IPB colloquium by Dejan Stojkovic


 IPB colloquium will be held on Friday, 20 May 2016 at 12:00 in “Dr. Dragan Popović” library reading room of the Institute of Physics Belgrade. The talk entitled

"QUANTUM ASPECTS OF GRAVITATIONAL COLLAPSE: NON-SINGULARITY AND NON-LOCALITY"

will be given by Prof. Dr. Dejan Stojkovic (University at Buffalo - The State University of New York).

Abstract of the talk:

Singularities in classical general relativity are unavoidable, but perhaps only represent the fact that we are extrapolating our theory beyond its region of validity. In this talk we will study the end stages of gravitational collapse using the functional Schrodinger formalism to capture quantum effects in the near singularity limit. We will find that that the equations of motion which govern the behavior of the collapsing object near the classical singularity become strongly non-local. We will solve the non-local equations, and find an explicit form of the wavefunction describing the collapsing object. This wavefunction and the corresponding probability density are non-singular at the origin, thus indicating that quantization should be able to rid gravity of singularities, just as it was the case with the singular Coulomb potential.