Research

My current research is into quantum gravity via dynamical triangulations under the supervision of Dr. J. Laiho.

The above is a rather technical statement, so I will attempt to explain it a little more clearly! Our current understanding of the Universe we live in makes use of two extremely successful theories: Einstein's General Relativity, which describes gravity as a result of the curvature of space and time, and Quantum Theory, which describes how particles behave under the action of the other three fundamental forces that we know about.

So far so good. The problem is that when we need both of these theories to describe a particular physical situation, they turn out to be incompatible with one another. Admittedly, this only happens in a few arenas, but they present some of the biggest questions we currently think about - things like 'what happens inside a black hole?' or 'what is the structure of empty space at the smallest possible level?'. Questions like these cannot be solved without unifying the two ideas in what is known as a theory of quantum gravity. Finding a theory like this is generally acknowledged as one of the biggest outstanding problems in theoretical physics today.

I work on a particular approach to such a theory known as dynamical triangulation, which represents spacetime at the smallest level by triangular elements, similar to a curved surface in computer graphics being approximated by triangles. These triangular elements are built into configurations, and, in analogy to Richard Feynman's path integral formulation of quantum field theory, these configurations are summed over weighted by their action to produce a description of macroscopic spacetime.

More specifically, I am building on and assisting with work started by J. Laiho and D. Coumbe - more technical details can be found on the arXiv.

I am also a STEM Ambassador, and am happy to answer any questions about my research that I possibly can! My contact details are all below.