This project focuses on several complementary aspects of gravitational physics and its applications to a varying class of phenomena: Quantum gravitational effects in cosmology will be studied at large distance scales with a dual goal: (i) to drastically improve previous calculations of the quantum gravitational back-reaction to inflation, which indicated a perturbative screening of the cosmological constant, and (ii) to further develop the construction of cosmological models consistent with this perturbative screening as well as to further pursue their phenomenological implications for cosmology from the inflationary era to the present.
Large energy (ultra-planckian) scattering will be studied with the purpose of obtaining firm theoretical predictions for the black-hole production cross-section in high energy accelerators, for the missing energy to gravitational radiation, relevant for the search of large extra dimensions at the LHC, and, through the holographic translation of the analogous results on AdS, an improvement of the predictions about the physics of the QGP and the heavy-ion collisions at the LHC. It is expected to also shed light on the validity of the conjectured “classicalization” of gravity and on the nature of its UV completion.
Gravitational techniques based on holography will also be applied to cosmology with the purpose of describing novel models of cosmological acceleration, the cosmological physics of strongly coupled fluids and to the construction of strongly coupled theories for electroweak symmetry breaking.
