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Host
Abstract
100 years ago, Niels Bohr formulated the correspondence principle, dictating that classical physical systems can be described as a particular case of the (by then) novel quantum theory. Nowadays, one of the most remarkable such classical systems under study are astrophysical black holes, as governed by Einstein’s General Relativity (GR). Indeed, we can test GR to an exquisite precision by analyzing gravitational signals reaching our detectors, arising from black hole collisions happening billions of light-years away. A novel incarnation of Bohr’s old idea suggests that the classical theory of GR is also encoded in (a limit of) the quantum theory: More precisely, observed from such very long distances, two colliding classical black holes can be described by the collision of quantum particles. In this talk we will present this idea in detail and explain how it is being used to obtain very precise predictions for gravitational wave signals
lawphysics 