Gravity: bulk, boundary, corners

Abstract

I will review four-dimensional gravity in the coframe-and-connection formulation (a.k.a. Palatini–Cartan formalism) and what it entails on boundaries (e.g., on Cauchy surfaces) and on corners (e.g., surfaces at infinity or surfaces around singularities in space). This full analysis will require the BV, the BFV and related formalisms and their interplay.

About the speaker

Alberto Cattaneo is a Professor at the Institute of Mathematics of the University of Zurich, Switzerland. He received his PhD at the University of Milan in 1995. He was a postdoc at Harvard University (1995-1997) and at the University of Milan (1997-1998). He then moved to the University of Zurich, Switzerland, as an Assistant Professor (1998-2003) and as a Full Professor (since 2003).

He was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 2006. He has made major contributions to the study of perturbative TQFTs, to Poisson geometry and deformation quantization, and to the development of cohomological methods (BV, BFV) for quantum gauge theories with particular interest in boundary (and corner) structures.