Por Mercedes Martin Benito (IA / FCUL).

Abstract: In this seminar I will give a basic introduction to the fields of quantum gravity and quantum cosmology. I will briefly overview some of the approaches that aim at obtaining a fundamental quantum theory for gravity, with a special focus on Loop Quantum Gravity (LQG). I will also cover the main ideas behind Loop Quantum Cosmology (LQC), the application of LQG to cosmological models. We will see that LQC succeeds in resolving cosmological singularities: the classical Big Bang singularity gets replaced by a quantum bounce and quantum physical observables, like the scalar curvature, never diverge.