UNC PHYSICS AND ASTRONOMY CHALK TALK
Dr. John Joseph Carrasco, Stanford University
“Gluons for nothing, and gravitons for free”
Towards an active discussion of future directions, I will give a pedagogic introduction to one of the most promising recent developments in perturbative scattering: the color-kinematic duality for gauge theories and the associated double-copy structure of graviton amplitudes. These are surprisingly simple relations universal to gauge and gravity theories–resolving a beautiful double-copy structure in the scattering of gravitons. Exploiting these relations promise to definitively answer outstanding open questions regarding the nature of high-energy (UV) divergences in quantum field theories of gravity, and suggests a strategic path forward to understanding the explicit role quantum mechanics plays in resolving the classical singularities of general relativity. I will comment on the increasing impact of large-scale analytic computation in the field, and how leveraging such resources will facilitate key near-term and more open-ended avenues of investigation.