Shape Dynamics and Effective Field Theory

Understand

Shape Dynamics is a gauge theory based on spatial diffeomorphism- and Weyl-invariance which is locally indistinguishable form classical General Relativity.

• If taken seriously, it suggests that the spacetime--geometry picture that underlies General Relativity can be replaced by a picture based on spatial conformal geometry.
• This classically well understood trading of gauge symmetries opens new conceptual avenues in many approaches to quantum gravity.
• I focus on the general implications for quantum gravity and effective field theory and consider the application of the Shape Dynamics picture in the exact renormalization group approaches to gravity, loop- and polymer- quantization approaches to gravity and low energy effective field theories.