HEP Theory Journal Club

Emergent gravity and the dark universe

Laure-Anne Douxchamps

McGill

In a recent paper, Erik Verlinde has proposed a new way of understanding dark energy and dark matter in terms of entanglement of microscopic degrees of freedom. In an argument that calls upon ideas coming from string theory, black hole physics, quantum information and theory of elasticity, Verlinde depicts de Sitter space as a glassy system whose short-time and long-time behaviors are very different. Dark energy excitations are seen in this picture as the basic constituents of our universe, while dark matter is seen as a memory effect of the emergence of spacetime and the matter within.