Claire Zukowski
Case Western Reserve University, OH·Physics
Gravity is the one fundamental force without a known quantum description. That gap matters in places like the deep interior of a black hole or the moments just after the Big Bang, when the whole universe was squeezed into a tiny region.
- Fields
Physics
Astronomy & Astrophysics
- Topics
quantum gravity
de Sitter spacetime
holography
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2027
What they work on
- Compute new quantum observables for de Sitter spacetime, an expanding universe like ours, building on recent advances in Chern-Simons gravity, a simplified formulation of gravity, as a route around past obstacles in dS/CFT holography.
- Use quantum information tools, namely modular Berry transport (tracking how quantum states shift between regions) and complexity (how hard a state is to build), to probe the bulk geometry of de Sitter space.
- Constrain the low-energy landscape of quantum gravity by performing general warped compactifications of extra dimensions and applying a new bootstrap technique that uses consistency conditions on compactifications.
More about the research
Theories of quantum gravity are easiest to work with in model universes that do not look like ours. This project instead studies quantum gravity in de Sitter spacetime, an expanding universe that approximates the one we live in.
Why it matters
This is basic theoretical physics. It aims to show how gravity behaves at the quantum level in a universe resembling our own, which is needed to describe black hole interiors and the earliest moments after the Big Bang. Limits on the landscape of possible low-energy theories could eventually inform which cosmological models are consistent with quantum gravity.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Igor Klebanov
Princeton University, NJ·Physics
Develop new methods for quantum field theories with defects or boundaries, where interactions are confined to a surface or edge, and identify the new critical phenomena and renormalization group flows they produce.
Massimo Porrati
New York University, NY·Physics
Develop new methods for defining quantities that separate signal from noise in gravitational-wave data.
Paul Anderson
Wake Forest University, NC·Physics
Determine whether evaporation of primordial black holes during cosmic inflation could produce observable effects on the cosmic background radiation, and study other quantum effects of these early black holes.
The school
Case Western Reserve University: 34 labs on PI Pages, $643M a year on research, 213 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
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