More Astronomy Courses
Roger Penrose: Twistor Theory in a Cosmological Setting
Course Description
Roger Penrose
Twistor Theory in a Cosmological Setting
Lecture in the Askloster Symposium, July 26, 2008
Copyright: The Archive Trust for Mathematical Sciences & Philosophy
(http://www.archmathsciphil.com). Permission granted to CosmoLearning

TWISTORS: In theoretical and mathematical physics, twistor theory is a mathematical theory mapping the geometric objects of conventional 3+1 space-time (Minkowski space) into geometric objects in a 4 dimensional space with metric signature (2,2). This space is called twistor space, and its complex valued coordinates are called "twistors." Twistor theory was first proposed by Roger Penrose in 1967,[1] as a possible path to a theory of quantum gravity. He and his students have written a large majority of the papers on the subject. The twistor approach is especially natural for solving the equations of motion of massless fields of arbitrary spin. In 2003, Edward Witten[2] proposed to marry twistor and string theory by embedding the topological B model of string theory in twistor space. His objective was to model certain Yang-Mills amplitudes.
Video Lectures & Study Materials
# | Lecture | Play Lecture |
---|---|---|
1 | Twistor Theory in a Cosmological Setting (1/2) | Play Video |
2 | Twistor Theory in a Cosmological Setting (2/2) | Play Video |
Comments
*If any embedded videos constitute copyright infringement, we strictly recommend contacting the website hosts directly to have such videos taken down. In such an event, these videos will no longer be playable on CosmoLearning or other websites.