterspace-times have a negative cosmological
constant (a number that describes the large-scale geometry of the universe);
our universe has a positive one. We just dont inhabit the mathematical
construct that is AdS space.

Verlinde is pragmatic. One idea is that [for a positive cosmological constant]

one needs a totally new theory, he said. Then the question is how di erent
that theory is going to look. AdS is at the moment the best hint for the
structure we are looking for, and then we have to nd the twist to get a
positive cosmological constant. He thinks its time well spent: Though
[AdS] doesnt describe our world, it will teach us some lessons that will guide
us where to go.

Coming Together in a Black Hole

Verlinde and Pullin both point to another chance for the string theory and
loop quantum gravity communities to come together: the mysterious fate of
information that falls into a black hole. In 2012, four researchers based at the
University of California, Santa Barbara, highlighted an internal contradiction

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in the prevailing theory. They argued that requiring a black hole to let
information escape would destroy the delicate structure of empty space
around the black holes horizon, thereby creating a highly energetic barrier
a black hole rewall. This rewall, however, is incompatible with the
equivalence principle that underlies general relativity, which holds that
observers cant tell whether theyve crossed the horizon. The incompatibility
roiled string theorists, who thought they understood black hole information
and now must revisit their notebooks.

But this isnt a conundrum only for string theorists. This whole discussion
about the black hole rewalls took place mostly within the string theory
community, which I dont understand, Verlinde said. These questions
about quantum information, and entanglement, and how to construct a
[mathematical] Hilbert space thats exactly what people in loop quantum
gravity have been working on for a long time.

Meanwhile, in a development that went unnoted by much of the string

community, the barrier once posed by supersymmetry and extra dimensions
has fallen as well. A group around Thomas Thiemann at Friedrich-Alexander
University in Erlangen, Germany, has extended LQG to higher dimensions
and included supersymmetry, both of which were formerly the territory of
string theory.

More recently, Norbert Bodendorfer, a former student of Thiemanns who is

now at the University of Warsaw, has applied methods of LQGs loop
quantization to anti-de Sitter space. He argues that LQG can be useful for the
AdS/CFT duality in situations where string theorists dont know how to
perform gravitational computations. Bodendorfer feels that the former
chasm between string theory and LQG is fading away. On some occasions
Ive had the impression that string theorists knew very little about LQG and
didnt want to talk about it, he said. But [the] younger people in string

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theory, they are very open-minded. They are very interested what is going on
at the interface.

The biggest di erence is in how we de ne our questions, said Verlinde.

Its more sociological than scienti c, unfortunately. He doesnt think the
two approaches are in con ict: Ive always viewed [string theory and loop
quantum gravity] as parts of the same description. LQG is a method, its not a
theory. Its a method to think of quantum mechanics and geometry. Its a
method that string theorists can use and are actually using. These things are
not incompatible.

Not everyone is so convinced. Moshe Rozali, a string theorist at the

University of British Columbia, remains skeptical of LQG: The reason why I
personally dont work on LQG is the issue with special relativity, he said. If
your approach does not respect the symmetries of special relativity from the
outset, then you basically need a miracle to happen at one of your
intermediate steps. Still, Rozali said, some of the mathematical tools
developed in LQG might come in handy. I dont think that there is any
likelihood that string theory and LQG are going to converge to some middle
ground, he said. But the methods are what people normally care about, and
these are similar enough; the mathematical methods could have some
overlap.

Not everyone on the LQG side expects the two will merge either. Carlo Rovelli,
a physicist at the University of Marseille and a founding father of LQG,
believes his eld ascendant. The string planet is in nitely less arrogant than
ten years ago, especially after the bitter disappointment of the non-
appearance of supersymmetric particles, he said. It is possible that the two
theories could be parts of a common solution but I myself think it is
unlikely. String theory seems to me to have failed to deliver what it had
promised in the 80s, and is one of the many nice-idea-but-nature-is-not-

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like-that that dot the history of science.I do not really understand how can
people still have hope in it.

For Pullin, declaring victory seems premature: There are LQG people now
saying, We are the only game in town. I dont subscribe to this way of
arguing. I think both theories are vastly incomplete.

This article was reprinted on Wired.com and BusinessInsider.com.

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Sabine Hossenfelder
Contributing Writer

January 12, 2016

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