Shamik Banerjee is a theoretical physicist at the Bhubaneswar Institute of Physics (IOP). He is a SwarnaJayanti fellowship recipient for the 2020-21 academic year. Understanding quantum gravity theory may result in a better understanding of the entropy of general black holes.
Key Highlight:
- Shamik Banerjee is a theoretical physicist at Bhubaneswar’s Institute of Physics (IOP).
- By unraveling the symmetries of the quantum theory of gravity, he hopes to explain the universe’s birth and what happens at the center of a Black Hole.
- Understanding and computing the entropy of generic black holes may lead to understanding the quantum theory of gravity.
- This will be a significant advance in our knowledge of gravity.
An Indian theoretical physicist, Shamik Banerjee, is working at the Institute of Physics in Bhubaneswar. He is a SwarnaJayanti fellowship winner for 2020-21, and he wants to learn more about the universe’s beginnings and what happens inside of a Black Hole by unraveling the symmetries in quantum gravity.
Classical: Einstein’s general theory of relativity, which talks about gravity, is based on this type of theory. Gravitational force is very weak in everyday life, so the general theory of relativity works great and has made a lot of predictions about the big-scale structure of space that have been proven to be true. Classical gravity theory doesn’t work at very short distances, like 1035 m. The atomic nucleus is so small that it doesn’t fit in the same space as the classical theory of gravity. In this case, quantum fluctuations in the space-time geometry start to matter, so this is why.
So, we need a bigger picture. This means that a quantum theory of elementary particles can’t be combined with a classical theory of gravity because it doesn’t work well together. That means that gravity needs to be quantified, so
Because we live in a four-dimensional world, our theories are written in four dimensions. For example, there is an example of this, the equations of the general theory of relativity. Even so, there are strong signs that quantum gravity equations should be written in three-dimensional space-time, which can be thought of as the boundary between our four-dimensional world and our three-dimensional space-time. It’s called Holographic to describe this way.
When you read this description, one of the most interesting things about it is that there is no gravity in the three-dimensional world in which the equations of quantum gravity are made. The three-dimensional theory, which talks about quantum gravity in four dimensions, is still very new to people. With help from the SwarnaJayanti Fellowship from the Department of Science and Technology, Professor Banerjee wants to learn about this theory’s symmetries and the equations that describe it in three-dimensional space and how this theory works.
In the seventies, Jacob Bekenstein and Stephen Hawking found out that black holes are thermodynamic systems with temperature, entropy, and other things that make things work. But classical gravity can’t explain why black holes are so hot. If we know more about the quantum theory of gravity, we may be able to understand and calculate the entropy of general black holes’ entropy. This will be a big step forward if we can figure out how gravity works better.
