Research
My current interests include cosmology, black holes and quantum gravity.
More specifically, I aim to understand how quantum physics and general relativity can be unified into a theory of quantum gravity.
Quantum gravity is crucial to address some of the universe's biggest mysteries, including the nature of black holes, the origin of dark energy, and the dynamics of the early universe following the Big Bang. I am particularly motivated to connect quantum gravity to observations. To this end, I study quantum gravity in realistic spacetimes such as de Sitter space and investigate the low-energy constraints quantum gravity puts on effective field theories.
Highlighted Projects
Quantum Fluctuations of Causal Diamonds
Causal diamonds are subregions of spacetime that define the causally accessible region for worldlines of finite proper time. Causal diamonds have holographic properties such as finiteness of their gravitational entropy. For this reason, they are the natural object to study if we are interested in understanding quantum gravity for subregions of spacetime.
My research in this area aims to understand how quantum metric fluctuations affect causal diamonds and if this can lead to observational signatures. In recent work I studied causal diamonds in cosmology and demonstrated how their metric fluctuations scale with the size of the causal diamond. This work serves as a starting point to study fluctuations in more general spacetimes and to further investigate their relation to observables.
Quantum Black Holes in de Sitter Space
Black holes in de Sitter space are a useful tool to explore properties of quantum gravity in realistic (cosmological) spacetimes describing the accelerating expansion of our universe. The introduction of a cosmological horizon brings about a plethora of interesting new physical affects absent for black holes in asymptotically flat space.
My research in this area aims to understand the quantum properties of extremal black holes in de Sitter space and in particular how they decay. This sheds light on quantum gravity constraints that effective theories need to satisfy. It also provides hints towards the properties of the finite-dimensional microscopic theory underlying macroscopic features of de Sitter space.
Non-Decoupling Effects in Quantum Gravity
A fundamental aspect of quantum gravity is the correlation between short and long distance scales. While naive dimensional analysis suggests that quantum gravity effects only manifest near the Planck scale, evidence from black hole evaporation and the holographic principle suggests otherwise, hinting at signatures even at lower energies.
My research in this area studies non-decoupling effects in quantum gravity through the swampland program, which seeks to unveil constraints that low-energy theories satisfy that arise from consistent quantum gravity theories. I am particularly interested in the Weak Gravity Conjecture and the constraints this puts on higher-derivative corrections to black holes.
