This conference is the third in a series of conferences that focus
on bringing together researchers working in condensed matter physics
and quantum gravity. The first of these conferences was held at the
Perimeter Institute in 2005 and the second conference at the Lorentz
Center in Leiden in 2007.
The condensed matter and gravity communities have traditionally
worked on different problems, with little reason to interact. In
recent years, this has changed for a number of reasons. The condensed
matter community has, for some time now, observed emergent phenomena
that look very much like the high energy phenomena that we see around
us and has made the logical step to ask whether our world is also
emergent from an underlying condensed matter like theory. It is natural
to investigate the role of gravity in this context, and several attempts
have been made to show how gravity could arise in a condensed matter
theory. In the quantum gravity community the interest in condensed
matter physics grew out of the realization that one is dealing with
a system with a very large number of degrees of freedom, i.e., one
finds oneself in a situation not unlike the one encountered in solid
state physics.
The aim of this conference series is to bring together these two
communities so that they can learn from and critique each other.
This third workshop in the series will have a focus on cosmology
and the origin of the universe. The format will be a combination
of talks by leading experts in both fields and ample time for discussion
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