Locality, entanglement and quantum sources of gravity

Flaminia Giacomini (U Tor Vergata, Rome)

Nov 12. 2026, 09:45 — 10:15

The interface between gravity and quantum theory has become a lively field of research, substantially driven by the developments of quantum optics technologies. One of the most ambitious experimental goals is the preparation of a massive source in a quantum superposition of spatial locations, enabling tests of gravity in genuinely quantum regimes. Such experiments raise crucial theoretical questions: what insight could they provide on the (quantum) nature of gravity, and which tools and techniques are best suited to interpret them? Information-theoretic methods have proved very useful to analyse these scenarios, with entanglement and the LOCC theorem playing a central role. While these methods are naturally suited to the experimental platforms under consideration, their application to gravity is complicated by the gauge-theoretic nature of the field, which challenges standard notions of subsystems, locality, and information. 
In this talk, I will argue that concepts and tools of quantum information should be generalised to accommodate gauge theories and gravity. After reviewing the role played by information-theoretic arguments in current proposals, I will discuss how some of these notions can be reformulated in a gauge-invariant framework. This perspective provides a route toward extending the methodology of quantum information to gravitational scenarios.

Further Information
Venue:
ESI Boltzmann Lecture Hall
Associated Event:
Quantum Probes of Gravity (Workshop)
Organizer(s):
Christopher Hilweg (U of Vienna)
Thomas Mieling (FZ Jülich)
Marius A. Oancea (U of Vienna)
Dennis Rätzel (U Bremen)
Philip Walther (U of Vienna)
Magdalena Zych (U Stockholm)