Quantum Gravity and the Functional Renormalization Group

Martin Reuter is a Professor of Theoretical Physics at the Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz, Germany. He previously worked at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, CERN, in Geneva, the DESY laboratory in Hamburg, and the Leibniz Universität Hannover. In the 1990s, he initiated the exploration of quantum gravity and the Asymptotic Safety scenario by means of the functional renormalization group and subsequently played a key role in developing the program into its present form. Frank Saueressig is an assistant professor at the Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen. Before his appointment, he held research positions at Utrecht University, the Institut de Physique Théorique at CEA/Saclay, and an Emmy Noether fellowship at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. With more than seventy scientific publications in the field of quantum gravity he is among the leading young talents in the field.

'This book summarizes the developments in a specific approach to quantum gravity, called the 'asymptotic safety' scenario, over the last thirty years. It provides a pedagogical account of the basic conceptual idea and methods of the approach, and should be a valuable resource for researchers in this field.' Ivan G. Avramidi, Mathematical Reviews Clippings

• 1. A quantum field theory of gravity; 2. The functional renormalization group; 3. The asymptotic safety mechanism; 4. A functional renormalization group for gravity; 5. Truncations of single-metric type; 6. Bi-metric truncations; 7. Conformally reduced gravity; 8. The reconstruction problem; 9. Alternative field variables; 10. Matter coupled to quantum gravity; 11. Towards phenomenology; 12. Miscellanea; Appendix A. Notation and conventions; Appendix B. Organizing the derivative expansion; Appendix C. Metric variations; Appendix D. Heat Kernel techniques; Appendix E. Cutoff- and threshold functions; Appendix F. Field decompositions; References; Index.