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Department of Physics and Astronomy
University of Mississippi

Events

Event Information:

  • Tue
    21
    Jan
    2020

    Colloquium: Giving the Graviton a Mass

    4:00 pmLewis Hall 101

    James Bonifacio
    Department of Physics
    Case Western Reserve University

    Giving the Graviton a Mass

    In general relativity, the gravitational force is mediated by a massless spin-2 particle…the graviton. In fact, the structure of general relativity and its interactions with other particles are largely fixed by this requirement. However, there are still many open questions about the behavior of gravity, both at short and long distances, which motivates the exploration of theories that deform general relativity. One such question is whether the graviton in our universe can have a small but nonzero mass. In this talk I will review some of the challenges and successes in constructing theories of massive gravitons and discuss some recent experimental and theoretical results that constrain such theories.