Olaf Dreyer

Olaf Dreyer at Harvard University

Olaf Dreyer (born 1969 in Hamburg) is a German theoretical physicist and postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Applied Mathematics at the University of Waterloo whose research interests include quantum gravity and the quantum measurement problem. Dreyer received his Ph.D. in quantum gravity in 2001 from the Pennsylvania State University^[1] under the direction of Abhay Ashtekar.^[2] Subsequently he has held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, a Marie Curie Fellowship at Imperial College, London, and a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Theoretical Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In 2002 Dreyer proposed^[3] a connection between the Barbero-Immirzi parameter in loop quantum gravity and the asymptotic behaviour of black hole quasinormal modes (in numerical general relativity), building on previous insights due to Shahar Hod.^[4] Subsequently, Lubos Motl proved that the exact asymptotic behaviour of the quasinormal modes of the Schwarzschild black hole was as predicted numerically.^[5]

Dreyer has developed an approach to quantum gravity known as "internal relativity".^[6]

Notes

1. ^ "Press release for "The Trouble with Physics" published by Houghton Mifflin Company : Hot Young Physicists". http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/booksellers/press_release/smolin/#physicists. Retrieved 22 January 2011. 
2. ^ Baez, John (2002). "This Week's Finds in Mathematical Physics (Week 189)". http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/week189.html. Retrieved 22 January 2011. 
3. ^ Dreyer, Olaf (2003), "Quasinormal Modes, the Area Spectrum, and Black Hole Entropy", Phys. Rev. Lett. 90: 081301, arXiv:arXiv:gr-qc/0211076v1, Bibcode 2003PhRvL..90h1301D, doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.90.081301, PMID 12633415 
4. ^ Hod, Shahar (1998), "Bohr's Correspondence Principle and The Area Spectrum of Quantum Black Holes", Phys. Rev. Lett. 81: 4293, arXiv:arXiv:gr-qc/9812002v2, Bibcode 1998PhRvL..81.4293H, doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.81.4293 
5. ^ Motl, Lubos (2003), "An analytical computation of asymptotic Schwarzschild quasinormal frequencies", Adv. Theor. Math. Phys. 6: 1135–1162, arXiv:arXiv:gr-qc/0212096v3 
6. ^ Marshall, Michael (4 March 2010), "Knowing the mind of God: Seven theories of everything", New Scientist, http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18612-knowing-the-mind-of-god-seven-theories-of-everything.html 

External links

• "xQIT:: Center for Extreme Quantum Information Theory at MIT"]. http://www.rle.mit.edu/xqit/dreyer-abstract.html. Retrieved 22 January 2011. 
• Becker, Kate (2007), It's all relative, The Foundational Questions Institute, http://fqxi.org/community/articles, retrieved 22 January 2011 

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Name	Dreyer, Olaf
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Date of birth	1969
Place of birth	Hamburg, Germany
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