Shining Light on Black Holes Workshop

September 21-25, 2009

University of Michigan
West Hall Room 340
Ann Arbor MI 48109-1040

 

 

The workshop "Shining light on Black Holes" aims to provide an opportunity for exchange of ideas between leading physicists studying black holes from very different perspectives.
Currently there are many popular directions of research directly or indirectly related to black hole physics. These directions cover broad scales from astrophysical to microscopic quantum physics including quantum gravity.  Surprisingly due to the AdS/CFT correspondence, black holes physics can help us understand better even condensed matter systems and finite temperature quantum chromodynamics. And vice versa: the so-called analog gravity models have the ability  to improve our understanding of black hole physics by opening up a possibility to measure analogs of quantum effects occurring around black hole horizons. Recent development in theoretical high energy physics suggest that strong gravity effects can occur even on scales accessible to the LHC. These speculations open a very exciting perspective and may change our basic notions of fundamental physics. On the other hand the success of astrophysical observations open a window of opportunity to study the properties of astrophysical black holes and fields interacting with them. Moreover, due to a peculiar universality, black holes may appear as a theoretical laboratory to differentiate between different speculative models of Dark Energy and gravity modifications. In addition to all this, developments in modern mathematical theoretical physics point out directions for better understanding the microscopic physics behind black hole entropy. Such is the case with developments in string theory and maybe in loop quantum gravity.

We plan on a 5 day (Mon-Fri) workshop with talks on the above mentioned topics and plenty of time for discussions.

 

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