Conferences
16–20 July 2018, Domodossola, Italy
Domoschool: International Alpine School of Mathematics and Physics
In the years 1915-1916, Albert Einstein developed the theory of general relativity, which predicted a dynamical and interactive Universe. There has been a huge number of experimental and observational confirmations of such theory, which predicts with high precision several phenomena that are new with respect to pre-relativistic theory, and it has also had some technological consequences. Among the predictions of Einstein theory there is the existence of black holes, that of gravitational waves, and the born of cosmology as part of exact science. The considerable difficulty in solving Einstein equations requires a strong interaction among physicists and mathematicians, both for determining new solutions, and for its physical interpretation. Indeed, still today, more than 100 years after its formulation, the theory of general relativity is able to provide new surprises.
The 2018 edition of the school wants to be an occasion to discuss, both from a mathematical and a physical viewpoint, the more recent experimental and theoretical discoveries related to Einstein equations. To this aim, 3-4-hour courses will be given by worldwide experts on the following topics:
-Gravitational waves have been studied by Einstein in 1918 in his famous paper, , “Über Gravitationswellen, Königlich Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Sitzungsberichte (1918): 154-167”, in which he concluded that it consists in a so week phenomenon that it would be impossible to be detected. Only after September 2015 it has been possible to reveal directly the existence of gravitational waves, thanks to a spectacular technique of measurement realized in a joint experiment including to American laboratories (LIGOs project) and an Italian-French one (Virgo project).
The phenomenological aspects will be presented by professor Giancarlo Cella, who is actively working at the Virgo lab. The theoretical aspects will be treated by professor Eric Poisson, coming from Guelph University (Canada).
-The lectures of prof. Poisson will regard methods suitable to study not only gravitational waves, but also perturbations around black hole solutions, the main sources of gravitational waves. Black hole instability under perturbations will be analyzed from a mathematical point of view by professor Felix Finster, professor in mathematics at the Regensburg University, Germany.
-New theoretical predictions of Einstein equations come from the quite recent discovery due to Alessandro Carlotto and Richard Schoen, stating that new solutions of Einstein equations may predict new phenomena, impossible in Newton’s theory of gravity, among which, in particular, a gravitational screening phenomenon. At the school, mathematical and physical aspects related to such discovery will be discussed by professor Alessandro Carlotto, ETH of Zurich, Switzerland, and by professor Piotr Chruściel, University of Vienna, Austria.
-Finally, professor Alexander Kamenshchik, from the University of Bologna, winner of the Friedmann Prize 2017 for is numerous discoveries in classical and quantum cosmology, will give a course on mathematical and physical aspects of cosmology as described by Einstein equations.
