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

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Roger Penrose: Twistor Theory in a Cosmological Setting

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.

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